Thursday, Jan. 27, is family literacy day in Canada. According to ABC Life Literacy Canada, this year’s focus is on learning through play.

There are two reasons that play is such a powerful learning tool. Children are meant to learn through play. Think about all the important life lessons that your children have learned through play. In addition, play is a great way to take the pressure off and make something dry (or boring) entertaining, if you don’t believe me – put on some great tunes and dance your way through doing the dishes tonight, we suspect you’ll notice quite a difference.

Here are 10 really simple and fun reading and writing games to play at home with your children:

1. For children who are learning the alphabet, making letters out of play dough is a fun and tactile way to experience the alphabet.
2. In the car, simple games like “I-Spy” are great for practicing letter sounds and entertaining young minds while you are navigating rush hour.
3. Create a family play night. Have your children write a short play, give everyone a part, have fun dressing up and put on a performance in your own home.
4. Setting up a treasure hunt is a game that you can adjust to work with almost any age. Set it up yourself to practice reading or have your child set it up for you to have them practice writing the clues. At the simplest level, use one word like “oven” on the clues.
5. Children love to put on a performance, so next time, have them create an entire show to present to you. Writing out programs and creating tickets are just some of the sneaky ways that writing works itself into this idea.
6. When reading stories to young pre-readers, have them guess what they think will happen next before turning the page. This simple game engages children in the story and helps build their imagination and curiosity, which are vital in building the desire to learn to read in children.
7. Involve your child in the weekly grocery shop. Make a list for you and give your child items for him to write on his list too. When you are at the store let him be in charge of finding the items on his list.
8. Another fun letter game to entertain children in the car is to make funny phrases out of the letters on car license plates that you pass. For example “ALA 168” could be “Angry Little Aardvarks.”
9. A really fun writing activity (which can also tie into the next activity) is to have your children run a restaurant for the night or for lunch. They are the servers and they set and write the menus. They can help prepare the food and even provide entertainment. This is a really great rainy day activity.
10. Without a doubt, our favourite reading activity is cooking. Find simple recipes for early readers to follow. Casseroles with lots of ingredients are great for more advanced readers. Cooking also sneaks in some math skills and at the end of the day you have a child who can cook for you! For young ones, putting raisins on gingerbread men help with fine motor movement and finger dexterity.

Most commonly, this question starts to pop up when a child is 3 or 4 years old. The first and most important thing to remember at this age is that at this age a toddler’s brain is developing rapidly. Surprise! Just by being a loving parent you are probably doing all that you need to do to facilitate his learning.
One thing that seems to be forgotten these days with all the pressure on academics children are put under is that there are many skills that a child needs to learn in order to do well in school. Reading is just one of those skills. More important are social skills and a positive attitude towards learning. Marilyn Chapman, director of the Institute for Early Childhood Education and Research at the University of British Columbia says “Learning is emotional as much as it is cognitive, and emotions help memories ‘stick’. We want children not only to learn, but to feel good about doing it and develop a positive, healthy identity.’
In his book “Outliers” Malcom Gladwell talks about a comparison study between the literacy levels of two groups of children. One set which were in an academic preschool and the other set that were in a play based preschool. It was found that on average the children in the academic preschool learned to read one year earlier than the children in the play based preschool. However, by the age of 7 there was no difference in reading skills, but the children from the play based preschool were much more likely to read for fun.
Here in Vancouver, Canada it is only expected that children should know their alphabet by the end of Grade 1 – this means that your child has until they are 7 years old before the educational system feels that they are ready to move on.
So what does this mean to you? Watch your child, look for clues that indicate that your child is ready to start to learn to read and once you feel that they are ready make sure that it is a fun experience and don’t feel that they are falling behind in any way if they don’t catch on right away.
Clues that your child is ready are likely that your child is asking more and more for you to explain, point out and help them “read” words. Teach him to write his name, if he manages it quite easily then that would be an indication that he’s ready for a bigger challenge.
If your child is not quite ready, don’t worry about it. Keep modelling positive learning behaviour such as reading books to him, giving him picture books to ‘read’ to you and pointing out important / interesting words you see as you move around on a daily basis. One day, pretty soon he will be open and primed for a positive learning experience.

What is Multi Sensory Learning?

Multi Sensory Learning is very simply learning through all the 5 senses. If you teach any one a concept through sound, sight, feel, smell and taste the chances of them ever forgetting it are very small. For example lets take something boring like fractions.

