Kids can be friends with books, and that’s another very important one to have. This is friendship month and we can share some great books with kids.
Eric Carle is one of my favorite children’s authors. A fairly recent one is Friends. This is the story of a two friends. To get together one of them swims a wide river, climbs tall mountains, hikes across a grassy field, and makes it through other places. Not all friends will connect at the end like the two do in this book, but the story shares the message that friends will go to great lengths for each other.
Another fun book is Ollie’s Valentine, by Olivier Dunrea. There are several books in the series about the friends Ollie, Gossie, and others. These little animals turn even the ordinary into adventures. The stories give clues about how to be friends, like sharing and waiting. The surprise ending in this book includes children hearing and reading the story in the circle of friends.
Being friends with books has amazing advantages for kids. Hearing stories over and over not only adds hundreds of words to vocabulary but millions of words to the brain’s language files. This increases the brain’s processing speed for language. Do you remember someone when you went to school who always had a hand up to answer questions faster than anyone else? This student may not have been any smarter than the rest, but could process the question faster.
One of the biggest tasks kids have at school is learning to read. By reading and sharing books and stories with your child, you make this much easier. Kids not only know how books work, they also know how print works. They understand the black lines and squiggles are the words we say marked down on a page. Reading is connecting these marks to what they mean. For a play-of-the-day, share any stories and books. What are some books that help so kids can be friends with books?
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