Here is a guest post from blogger, Amanda Kidd. She is writing on letting children choose their own books with The Goldilocks Strategy, which may be helpful for some of you, parents and teachers. Don’t forget to check out Monday’s post about the book, Cold Case, a middle-grade crime drama book. I am giving away a copy. Here’s the post for details.
Book Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Them Decide
by Amanda Kidd
Today’s children are more involved with computer games with little attention towards books. As a responsible parent, it becomes your job to guide them to read good books that can benefit them in many ways. Reading is one of the best ways to enhance vocabulary and improve fluency.
The habit of reading should be started at an early stage, so that children develop the habit of reading and love for books. Initially, parents can guide kids to make the selection of good books. But slowly, you will realize that kids are better selectors than you.
Benefits of reading
Reading is a healthy pastime that every child should be engaged in. It helps them to develop their personality. Good books help children read well, gather a lot of information, and develop into smart individuals. Most families already have the practice of reading interesting bedtime stories to their kids. It is an excellent way to relax the kids before going to bed. When children hear the stories and come to know about various things, their interest towards books increases naturally.
When children read good and appropriate books, it improves their reading and writing skills. They learn the language better by reading more and more books. After a certain age, children should be allowed to choose books on their own. You can give them a few choices and ask them to select from those if you want to start that way. This will give them an opportunity to understand that they are responsible for the kinds of books they choose. According to the experts, the best way for helping kids to choose books is by applying the Goldilocks strategy.
Goldilocks by Hiro Sheridan www.flickr.com
The strategy follows the simple technique where the books are grouped into three categories such as too easy, too hard, and just right. “Too easy” are books that are easy to read and comprehend. There may be no words that the children do not understand. Such books are usually read by the children for fun.
Books that are classified as too hard can be explained as books that may contain too many words that are difficult to understand. Reading this type of book may be frustrating for a child.
The “just right” books are the books that can be easily understood by the children, but still present a little bit of a challenge. Children are also learning something new. Such books may also have only one or two words per page that may be difficult to understand.
The best way to help your child to choose good books is by adopting the above mentioned strategy. If your child is not able to do so on his own, then you can choose a few “just right” books and ask him to choose from this pile. In this way, you can kee
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