Children's Books discussion
Books for Specific Age-Groups
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At What Age Do You Stop With the Bedtime Stories?
message 51:
by
Suzanne
(new)
Jul 27, 2010 04:29PM
I just wanted to give some more feedback on reading books in your ballet class. When I was studying ballet as a child, I stumbled onto a book about a ballet dancer that I treasured. It brought my dancing to a whole new level and made it come alive. Your reading can do nothing but enhance their abilities to dance, especially stories that have the characters dancing from their hearts and well as their talents.
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Are you familiar with A Very Young Dancer? I love all of Jill Krementz's photojournalism books for kids. Her A Very Young... series and her How It Feels... series.This book is good for the 8-10 as well as the 6-8 group. It's about a 10 year old, told from her pov.
I agree, I think the idea is really great! I would love to hear how it goes. I found a list that might help in choosing some books. Picture books for ballet lovers. http://www.amazon.com/Picture-Books-f...
My first ballet lesson: I remember walking into a class where all the children knew what they were doing. I felt so scared and embarrassed. I ran out crying and hid behind a car until my mother and teacher talked me back inside. The teacher was really sweet, I remember her saying that I didn't have to be embarrassed everyone started off just like me and she would teach me to dance like the others. She took me by the hand and led me back inside.
Kathryn, if you have a class for beginning dancers and
you could find a book that might help out with a situation like this, that would be awesome!
I read a really cute book written by a ballerina Darcy Bussell calledThe Magic Ballet Shoes. It really portrays her love and passion of ballet. It is a chapter book but this one is all about the Nutcracker.
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Abigail wrote: "Ooh! I've just stumbled across a listing for a book which looks perfect! And absolutely gorgeous: Jane Yolen's The Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories."That book looks fantastic!
Jim Trelease of the Read Aloud Handbook fame wrote a second (lesser known but also great book called Hey! Listen to This: Stories to Read Aloud of stories to read to older children. He encourages parents to keep reading as long as the child will listen... so I think all the comments have been right on.I'm also a teacher and reading aloud to children is probably the most powerful thing parents can do to help prepare their child for school and to continue to support them as they learn. In a great research article called What Reading Does for the Mind by Anne Cunningham and Keith Stanovich, they found the following benefits of time spent reading (alone or together):
it improves reading comprehension, develops vocabulary and word knowledge, often improves spelling, increases general knowledge, improves practical knowledge, increases verbal fluency, can raise IQ and make you smarter, can even slow the process of aging and decrease memory loss. Pretty great benefits!!!
Cute story... my kids see me reading whenever I have a spare moment. (And I read to them daily!) The other day I walked into the bathroom and there is my 7 year old with a book in her hand as she was using the bathroom. A girl after my own heart! :)
So anyway, keep reading as long as they will listen and follow all the other great advice...let stronger readers take turns with you, read to younger siblings, choose books that are above their reading level,etc.
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I wonder if Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild would be a cool book to share or at least recommend to your older students. It's not a picture book, but it might interest them.
Gundula, That's a good book.Kathryn, Maybe you could give them all a sheet with picture books and novels and non-fiction books about ballet for kids ages 6-10.
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Oh, and Crystal, I meant to comment that I'm so happy you stayed with your ballet class and had such an understanding teacher. I agree it would be great to find a book that highlights the worry that new students can feel, especially if they are new not only to that particular class but to dance in general. Thank you for sharing!
Kathryn, I just found a great book, though it's not exactly ballet, but it's dance: The Human Alphabet.
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Cheryl, the person who started this thread or one of the mods can change the topic title, but there's no way for anyone to separate out the individual message posts into more than one thread.Anyone can start a new general reading aloud thread and/or a general bedtime reading aloud thread. They do both fit together well enough, I think.
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And, Cheryl, that is so great that you and your son have so many conversations together--and even the chance to share some poetry. How wonderful, especially at 14!