Sound: First explain what half and a quarter is to your child.
Sight: Take an apple and cut it into half and a quarter
Feel: Allow your child to cut up other pieces of  fruit into fractions.
Smell:  Take three glasses of water. Using vanilla essence measure out three servings into the three glasses using fractions. How different do they smell?
Taste: Taste the difference between the three glasses.

Do you have to use all the senses all the time?

No, some senses are harder to engage than others. Try to engage as many senses as is natural for the topic you are working on.

Isn’t Multi Sensory Learning used mainly for children with learning challenges?

Multi Sensory Learning has been very successful in teaching children with learning challenges. However it’s uses are much wider than that, it is a great tool for teaching any one any thing – I like to use it to teach adults concepts too. One thing it does is get you to think much more creatively about the topic you are explaining. Taking any thing out of a text book and into 5D is much more engaging and in the long run easier for you. A little more effort at the front end equals less time going over topics and re explaining old topics when you are trying to build on them.

Next time you are looking to explain a concept, try to think in 5D (using your 5 senses!) For information on a Multi Sensory literacy program see the rest of my website.

A while back I spent a fair bit of time in a down town east side school here in Vancouver and one of the things I did was take the kids for computer time. Over a period of time I made a couple of observations which I’d like to share.

1. Computer time is a really fun time, kids really enjoy it and do an amazing job of figuring it all out (usually before I have)
2. Computer programs are very graphically designed. Kids can enjoy the games by clicking on lots of stuff but without reading the screen. If your child is just starting to read, it would be a good idea to sit with your child while they play computer games and encourage them to read the screen.
3. Computer programs can be very controlling. Your child will often find the easy route through the games instead of engaging their brain. An example of this was a story that could be read, but if the child was stuck then they could click on the word and the computer would pronounce it for them. The kids I was working with didn’t realise that they were supposed to be reading the words themselves. Instead they were labouriously clicking on every word and waiting for the computer to pronounce it. Once your child is reading, keep an eye on them while they are playing computer games to make sure that they are using them in a way that has some educational benefit.
4. Sometimes computer games can overstimulate a child to some extent. They begin to click away fast and change games without playing and finishing one. If this happens, you will need to step in and turn off the games for a while. Next time, you will need to direct your child into playing one or two games only.

• Take a digital camera with you on a day out with your kids. The next day print off the photos and help your child make a book telling the story of the day out. This book can be read by your child when ever he/she wants to read it.
• A fun variation on this is for your and your child to spend the day photographing a favourite toy in various places and poses around your neighbourhood, you can build this into quite an adventure story!
• Check out your local library for events. There is bound to be lots of kid friendly activities on over the summer, while you are there spend some time together in the kids section and help your child pick out some books to take home and read. Don’t worry too much about trying to find books that are challenging. Kids learn a lot about the enjoyment of reading from books that they can pick up and read fluently by them selves.
• Cook together – and get your child to read the recipe.  Even better – turn your baking into a pretend cafe and have your child make up some menu’s and signs.
• Any time you are in a restaurant together this summer, let your child read the menu and pick their own meal.
• Planning a road trip? Make a bingo board out of road signs and place names that you think you will see on the way. When your child sees the sign then they cross off the matching words on the bingo board.
• More on that road trip – give your child a map before hand and let him/her plan the route.
• Do you have parents that live out of town? Have them email your child and let your child return the emails.

As adults we read books once and then are pretty much done with them and I for one, assumed that this was the same with children’s readers too. It was only when I worked in an elementary school here in Vancouver that I learned that there was a different way. Children there were encouraged to pick three books which they kept for a couple of weeks – yes that’s right, the same three books for two weeks! Now you or I might think that sounds pretty tedious, but what happened was pretty interesting. For the first few read throughs the children would be learning new words and generally focusing on the technicalities of the books. Once they got over that they were able to enjoy the sensation of reading and getting lost in a story. We all know how much kids like to hear familiar stories over and over again, this was the same philosophy but with the added benefit of the child having the satisfaction of knowing that they read it all by them selves.

Looking at this technique from a couple of perspectives I think it is a great idea – firstly, the child is reading less books so you can really focus on finding good books that really are age appropriate and secondly it may really be the difference between teaching children to read and teaching children to read for pleasure.

Yet again the slow and steady learning wins the day.

http://oinks.squeetus.com/2009/01/let-them-eat-pictures.html

Here is a flawless example of the phonetics alphabet pronounciation by www.helpingtogrow.com

Here is a high energy example – but beware, some of the letters are prounced as bu, du, pu, cu etc. The correct way to pronounce them is softer and more breathy (as in the first video). This video courtesy of www.genkienglish.net