Nowadays, parents face many new modern difficulties, have so many questions and often feel like there is no answer to their fears and dilemmas. But don’t worry! We are here to help and so is our April reading list. We are sure that the books we recommended will answer some of your questions. In addition, celebrating the fact that spring is finally here, we also listed a book that will give you plenty of ideas for the outdoor activities with your little ones.  

Did you have a chance to already read one of these books? Share with us how they helped you.

1. All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood – Jennifer Senior

In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior , analyzes the many ways children reshape their parents’ lives, whether it’s their marriages, their jobs, their habits, their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She argues that changes in the last half century have radically altered the roles of today’s mothers and fathers, making their mandates at once more complex and far less clear.

This book, besides answering some of most complex questions of modern parents, also makes us reconsider some of our culture’s most basic beliefs about parenthood, all while illuminating the profound ways children deepen and add purpose to our lives. By focusing on parenthood, rather than parenting, the book is original and essential reading for mothers and fathers of today””and tomorrow.

2. Raise the Child You’ve Got””Not the One You Want: Why everyone thrives when parents lead with acceptance – Nancy Rose

Although we know it’s of no use, we have all been there – comparing our child with other children and ourselves with other parents. You probably caught yourself wishing your child was more patient”¦or more outgoing”¦or less impulsive”¦or more creative…or simply different from who he or she is. Trying to do better and banging your head against the wall because your child didn’t meet your expectations, feeling like you failed as a parent.

There is a way out of your endless loop of frustration, according to this book by parent coach Nancy Rose. She paves the way out of all your problems with a remarkably effective approach: leading with acceptance. This approach will help you discover what you can and cannot change about your child and gain peace of mind as you raise your children to become their best, happiest selves.

3.  131 conversation that Engage Kids – Jed Jurchenko

In this book, Jed Jurchenko author of the ,,131″ book series about parenthood, family and kids, discusses one of the most important parts of our lives – conversation! Explaining all the benefits of encouraging face-to-face conversations with your children, such as creating a connection, dealing with their everyday dilemmas and problems or just doing it for fun, he teaches you the best and most efficient ways to do it.

Besides that, he gives advice on how to help your children make friends, inspire change in themselves and others and how to feel free enough to share most parts of their life with you.

4. 101 Things For Kids To Do Outside – Dawn Isac

Make a garden out of plastic bottles, predict time with help of pinecone, measure how old is the apple tree in your garden, learn how to plant and raise sauce for your pizza, etc. This are just a few out of 101 activities for children and their parents to do outside, that you will find in the book by Dawn Isac. We all know just how important is to spend time outside, in nature, breathing fresh air and feeling the sun on your skin while doing something exciting and fun, therefore this book will help you to use your time with children in the best possible way, bonding and learning many useful skills and information.

If you have other books you’ve read and would like to share, please let us know in the comments below! We will add them to our new list next month.

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What’s your child’s favorite book? What’s yours? You would be surprised how much kids benefit from reading with their parents. The positive effects go beyond the obvious ones – love for books, learning language, expanding their vocabulary. See the infographic below for more information.

By Children’s Health Team

Source: health.clevelandclinic.org

The post The Surprising Benefits of Reading With Your Kids (Infographic) appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

In the past most children experienced the unpleasant routine to carry home weights and weights of textbooks whereas today’s youngsters simply turn to electronic versions of books on their tablets or computers. This technological development may save time, space and weight but there is no scientific evidence that shows that it will help children in the learning process of memorising and understanding information. In turn, research suggests that there is one simple technique that promotes children’s learning and reading skills: taking time to open and read an actual book aloud.

Why Does Reading Aloud Matter?

The national campaign group Read Aloud has raised the concern that more than one in three children start kindergarten without possessing the literacy and language development skills necessary to succeed in life-long learning. According to the findings of educational studies, researchers are confident that parents who read aloud to their children support their kindergarten and school preparation more successfully than parents who do not engage in reading aloud. This means that the typical storytelling routine is not only a calming or entertaining tool but it may also help children to develop a better vocabulary, improve the ability to read and encourage the passion for reading in adulthood.

A review in the Archives of Disease in Childhood concludes that parents who are engaged in the activity to read aloud to their children foster language development skills and the interpersonal relationship between child and parent.

