While the focus of gift-giving holidays may take place in winter, however the spring has its fair share of things to celebrate. For many people, Easter is the next major holiday and it can be a great time for parents to share stories with their children while also sharing something a little special as well.
Easter coincides with the beginning of spring, and with good reason. Parents can use this meaningful holiday to emphasize the circle of life and to relay other messages, but like many other holidays it can be a great opportunity to take advantage of storytelling.
Strapped for Easter gift ideas? KD Novelties is having an Easter Giveaway. Enter to win a variety of Easter gifts that are sure to make any Easter basket complete. In the giveaway, KD Novelties will include The Cottontail Mystery personalized book, an Easter Bunny plush and an Easter bucket as well. Not only do the prizes have your Easter gift-giving work cut out for you, but the giveaway helps to promote literacy as well. With personalized books like The Cottontail Mystery, kids can embark on their own adventure alongside the Easter Bunny himself. Full of springtime charm, this book uses puzzles and other sorts of clues to engage kids in a mystery surrounding the Easter Bunny. By personalizing the book, the story becomes more immersive and interesting, especially for kids who may not otherwise like reading or need a little extra push to do so.
Personalized books have proven to be a great gateway to reading other books and promoting a general interest in reading and learning, even among reluctant readers. With The Cottontail Mystery and a basketful of Easter goodies in tow, your child will be ready to take on the springtime weather and wait for the furry bunny of the hour to finally arrive on Easter morning!
Now that the major holidays are over, there are only a few more breaks before school is out for the summer. Depending on where you live, a Spring break may be headed your way. It’s important that parents and guardians provide ideas and encouragement when it comes to certain activities that children can do during their time off from school. Here are some suggestions for the upcoming spring break.
Hitting the Road
If you have the opportunity, traveling somewhere new can help broaden your child’s perception and understanding of the world around them. Visit a part of the country you’ve never seen or look for something new to do if you’re visiting a family favorite location. Traveling in general can be incredibly beneficial for children, especially when they are young. Exposing them to different places, people, cultures, climates, and other activities can help encourage their creativity as well as their ability to connect with different people, too.
Children’s museums are a great option that can help entertain the whole family while teaching you all a little something new, too. Museums geared towards children, or museums that offer special children’s tours, can help make learning fun and more interactive, while also providing a unique experience.
Even if you can’t afford an extravagant vacation, day trips are also a great option. Consider taking the kids to a nearby metropolitan area, museums as mentioned, looking for historic landmarks or even visiting any nearby National Parks or forests if the weather permits outdoor activities. Pick up a new skill, take a class, or even volunteer.
Staying Indoors
If you’re staying indoors then you may be thinking of other activities that are both wholesome and exciting to keep your child occupied.
Reading is a great way for kids to experience new things without necessarily having to go anywhere. The act of reading can help bolster cognitive function, abstract understanding, and communication skills while also helping your child develop other key skills that will help them academically. Reading can also help introduce your child to new ideas, expanding their imagination and their ability to empathize with others. Choose a book series you can explore during the break or consider some personalized books, from our website, that provides kids with a uniquely personal experience that they may not be able to experience otherwise if a trip or vacation is out of the question. Plus, plenty of libraries offer kid-centric activities year-round but especially during school breaks to help keep kids active or to help parents who may still have to work during the spring-break recess.
Get Creative and Make Memories with the Kids
Aside from exploring and discovering new stories and adventures through books, you can create some, too by getting creative with arts and crafts! Create a family adventure and write it down, complete with illustrations and scenes that you can act out together.
However, no matter what, family time should take priority during breaks like these, even if parents or guardians still have to work during the day. Make time to prep dinner together, creating lifelong memories. Making a point of eating dinner together is important for families no matter what time of the year or day of the week it is, but you can make the occasion extra special over the break by preparing a well-loved family meal, trying something new, or making a project out of it.
It’s also important not to underestimate the power of family movie night. There are hundreds of family friendly movies on subscription channels like Netflix or Hulu that you can tune into from the comfort of your own home, and plenty of family friendly and kid movies are released in the early spring as well. Make a small outing, get some snacks and hit the theater! Local libraries and community centers sometimes host movie nights or other events for kids and families to partake in, so those are worthy of considering as well.
A break from school may seem like a small vacation to some, but if you plan accordingly and explore your options, you and your kids can make the most of it before school is back in session!
When it comes to literacy development, there are not many methods better than simply reading aloud. According to the Bredekamp, Copple, & Neuman, 2000 study, it is the single most important activity for reading success and to boost reading comprehension. It not only provides children with an accessible demonstration of phrased, fluent reading but it also provides them with the immediate rewards of reading, developing the listener’s interest in books and piquing their desire to be a reader as they become more skilled.
Reading out loud can be a great tool for parents, as well as a great activity to share with children. Listening to others read can develop key understanding skills and reading comprehension, even if the child is not doing the reading themselves. Active listening can help kids familiarize with the different parts of a story as well as with different and integral parts of language. On that note, children can listen on a higher level than they can read – meaning that they can listen to books that are more advanced than their reading level. This can be extremely helpful when trying to boost your child’s reading skills, reading level, and generally interesting them in reading on their own.
For the most part, a child’s first experience with reading will be story time with their parents or something similar. By making story time a staple of your daily schedule, reading and storytelling can quickly become a very important part of your child’s life. However, parents can take it a step further, too.
Make Reading a Part of Your Lives When story time has its own time and place, children find meaning for stories and reading in their lives. There are so many ways in which parents can make reading a part stor of their child’s everyday world. Have books around, of all kinds. Give your kids a little library of their own, but even magazines and coffee table books around the house can pique their interest – one day, they’ll be able to read those things, too. Kids also learn from example, so if you read often yourself, children will develop an interest in reading, too. But overall, if shared story time is something that you do every night before bed, or in any part of the day, they become habits and the comfort they provide can help to ensure that your child is always interested in books, reading and learning.
Encourage Kids to Listen and Form Opinions Reading aloud is one thing, but it can play a huge role when it comes to active listening. Active listening during story time can help build vital reading comprehension skills that kids will utilize once they can read more independently. Ask your kids questions about the story. Request an overview after every book or chapter. Have them tell you about their favorite characters and why.
Read Aloud – and Think Aloud, Too In addition to asking kids questions about what you’re reading, asking them to share their thoughts and feelings can help them develop communication skills that can carry across verbal and written forms. Ask them to connect the book to their own life experience, to other books you’ve shared together, and even ask them to connect what they are reading to universal concepts like love, friendship, family, etc. Stories made personally for children can help with this process as they are submerged into the story themselves helping them connect with characters in the story.
Have Kids Read Along As kids get older and begin to learn, they will surely be able to identify some of the words you’re reading – even if the book you’re sharing is a bit more advanced for them. If kids are encouraged to read along, even if they are still listening, different parts of their brain are being activated and utilized. Kids will have a better idea of the relationship between how words look and how they sound, and they may also develop a deeper understanding of how language flows and how stories develop as well.
