July 2018 - Page 2 of 2 - Learning to Read Together

Reading tips for travel with kids

Post author:Liz
Post published:July 9, 2018
Post category:Reading Resources

In the next couple of blog posts I will be providing reading tips for travel with kids. These tips will consist of reading activities to do in the car or plane and travel book recommendations. I will also be sharing reading activities and books that are in our carry-on bag.

Our family loves to travel! We have driven cross country with Tim, traveled out of the country, and taken many plane trips to visit friends and family. Traveling has gotten easier as Tim has gotten older but the theme when you travel with kids remains the same- be sure to have endless entertainment! Long hours in the car, waiting at the airport and being trapped on an airplane can be a parent’s nightmare if you are not prepared. Thankfully, there are lots of reading activities to pass the time and support reading development at the same time.

Reading on the Road: 10 reading tips for travel with kids in the car.

1. Before your trip, visit your local library and have books at your child’s reading level to read in the car. You may also have books about the place that you are traveling to.

2. Play the alphabet game with signs on the highway. Beginning at A, have everyone find a sign that has a word each letter in the alphabet in it. Once one person uses a sign for his or her word, that sign is off limits. The first person to get to Z wins! I used to play this game as a child on long road trip and it was a lot of fun!

3. Play I spy… You can say “I spy something that begins with the letter______. I spy something that begins with the sound_________. I spy something that ends with the sound__________. I spy something that rhymes with__________. You could also play 20 questions. We often play 20 questions at a restaurant while waiting for our food to arrive. Tim loves it!

4. Make a travel diary or scrapbook with pictures from your trip and captions or sentences to go with them. Your child could take pictures of sites along the way or draw pictures and then write captions under the pictures and/or a brief sentence as to why this place was special to them. Barnes & Nobles had an awesome travel journal. You could also make your own!

5. Write a postcard to a friend or family member from each place that you stop or visit. You can mail them at your hotel that you stop at for the night.

6. Bring a cookie sheet with magnetic letters and have your child see how many words he or she can make in each word family i.e. “at” family words-cat, sat, hat, bat etc. Your child may just want to play and make words on the cookie sheet as well.

7. Books on cd are also a great way to pass the time for long car rides! Oftentimes children’s books on cd come with a copy of the book as well so your child can follow along. Children’s cd and songs work as well as they often promote rhyming!

8. Bring along a children’s atlas or book about the place or state in which you are going. You could have your child follow your route, read facts about the places that go through or are going to. Your child could also draw pictures of different scenery or landscapes that he or she sees along the way. We bought a children’s atlas and read a few facts about each state we went through during our drive cross country. Tim loved learning about each new place!

9. Collect brochures, handouts, or information sheets about sites that you visit along the way or about your destination. You and your child could create your own travel brochure for that place or you could read more information about your travel site to your child.

10. You or your child could jot down a list or questions that your child has about the place in which you are travelling. You could check out some books at the library when you get back or research the answers online to answer your child’s questions. Tim loved visiting the Grand Canyon in Arizona and we were able to find some books at the local library to read to him because he was interested in learning more about it.

Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville, Tennesee

Hope these reading travel tips help make your experience fun when you travel with kids!

Support reading development through experiences

Post author:Liz
Post published:July 5, 2018
Post category:Our Reading Adventures

Teaching your child through experiences helps support reading development in that it helps build a child’s background knowledge. Reading doesn’t always have to involve reading a book or having your child read a book to you. Background knowledge includes the following: children’s memories about themselves, others, objects and the world around them and values and expectations for behavior developed in different environments.

Building background knowledge is crucial to reading comprehension in that it helps a child make connections with the characters in a story, supports vocabulary development and builds a deeper understanding of a book’s main themes. Having background knowledge on a topic can also help children use context clues to sound out tricky words quickly when they are reading. Children’s experiences with their families and communities help develop their background knowledge.

Since we just celebrated the Fourth of July, I thought that I would tell you about a recent trip to the Boston Tea Party ship in Boston, Massachusetts. My husband loves history and has been teaching Tim about the American Revolution. We recently visited Lexington and Concord and took a tour of the Boston Tea Party Ship and Tim loved it. My husband had discussed the tax on tea and the colonists, so Tim already knew some information about the Boston Tea Party before we arrived.

At the beginning of the tour we were each given a card with the name and description of a colonist who we were supposed to pretend to be. The tour guides were dressed in period clothing, and “Samuel Adams” led the meeting about the new tax on tea. Through role playing on the tour, we learned more about why the colonists threw the tea overboard, and why they wanted to break away from England and form their own government. Tim was able to ask some excellent questions because my husband had already taught him about the American Revolution and the Boston Tea Party. Tim enjoyed throwing the tea overboard too!

Family picture aboard the Boston Tea Party Ship

The following books are several books that we have read aloud to Tim as a follow up to our visit to the Boston Tea Party ships.

Books related to the American Revolution

Here are some ideas to support background knowledge and reading development through experiences:

• Have fun spending time traveling with your child and learning about new places. You can enjoy learning along with your child or you can teach your child if the place is a place you have a lot of knowledge about. Make sure the experience is something you are interested in too, as if you are excited about the experience, your child most likely will be too!• Support your child in asking questions about the new experience. If you are at a museum or other location with available staff, be sure to engage them in discussion or ask them questions. They are often very knowledgeable and happy to answer questions that you have.

• Discuss the new experience before going and after going to talk about what your child learned, his or her favorite part, something your child would like to learn more about. It might be helpful for you to read up on the place you are going beforehand so that you can teach your child some information about it in advance.

• If you didn’t get to experience everything, plan a follow up trip or see what other activities or programs are offered.

• Experiences can be free! A walk outside talking about the flowers, insects, wildlife and other things you see on your walk is free, fun and supports reading development!

• Follow up by checking out a variety of books on your experience. For example, if you visited an aquarium, check out books about sea life that you saw or read stories about visits to the aquarium.

• Some suggestions of experiences include: historical monuments, national parks, museums, farms, beach trips, camping etc. Possibilities are endles

My name is Liz and I am a reading specialist and the parent of a soon to be first grader named Tim. Last year as Tim entered Kindergarten, I experienced school for the first time as a parent.

As a parent my role was now to encourage and support Tim with his schooling. Fortunately, my background in reading gave me an advantage in helping develop his reading skills during the year.

As the year progressed and other parents learned I was a reading specialist, they began asking me what they could do to help their children’s reading. With their encouragement, I decided to start this blog in order to reach a larger audience and provide parents with ideas to support their children with reading at home. My hope in sharing my knowledge is that this information will be helpful as you experience your own reading adventure with your child.