Food for Thought: Reading Nonfiction

Encouraging your child to read nonfiction now can have a big payoff later in their childhood.

Reading nonfiction is a big deal. Think about what most of us, as adults, read now. I read (and write) almost exclusively nonfiction. And I'm not talking just books - it's magazines, reports, the newspaper, etc., etc. Unfortunately the majority of reading material that our kids get is fiction. Girls, in particular, usually excel at reading in the early elementary years when most children are reading fiction, but then begin to lag behind boys as the learning focus shifts to content areas like science, math, and history. That statistic describes my experience exactly; I did well in reading at the elementary level but then had a horrible time in science and history when I needed to read something that didn't have a story line. Though you might argue that history does have a story line, the way it is presented in history textbooks is not similar to what most of your children will be reading for pleasure in junior high.

The point of this post is to encourage all of you to get nonfiction books and texts for your young children. I subscribe to Your Big Backyard for Isadora and celebrate its arrival when it comes in the mail. I also try to check out nonfiction books when I can. Gail Gibbons is an excellent author for nonfiction that appeals to preschoolers (It is her book on Monarch Butterflies that I have in the upper corner of this post). But I have to admit that the pickings are slim, and about 80% of what Isadora has on her bookshelves in fiction...even knowing what I know.

The spring and summer is a great opportunity to dive into nonfiction as your child becomes fascinated with bugs and bicycles and sandboxes and trips to the beach. I am going to challenge myself to try to actively seek out nonfiction books/magazines/websites for Isadora that I think she might be interested in and I'll share them with all of you. If you are reading this (if anyone reads this at all - besides my husband of course - I force him) please share any non-fiction materials that you find to be successful with your preschooler!

Alphabet Bingo

Alphabet Bingo is a fun game that can reinforce letter names.

Aak! I've been working on my dissertation day and night, leaving little time to update and add new stuff. I'm doing well now and feeling good about where I'm at - only a few more weeks until I'm all done!!

But back to the interesting stuff - we were at a friends house for a birthday party the other day and we found a game of alphabet bingo stuffed among all the other toys. Isadora and I played a couple games and she seemed to really enjoy it (of course I'm sure it had nothing to do with me saying, "Wow Isadora, isn't this alphabet bingo a FUN game!? This is so much FUN!")

We got home and I looked up the game on Amazon, but it was fairly expensive for just a bunch of printouts. I decided that there must be something on the internet, and indeed there was! Here is the link to the webpage where I got it. I printed out two copies of the boards, cutting up one and then pasting the whole boards down to some construction paper. This is more work than I usually do for a literacy activity, but I figured that it's a game that we will be returning to often, so it's worth the 15 minutes I spent cutting and pasting. Then I just turned the letter cards over, call out the letter name, and we put coins over the letters that we each got. Isadora actually prefers to use poker chips, so we are using those now. There are supposed to be rules to filling in four in a row, or two at each side in order to win, but right now we are just filling up the boards.

*It also has uppercase and lowercase, something that I think is great. Once Isadora has mastered her uppercase, we will move to the lowercase.