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I would never stop as long as a child lets you reaed aloud to her/him, do it! I have read about parents reading to high school aged kids, even when a friend was over. You have to read your child though to see if it is appropriate.I found my kids having homework until late in the night stopped me from reading bedtime stories and I truly miss those times.
I don't think that there's ever a time when kids are too old to be read to, so long as they are interested! One of the girls who I babysit for just turned 10 in November, and absolutely hates reading, and I quote what she said "The only way I'll ever read is if my parents threaten to ground me for a week if I don't," but loves it when I read to her. After she told me that I told her I knew a really good book that I knew she would like (Savvy by Ingrid Law), and I asked her if maybe she'd let me read it to her. She reluctantly agreed but by the end of it she wanted to read the book again on her own and would always ask me to read aloud to her. I'd say never too old, because it can really change a child's perception on reading and can help them really begin to love it!
Never! I still like to read to my grown up kids. (Although its snippets of info now).
I don't really remember getting read bed time stories.
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My daughter is 5, 6 in a few months. I could not imagine no longer reading to her. In fact, she did not want to learn to read for a long time. Saying things like, "It is boring to learn to read." Even when she saw her younger cousins reading she still showed no interest. Well, I know my daughter and when she wants to learn something, she does, and picks it up quickly. I never pushed the idea. I wanted my daughter to enjoy being a kid, that is very important to me. Well, come to find out she didn't want to learn to read because she thought that meant she wouldn't be read to any longer! She was really bothered by that. She has since figured out reading to others can be fun too. Although, she still prefers to be read to. She now reads at a first grade level having just begun showing interest later in this school year. Now, she is enjoying thinking about reading to her future brother or sister!
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I actually read out loud to myself sometimes (and to the deer on my property, lol).
When we're on vacation, Bob reads to me--it's a special time together. And sometimes when Smudge, my cat, sits on my shoulder, I'll read to him. So I'm like you, Gundula. When Smudge gets bored, he leaves.
Gundula wrote: "Crystal wrote: "My daughter is 5, 6 in a few months. I could not imagine no longer reading to her. In fact, she did not want to learn to read for a long time. Saying things like, "It is boring to l..."I bet they enjoyed it! That sounds like a fun memory.
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They stared at me :-)
I read every night to my 3rd grader and will likely continue to do so for some time. He is dyslexic and not capable of reading the higher level books that interest him. He rarely if ever reads on his own. He either reads aloud to me for practice, or I read to him for pleasure, but he rarely sits and reads silently to himself. I stopped reading nightly to my daughter sometime around the age of 8, when she began to read long chapter books by herself. She was more interested in solo reading, and time became more of an issue as well. We still occasionally read together (she's in 5th grade now), such as taking turns reading a particular book(we began A Christmas Carol last Christmas), but I don't read to her nightly. I do try to discuss with her what she is reading on her own, and occasionally I read one of the books she is reading myself, but I couldn't possibly keep up with her.
My kids are 12 and I read aloud to them every night before bed, unless one of us isn't home. Sometimes my parents listen, too, as when we were reading P.G. Wodehouse.It doesn't matter that my kids are both voracious advanced readers on their own. Reading aloud doesn't have to be instead of independent reading. Although reading aloud is useful and necessary with children too young or with other difficulties that make independent reading difficult, it's a mistake to think that it's only for kids who can't read well on their own. It's a mistake to think that reading aloud is babyish or remedial. It's a different thing - a sharing, social, communal time when we are all focused together in the same imaginary world. As others have said, reading aloud among all ages including adults was standard before the era of radio and TV, and telling stories aloud among all ages was standard before books were widespread.
As for us, we've read aloud together every night since they were toddlers, and we've never stopped. I don't know how much longer our schedules will permit it, or whether eventually the kids will want to stop, but no one's yet told them they shouldn't enjoy being read to, so we're all happy!
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It doesn't matter that my kid..."
Without reading aloud and oral story telling, there would likely not be literature and certainly, no folklore.
