In honor of March is Reading Month, I am here to share with you 5 engaging ways to read one book! As a speech-language pathologist who is passionate about literacy, this is one of my favorite topics. You may be thinking can you really read ONE book 5 different ways?!
The answer is ABSOLUTELY! There are SO many ways to engage with one book that are fun and effective for kids’ learning. Reading does not need to be just the act of reading every word on each page. You can read to your child in a variety of ways that will benefit their pre-literacy learning such as vocabulary knowledge, sounds, rhyming, expressing language and more. So with that, grab your favorite children’s book and take notes on these five engaging ways to use one book. Don’t forget, reading should be fun and motivating to your child so be sure to follow their lead on selecting books!
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Take a Picture Walk
A picture walk is so much fun to do with younger children who may not be ready or interested in sitting and reading the words of a book yet. You can simply talk about what you see on the front cover of the story and flip through the pages together. Talk about what is happening in the pictures, things you see, and make predictions about what might happen next! Go through the whole story like you are taking a “walk” by observing and commenting on the different pages.
Focus on Sounds
One of my favorite ways to adapt a book for reading, especially with young toddlers, is to use sounds as the focus while reading. One of my favorite books to read with a sound focus in Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. You can do this by labeling the animals on each page and practicing their animal sounds “A red bird! tweet tweet!” or, “A purple cat! Meow!” Do this a few times and see if your child will imitate you.
Play the “I Spy” Game
“I Spy” is a fun turn-taking game you can use with ANY picture book. Simply look at each page and spot different items to describe to your child and then see if they can do it for you. For example, “I spy a…caterpillar! What do you see?” This is a fun way to engage your child in a book, take turns, and begin to develop book awareness (how to hold a book, turn the pages, etc). You can advance this game by using descriptive words such as, “I see something green!” or, “I see something big and round!”
Fill in the Blank
Fill in the Blank is another fun way to engage with books and build language at the same time. I suggest doing this with a book your child is familiar with or has read a few times already. It is also fun to use this adaptive reading strategy with song books. While reading, leave off the final word and see if your child can fill it in. For example, “Brown bear, brown bear, what do you ______” or “Twinkle, twinkle, little _____.”
Character Voices
Using character voices is a great way to make a story come alive. It’s also a fun way to revive an old classic story if it’s been read a few times. We do a lot of character voices for classic Fables such as The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood.
This month, try to take a book off your shelf and read it in one or all of these five engaging ways! Here are some of my favorite classic children’s books.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. & Eric Carle
Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell
Little Blue Truck by Alice Shertle
Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathman
