To Instill the Love of Books

BY LISA S.T. DOSS

Books stir up excitement in children. Walking through the door to a story hour inspires a happy giggle and the running of little feet towards the individual holding an opened book! The love of reading is caught, not taught! We, as parents, invest in collecting and sharing stories of beloved and new fictional characters from birth through adulthood. Let’s take a look at a number of strategies to spark excitement about the life skill of reading!

Encourage Daily Reading: Do you recall the stories of your childhood? Beloved fictional friends arrived at an early age, later to be shared with daughters, sons, and grandchildren! Make it a habit routinely to read to your child! Ask your local librarian, teachers, and friends for recommendations!

Create a Book-Nook: Crawling toddlers will lie on the floor behind a chair and hold a selected book with hands and lap. It’s a time of discovery to see captivating pictures and turn pages. Books can be second-hand, torn, or taped together. The condition is irrelevant, compared to the excitement of each page. As children grow older, expand the reading nook, perhaps into a tent or corner of a playroom. Permit the imagination to follow familiar and new fictional friends along intriguing roads of decision!

Promote Self-Reading: Many Dr. Seuss books lend themselves to a parent pointing to, and a child accepting, the cues and reading aloud. Go Dog Go is a prime example. Particular books, emphasized by a few words and descriptive illustrations, allow the child to feel confident in reading each page successfully! Even wordless picture books allow you to ask:

• What is happening so far? (Comprehension)

• What makes you believe it? (Inferring)

• What do you think will happen next? (Predicting)

Teach Games Through

Books: Preschool children will need to identify letters in sight words in the text; therefore, talk about titles and words in a story. Ask your child, “Do you see the letter ‘A’ in the first word? Okay, point to it!” Your child will soon not go anywhere without a book in hand!

Introduce High-Interest Series: By the age of five, boys and girls will thoroughly enjoy The Mercy Watson series by Kate DiCamillo. Expect your child to read the book independently after one year. This particular series introduces the setting, character development, the problem, and the solution, which will help introduce sequencing events and problem solving. By age six, introduce chapter books, such as The Magic Treehouse and Stink series.

Jim Trelease, children’s author, writes, “Reading the same book multiple times can help children develop language skills and improve reading comprehension. If you tire from reading the same book, try reading it in a different voice.”

Audiobooks for Kids: Parents spend a lot of time driving kids to and from destinations. Why not utilize that time with a great book? Remember, children should not go two years above the intended age level. Online sites allow you to buy or borrow books. Contact the librarian at your local library to establish an online account. Additionally, utilize the parenting website “Common Sense Media” to assess book titles and determine if appropriate for your child. In all children’s media sources, including movies and games, parents and children post helpful reviews! Never Stop Reading Together: By the fourth and fifth grade, boys and girls will want to explore more challenging themes and worlds. From The Chronicles of Narnia to The Gryphon Chronicles, Percy Jackson, and The Five Kingdoms series, children can delve into great stories by sharing reading responsibilities with you, or listening to the audiobooks. Search for sensitive topics or important themes that can help you discuss the value of friendships, feelings of infatuation, or the handling of bullies and other problems. Influential series, such as A Tale of Magic by Chris Colfer and The Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell, will transform your child’s understanding of truth, friendship, and acceptance of self.

Vocabulary: “Onomatopoeia” is an entertaining word to say and apply in context. Children love to think of words that use the sound they describe, such as “oops” and “hum.” Each page of the book below has multiple ways to introduce the language, from defining a word to talking about its origins. Seven-to-nine-year-olds would love journeying with Milo to the castles of words and numbers in Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth!

The Outlook for Fall College Classes

One of the features of the pandemic is that some of the things society has been flirting with have become quickly adopted in several months instead of years or decades. For example, services like telehealth, workfrom-home, streaming, and grocery delivery, saw adoption grow in 2020. But colleges are looking at rapid changes that have led to aggressive debates – and likely permanent changes. Standardized tests: The SAT and ACT were high school traditions. Before the pandemic, some colleges were not requiring the tests and others were thinking about eliminating test requirements in the admissions process. But during the pandemic, most testing stopped and many schools stopped requiring the tests, according to College Life Today. Once the pandemic is over, it’s likely that many more schools will not require SAT or ACT scores as a part of the admissions process. Online classes: A number of schools had been aggressively pursuing online classes. During the pandemic, every school had to adapt to a Zoom environment. On January 26, U.S. News & World Report released its 2021 Best Online Program rankings. North Carolina has some of the Currently, we’re in the midst of the 2021 spring semester. Many schools are best online programs in the country, with local schools including North holding only virtual classes, and some schools are doing a combination of Carolina A&T University, Winston-Salem State University, and the University virtual and in-person classes with aggressive testing and contact tracing. of North Carolina at Greensboro earning high marks for online programs. What is the outlook for the fall 2021 semester? While predictions about Tuition: Many students and parents are saying that an online education the 2021 fall semester should be taken with a boulder-sized grain of should cost less than a traditional, in-person education. Some schools have salt, a number of areas were impacting colleges and universities before decreased their tuition costs by 10-20%. Where the tuition discussions the pandemic. They included: land will be worth watching. • Student debt at $1.6 trillion, with the average debt at $37,500. High-speed internet: Low-income students and students living in rural

TruliantGraduates with this much debt hinder economic growth because areas have a difficult or impossible time accessing high-speed internet. they are unable to buy homes and participate fully in the economy, While these discussions have been going on for years, there is now according to Investopedia. heightened urgency to bring high-speed internet to the entire nation. • Tuition and fees have increased 285% since the 1970s, reports Program inflation: Many schools aggressively added majors, hoping to

Forbes Magazine. Many elite schools top $70,000 a year; and many attract more students. But for many schools enrollment has not followed state schools cost more than $25,000 a year for tuition, fees, room program creation – leading higher costs. Many schools are now making and board. cuts to their majors. • Experts were predicting a 15% decline in enrollment by 2029 Concluding thoughts because of the declining birthrate, leading to lower tuition income The age of your children will determine how you think about the current and strained resources at colleges, according to the College and state of postsecondary education. The college-education process is now

University Professional Association for Human Resources. a moving target, with abrupt and significant changes taking place for Officials with The National Research Center for College and the foreseeable future. University Admissions, say that most four-year schools did fine The best advice for parents and students: Think hard about what last fall and had modest enrollment gains or small declines. And, you want from a college education and look closely at those schools they report, fall 2021 may see pent up demand have a positive impact that will meet your needs in terms of curriculum and finances – today on traditional-aged undergraduate enrollment. and in the future.