All About Grooming & Encouraging Good Reading Habits

[jaewee]

Hi Clare


A good set of reader- all illustrations are in real photos.. very attractive to young children ( i assume your niece is 2-6yr of age). This is something i got recently. This publisher is also being used by local schools.

http://primary.cengage.com.au/default.aspx?et=1&ei=57&subSiteID=2&ibcClientID=6297924&ibcClientToken=6268173486416144&categoryID=487

For the non-fiction one
http://edventure.com.sg/Sunshine/Non-fiction/index.html

Both items, i can source them cheap.

[tamarind]

clare:

Hence my latest attempt to cultivate interest in more 'literary' stuff:
Island of the Blue Dolphin - imho, beautiful lessons to be learned

clare,
I know that Island of the Blue Dolphin is a wonderful book about a girl who lived alone in an island for 18 years.

What worries me is that in the book, the girl's 6 year old brother died after being attacked by wild dogs. Do you think this this too traumatic for a 5 year old child to read ?

[ksmama]

My kids find Enid Blyton Boorring plus plus plus. ( I loved them when I was young, what's wrong with them??). My older kid says it is 'old fashioned'.


Your kid must read pretty well at 5 to love Edward Tulane. Well my boys loved Roald Dahl. You can try Eoin Colfer. They liked some of his. Andrew Norris to them is ok. Try 'Blart I and II' by Dominic Barker. Once my kids complained through the first part of the book, they couldn't put the book down. Can try 'Here be monsters' by Alan Snow. Thick book but lots of cute interesting monsters. 'The Phantom Tollbooth' by Norton Juster. Read with him this book, it is hilarious in some parts. These are some of my choices which they have liked. They liked CS Lewis when I read to them but not on their own. Recently I have just introduced them to Neil Gaiman and Cornelia Funke. Complained through first few chapters of the latter but now quietly reading it.

They own choices would be the 'Super Monster' series, 'Horrid Henry', 'Diary of a wimpy kid'.... Fun to read but not allowed to read over and over again.

Yes I do impose compulsory reading time. if hubby and I do not see them fulfilling the required time, no DS/ computor time for the day /week. Just that I have to endure the complains if after the first chapter of the book, they still find them boring. So you see for some successes, I have lots of failures too.

LL does not require them to do regular book reviews at P2/P4 but they do have library time on alternate weeks, when they are encouraged to borrow books. Ocasionally, they would get the kids to write up a little on their favourite book read at LL. They do cloze passages with excerpts from books. There would be a short write up on the authors and I suppose if the kids are interested, they could look up on the books to read them fully. LL have their own writers and they would produce materials on current affairs and this is what I like because of the discussions the class would do based on the passages. They used these materials for comprehension, learning new vocab or cloze passages. When my P2 kid told me about 'credit crunch', I was :shock: \"wwahhh! boy, I am glad you know about that\"

[clover18]

WOW, must say I’m impressed with the variety of books your kids are exposed to! Do you have any recommendations on books for girls?

[tamarind]

clare:

Hi jaewee, thanks so much for your recommendations, will certainly check these titles out; they look interesting.


Hi Tamarind
I have the same worries about the violent death. My view is that it's probably too traumatic for five year olds, in fact I think it's even traumatic for young grade schoolers. But I had the benefit of a psychologist's advice about this and knowing my ds, I judge that he can handle it with equanimity with his maturity. That said, I also worry that parts of the book are too depressing, so I may actually can the project altogether and read something else.. perhaps Black Beauty, though the descriptions of cruelty to animals in there worry me too, argh!
I remember reading in another thread that your daughter read Charlotte's Web; was she sad about Charlotte's demise?

clare,
Since Charlotte is a spider, her death does not affect my girl, especially since her death was portrayed in a sad but natural and gradual manner, in ways that young children can accept. E.B. White is a superb writer. In fact, my girl has a habit of killing insects :mrgreen: When she sees an ant, she will immediately smack it with her hands. Don't know who taught her that :oops: But she shows a lot of compassion for her fellow human beings.

My girl has a younger brother, and she knows that it is her responsibility to take care of him. In the book, the 12 year old girl jumped ship and swam back to the island take care of her 6 year old brother who was unintentionally left behind. Even as an adult, I find it extremely disturbing that the boy was killed, and the girl was left alone for the next 18 years. I actually have not read that book yet, how did the author describe the death of the boy ?

I don't intend to shield my girl from reading about death or cruelty. But I guess as parents, we have to be sensitive about what effect the books will have on our children, especially when they are very young. I plan to let my girl read the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Although the little prince also died in the end, bitten by a poisonous snake, the description was simple : \"He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound, because of the sand.\" The author explained that the little prince chose to die because he wished to go back to his own planet. It is very sad, but I think it is written in a way that children can understand.

[tamarind]

clare:

Hi Tamarind

In IoBD, though Ramo died violently his death was described very matter-of-factly. After worrying about his disappearance, Karana spied a pack of wild dogs moving around in a circle. \"In the middle of the circle was Ramo. He was lying on his back, and had a deep wound in his throat. He lay very still. When I picked him up I knew that he was dead. There were other wounds on his body from the teeth of the wild dogs.\" From this simple description I had to discuss how people die from wounds, how deep the wounds must be etc, why animals attack people, why WE eat animals etc. :roll:

The Little Prince would definitely be a good read; I like it very much and plan to get my son to attempt it later in French. The English translations of it (I think there're four or five to-date) are lovely, but to me it reads best in the original language. ~swoon~

clare,
That book is certainly not suitable for my girl now. It is too violent even for me ! It breaks my heart to see young children die violently.

I agree that reading the Little Prince in French will be lovely. Is your boy learning French now ?

[ksmama]

Hi Clare,

For every book that I successfully got them to finish, they would have rejected about 3 to 4, \"I can't take it anymore! It is soooo boring!!!\"

In my muddled state, I was thinking of Edward Tulane when you mentioned Durrell. It is amazing that you are trying to expose your kids to all these at 5. My kids are 8 and 10 now. At 5 years old, their all time favourites were the Berenstain Bears series . If your kid likes animal stories, Dick King-Smith is a possibility but my kids did not like his books ie rejected

My p4 boy's school made their class read Charlotte's web this year. I cried when I read about the spider's death but when I asked my boy if he felt sad about her death, he said no and he didnot like the book that much. I was a little disturbed then as I thought oh dear, is my boy so unsympathetic??!!

[ChiefKiasu]

ksmama:

...I cried when I read about the spider's death but when I asked my boy if he felt sad about her death, he said no and he didnot like the book that much. I was a little disturbed then as I thought oh dear, is my boy so unsympathetic??!!

I stole my son's Charlotte's Web for an hour to read it just to find out what's the big deal and I have the same reaction as your son. Maybe my wife was really right when she calls me insensitive at times :?

[ksmama]

maybe it’s the macho hormone thing as in nan er bu liu lei. Hey but my boy has not reached puberty!! Just joking. I believe it all boils down to personality differences.

[ChiefKiasu]

ksmama:

maybe it's the macho hormone thing as in nan er bu liu lei. Hey but my boy has not reached puberty!! Just joking. I believe it all boils down to personality differences.

No lah... it's just I find it difficult to feel for a member of the arachnid family.