Copyright: gpointstudio

Studies demonstrate that the years from birth to age 3 are the most critical in the development of language skills. This is because children often quadruple the number of words they know between their first and second birthday leaving some children with a 30 million word gap in comparison to their peers at the age of 4 when parents to not read stories aloud to them. According to national Read Aloud campaigners, reading is the only activity that helps young children to increase their vocabulary, familiarise themselves with printed words, improve listening comprehension and enhance their own creativity. The campaign’s website quotes studies that found out that children who lack an extensive vocabulary in kindergarten do not have the ability to read at grade level by the end of first grade. As a consequence, these kids also have an 88% risk of still missing the reading grade level by the end of fourth grade. In the long run, children with low reading proficiency rates are also four times more likely to leave school before graduation.

The Struggle of Reading Aloud in Practice

Despite this evidence, many parents and teachers do not read aloud to their youngsters at home or in the classroom at all or only irregularly. This development fosters an environment where children cannot develop their full potential when it comes to a diverse vocabulary and many children even lack critical language skills such as using full and complete sentences. A report published by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics revealed that only 64% of families read to preschoolers each day. The number even drops below 50% in families who live on low income. The statistics also show that children who grow up in low-income households are less likely to have access to print materials. Reversing this trend is very important, given the fact that the number of words a child knows when starting kindergarten is a key predictor of success in the future.

Copyright: Olesia Bilkei

Why is this? The teaching in the classroom is dominated by oral conversations. Teaching happens through talking rather than reading. This means that the children with the largest vocabularies have an advantage because they understand most of what the teacher is saying but the children with small vocabularies have difficulty keeping up and understanding what it going on.

Parent’s Decision to Raise a Reader

Fortunately, parents have the ability to positively influence this development by the simple activity of reading books aloud to children from a young age. The good news for families is that this activity is literally free of charge when borrowing books with a library card and only requires the willingness to spend some quality time with the youngsters. Research shows that even as little as 15 minutes are plenty of time when reading aloud to children each day from a very young age in order to see enhanced vocabulary and knowledge development skills in the long run. This is because scarifying 15 minutes each day for five years adds up to 27,375 minutes or put differently, 480 hours of reading and listening time. All these hours will support children in learning to read better, thinking better and imaging more richly and creatively. Besides these long-term benefits, there is also the immediate enjoyment to share an interesting book and spending quality time with the kids.

No scientific evidence that electronic tools help children to memorise information: healthland.time.com

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How many times have you heard someone saying: “I’d like to find something new to read. Can you recommend a good book to me? What’s the last book you read?” I’m sure you hear these questions quite often.

Selecting something to read among the variety of genres can be pretty hard as well as emotional. All of us have the read books that left us breathless as we told a friend the plot. For young people that emotion escalates since selecting the right book is a declaration of independence as a reader and a commitment to a new journey. Good writing can introduce young readers to new people and places. Moreover, by reading a good book they begin to see similar human qualities that are common bonds between all people, and discover the wonderful differences that distinguish one culture from another. “Getting lost” in a good book can also make you more empathetic and help you develop and enrich your world of mind.

There comes a point in a young life when the time is right to move on from the books and children’s authors they enjoyed as kids, to the books and authors that offer greater challenges. During these intense years of physical and emotional growth, books can provide a safe harbour, a quiet place from which they can explore new ideas and feelings. They can provide readers with the opportunity to meet characters who struggle with shared concerns and the chance to escape into worlds of fantasy and imagination.

Books can guide the reader through struggles with self-identity and help build self-confidence. However, the task of getting a teenager to read a good book has never been easy. However, instead of the latest best sellers such as “Harry Potter”, “The Lord of the Rings” and “A Game of Thrones” most of teens prefer, the following three books I would recommend are more classic ones. In the first place, they speak more directly to our experience and condition than the modern and popular titles. In addition, they celebrate life, human kindness, sincere emotions, justice, truth, knowledge and morality. Finally, these books are treasury of eternal values every young man should fight for in life.

Jack London – Martin Eden

This semi-autobiographical novel is the story of Martin Eden, an impoverished seaman who obsessively and aggressively pursues dreams of education and literary fame. Martin Eden is an intelligent and self-educated young man who wants nothing more than to be accepted by the young, educated rich he sees as a struggling writer. Martin is certain that once in the ranks of these beautiful people, he will finally be happy and hoping that as a famous writer he will acquire the respectability sought by his society-girl sweetheart…

The novel speaks about commitment, perseverance, failure, success and other universal topics, as life is seen as a set of circumstances constantly testing our willingness to achieve our goals and reach full potential. It also deals with the false image of perfection in which this young man believed. Certainly nobody is perfect and doing the things just to please and make somebody like you can be very risky.