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As it happens, I just learned in the nifty book A Family of Readers: The Book Lover's Guide to Children's and Young Adult Literature that some ppl read bits of poetry aloud to their children in the morning, instead of being chirpy and saying "time to get up, sleepyhead" or hustling the kid. Naomi Shihab Nye claims that her child appreciates this so much that he says "All day that poem came into my mind."
You can also read poetry together at bedtime, at the dinner table, between homework pages, while waiting at the dentist or in line at the grocer, etc...
Try Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Lilian Moore, Eve Merriam, Emily Dickinson, and of course Shel Silverstein
Gundula wrote: "They stared at me :-) "
LOL!
Cheryl wrote: "Poetry is always better when read aloud.
As it happens, I just learned in the nifty book A Family of Readers: The Book Lover's Guide to Children's and Young Adult Literature that so..."
That is a great idea! Thanks for posting this, my daughter starts regular school hours this coming school year and I was kind of dreading the whole morning thing. Hopefully, this will make it easier. We haven't read any Silverstein together yet. She got Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Poems and Drawings of Shel Silverstein for Christmas.
Our girls are 10 and 12 and we still read together almost every night. We love to listen to audiobooks and will listen to a couple of chapters most nights and also in the car on roadtrips. My hubby often groans, but I know he listens in, too - sometimes he'll even comment on what we're reading.
I hope it doesn't end anytime soon!
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My h..."
How about having them read to you as well? Make it a reading round, and perhaps invite your husband to join in.
Our girls certainly take turns reading aloud often enough, but having dear hubby read aloud to us is probably a bridge too far. I'm just glad that he participates somewhat.
Dolly wrote: "Our girls are 10 and 12 and we still read together almost every night. We love to listen to audiobooks and will listen to a couple of chapters most nights and also in the car on roadtrips. My h..."
When my boys hit middle school, the homework and evening activities pushed bedtime too far back to continue reading. But we do a road trip every summer, and lots of 3 hour trips back and forth to their Grandmother's -- so we read together then. Lately we've been checking out audiobooks from the library -- we do a lot of adult nonfiction (Gladwell, McCullough, Winchester, etc) as well as middle grade and YA fiction. It's great to have books in common that we can discuss or reference when we talk about things!
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When my children were in kindergarten, we read them a bedtime story, as the children grew up and learned to read, we read together, and then they read and we listened. This was a magical time to spend with them. So a bedtime story is a wonderful quality time with our children.
SkylarJust wanted to say that mums like you are WONDERFUL! I have dyslexia myself and I couldn't read until VERY late but thanks to Mum and her love of words I eventually got there. I'll always be so grateful to my mum for all those stories and her constant belief in me. Your son is so lucky to have a mum like you!
PS believe it or not, one day I just woke up and went from not being able to understand basic readers to consuming an Enid Blyton book a day. It literally happened overnight. I guess the brain was suddenly just ready to do it's thing! And now days I'm just about fluent in Latin too so don't let dyslexia scare you too much:-)(Still not much of a speller though, thank goodness for spellcheck he he!) XOX
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I read bedtime stories to my daughter until she entered sixth grade. At that point, she told me that she could read by herself. Of course, she was able to do that well before that time. So, we spent time together reading our own books.
My sister is in 5th grade and I want to read aloud to her (especially before bed), but I doubt she'd like it, so....:(
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I am still reading them at age 68! Not to anybody, but for myself. I enjoy bedtime stories and picture books in general, considering that I write them myself.
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I think the whole concept of having to stop reading bedtime stories is troubling (same as the concept of children's literature, including picture books, being only suitable for children).
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Children's Books
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Where the Sidewalk Ends (other topics)
A Family of Readers: The Book Lover's Guide to Children's and Young Adult Literature (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Flann O'Brien (other topics)Lilian Moore (other topics)
Eve Merriam (other topics)
Emily Dickinson (other topics)
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