How Do I Keep My Kids Reading During the Summer?

Posted on | by KD Novelties

Now that the end of school year is in sight, kids are probably gearing up for the summer holiday. The summer months are when most families go on vacation, relax and spend time with one another. The season may go by in the blink of an eye for parents, but summers can feel quite long for kids, and it’s a rather long time for kids to go without reading. In order to keep kids on the reading level they finished with in the school year, it is important that parents remember to keep reading a constant throughout the summer vacation in order to keep their kids’ minds sharp and ready to learn once the new school year rolls around.

Encourage Them to Keep a Journal
If your summer is full of family time, trips and vacations, then a great way to maintain your kid’s reading skills and even enhance them is to inspire them to write. Ask them to write about your adventures as a family. Encourage them to share their thoughts, memories and experiences. Even though writing is not the same as reading, it uses the same parts of the brain and even helps to improve reading and comprehension skills. If you want, you can ask your kids to read you their entries once they’ve finished or at the end of the summer to look back on everything, while also bolstering their reading skills.

Read Before Bed

One of the best ways to help kids build a strong relationship with reading is to make it a habit. Having books around makes them a part of their life, especially their life at home, but actively reading books as a part of their day can help instill reading as a daily activity that will continue for years and years to come. Share a story before bed, or pick a chapter book to read a section from each night throughout the summer. Take turns reading, act out scenes, and do the voices to make it more exciting and interesting.

Read Everything, Read Everywhere

Reading does not have to occur with books alone. Encourage your kids to read road signs that you pass on the highway, teach them how to read a map, ask them what’s written on the cereal box they eat from every morning, or even ask them to read off the ingredients for the recipes you whip up for your next summer barbecue. Reading is an invaluable skill and it is used to help people understand letters, pay bills, and make a plethora of other daily decisions. Reading other things can help kids understand a broader range of concepts and ideas and can help encourage them to read everything everywhere they go. It can help prevent them from getting lost, accidentally eating something that they may be allergic too, or it could help them read the signs and labels they see every day.

Summer Reading
Many schools and classrooms now incorporate summer reading as a means to help make sure that kids read during the long break. Some schools may provide specific lists for certain teachers or grades whereas other schools may simply provide a list of recommendations with incentives to read as many books on the list as possible. The last thing that most kids want to think about over the summer vacation is homework, but there are ways in which you can make reading fun and interesting. First off, you can incorporate any of the ideas above: ask your kids to start a journal about the things they read, encourage them to read with you every day, act out scenes and storylines, draw and color pictures of characters and places from the books they have to read, or even offer incentives of your own for every book that they complete on their own. Choose a personalized book where they will star as the main character, this will sure get them excited about reading too!

Reading is vital and it is a skill-set that helps people learn about so many other things. A love of books is often synonymous with a love of learning; so make sure that you keep your children up to speed with their reading over the summer and to help them enjoy the process, too.

How To Choose A Daycare

Posted on | by KD Novelties

There will undoubtedly come a time when, as a parent, you may need to make arrangements to find a daycare center. Whether you need to go back to work or are working on a degree, or have other errands to run, you will want to find a trustworthy place where you can send your child and know that they are safe. There are several things that you should look for and insist upon when it comes to choosing the right place for your child to attend. But first, you should make sure that you visit and inspect any location that you may be considering so that you can give it a thorough assessment.

Do Your Research
This goes for just about anything, and with the help of the internet you are sure to find most of the resources that you will need in order to do a thorough search on a variety of different places in your area. Not only will you be able to look for basic necessities from your own personal wish list, but the most important part about the research process are the reviews. Even if a daycare looks to meet all of your needs and wants, reviews may help paint a better picture in terms of how well the facility provides those needs and executes them. Be wary, however, and make sure to be thorough. Sometimes not everything you read is true. Word of mouth and other forms of recommendation can help as well.

Take a Tour
Most, if not all, daycares and preschools offer tours to interested parents and guardians. While touring these locales, it is important that you pay attention to certain things. Make sure that you look at how clean the floor, surfaces and other items are. See if you can catch children and/or employees interacting and see how they handle situations. Pay attention to the size of group activities, how many children are under the care of a single individual and how much of the supplies, toys, equipment and other necessities are allocated – are caregivers strapped for space or other items? Is there enough room for the kids? Do they have enough toys, activities and attention?

Ask Questions
Whether you’re taking a tour, talking on the phone or communing in some other fashion, it is important that you ask the right questions.  Pay attention to the answers you are given and that you note the manner in which they were given as well. Listening to how a person responds to your queries, what sort of language and tone of voice they use, will tell you a lot. Try to gauge how genuine these answers are, how accurate, and how sincere.

Go With Your Gut
In the end, it is still important to heed your own feelings as well as your using your own judgment.  If something feels off, then look into it and maybe move on. Make sure that “bad feelings” do not go unnoticed or overlooked. Intuition can help you a great deal, and when it comes to caring for your child there is no such thing as being too thorough.

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Why Nursery Rhymes Are Important for Reading

Posted on | by KD Novelties

When reading to children, one of the most popular go-to stories that parents choose to share are nursery rhymes. Nursery rhymes are old favorites that many parents remember from their own childhood. Many nursery rhymes are hundreds of years old, and there is a reason why these stories have stuck around and become classics. For thousands of years, even before the written word, stories were told orally and the best way to remember such stories was through song and rhyme. Putting a story to a tune, especially if the lines rhyme, helps with memory, which is why stories were shared like this before they could be written down and well after that.

Nursery rhymes today can be beneficial for children in many ways, and for many of the reasons listed below.

Brain Food
Not only are nursery rhymes a great way to acquaint children with language, but the mnemonic devices inherent in their structure can help bolster your child’s memory skills as well. According to Kay Vandergrift, Professor Emerita of Children’s Literature at Rutgers University, nursery rhymes are often a child’s first interaction or experience with literacy. Even if children cannot sit down and read a book on their own, the sing-song rhyming of nursery rhymes helps activate the parts of their brain that are active while learning and actively reading.

Cultural Significance
Nursery rhymes have become a staple of Western Culture, and many other parts of the world have their own equivalent songs and stories that have been passed down for centuries and generations. Since nursery rhymes are common among older generations, they provide a great way for families to bond and form a sense of shared understanding.

They’re fun!
You don’t really need a study to tell you that singing is fun, but when children are able to sing along and share the experience with others, it can be a great learning and social experience. This is why nursery rhymes are so popular at daycares and schools. The children can learn the rhymes and songs, sing along together, and sometimes even participate in dancing and re-enactments, such as the hand-holding and spinning that goes along with “Ring Around the Rosie”

Nursery Rhymes Personalized Book and Music

Nursery rhymes can be even more fun if they’re personalized, and KD Novelties offers a book and CD that can offer that experience. The Mother Goose Personalized Book and Music set puts a unique spin on the nursery rhymes that we all know and love by putting your child on an adventure to help Mother Goose find her way home. Along the way, they take part in nursery rhymes and meet Humpty Dumpty, the Cat and the Fiddle, Little Miss Muffet and many more favorite characters in this classic tale.

Oral storytelling has been a part of human culture since the very beginning, and nursery rhymes helps perpetuate that tradition while also teaching kids about language, boosting their memory, and getting their brains working. Sharing nursery rhymes with your kids will not only bring memories back of your own childhood, but you will be actively making new memories with your children as well.