Martin Eden is honest with himself and in the end he refuses to betray his ideals and dreams in order to become famous, rich and win the love of a woman he admires. Instead, he chooses eternity. The message of the novel is that injustice, ignorance and greed won’t lead you anywhere.

Jostein Gaarder – Sophie’s World

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Sophie’s World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print.

One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: “Who are you?” and “Where does the world come from?”. The questions sent to Sophie are questions that everyone asks, and a few spend a lifetime trying to answer. From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with these questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning, but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Therefore, Sophie’s World is the novel that speaks about an essential part of everyday life – it explains the nature of free will and whether all the things we do are the product of our will, or is there something that controls our thoughts and actions. In addition, this novel offers philosophical view of history and its flow. There are questions even the great minds have failed to provide answers. In the end, Sophie realizes that she will never stop wondering and that makes us human. Philosophical thinking should be part of our everyday lives.

Mesa Selimovic – Death and the Dervish

Sheikh Nuruddin is a dervish at a Sarajevo monastery in the eighteenth century during the Turkish occupation. At forty, he is a settled and respected member of the community, until pushed onto a new path by successive shocks: the arrest of his brother and an encounter with a fugitive from justice. In order to find out what has happened with his brother, he descends into the Kafkaesque world of the Turkish authorities. As he does so, he begins to question the previous certainties and his relations with society as a whole and, eventually, his life choices in general. These bring him into conflict with the local authorities. He becomes part of the political system himself; ill-suited to that, he comes to an unhappy end. Death and the Dervish is above all the story of an individual struggling to find himself and maintain his integrity and dignity in a hostile political landscape. Nuruddin is not an anti-hero, but he is a man profoundly troubled, a thinker rather than a doer, ill-equipped for the challenges he faces.

The book deals with the eternal search for happiness. The beginning of the novels sounds a bit depressing due to the verses from the Quran, that regardless of what a man does in his life, he will always suffer loss. Following the protagonist dervish and his confrontation with death, this psychohistorical novel vividly illustrates deep inner struggles of a man, conflicts within himself and efforts to preserve his dignity and morality while he is searching for the purpose of existence and facing with the meaninglessness of life and injustice. The book is highly structured and intertwined with a variety of themes: solid support, inner peace, happiness and stability without which nothing can be done. Nuruddin does not find this in religious service, nor in the holy books. Selimovic leads us to the conclusion that it is wrong to think that the decisions we make depend exclusively upon us. There is something stronger than us, some external and internal forces, that significantly affect our physical and spiritual unity.

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Though everyone’s taste is unique, take your time and think carefully what you are going to read next. As Wentworth Dillon wrote “Choose an author as you would a friend”.

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There are distractions all around whether exciting events to attend, friends to see, that ‘must-see’ box set to catch up on or pure fatigue which catches up with us. All too often, reading gets pushed to the bottom of the pile and relegated to the commute or to holidays. But 2014 will be different as I resolve to read more. Last time I wrote about the importance of storytelling in child development and how reading was a key part of acquiring storytelling skills. Today I am going to look at the importance of reading and how you can encourage your child to love it too.

Reading is more than pleasure activity or a hobby and has proven to be a real indicator and contributor towards the life chances of children. Research conducted last year showed that:

• Children and young people who do not achieve expected levels of literacy are likely to be from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• 14% of children in lower income homes rarely or never read books for pleasure.
• Parents are the most important reading role models for children and young people.
• Only 1 in 5 parents easily find the opportunity to read to their children.
• 10 to 16 year-olds who read for pleasure do better at school
• Reading for pleasure is more important for children’s cognitive development than their parents’ level of education.
• Only 40% of England’s ten year olds have a positive attitude to reading. The figure for Italy is 64% and 58% for Germany.¹

In a world where children are less and less likely to turn to books when there are so many distractions and demands on their time, what can you do to ensure that children learn to love to read?

• Start early. You do not need to wait until your child is ready to learn to read to get them involved with books. They are in fact more likely to take to reading with ease if they already have a love of books. There are a whole host of books suitable for children from about 3 months old providing not only visual stimulation but often different textures too for them to explore. Usually books aimed at children this young are board or fabric books which are much more robust but you can even get books which are made for bath time.

• Talk! Conversing with your child or, if they are too young to talk back, talking them through the things you are doing will constantly expose them to meaningful language. When they are old enough, talk about the books you are sharing together e.g. What might happen next? What might the character be feeling? What do the pictures tell us? What would you do? Tell me about your favourite part etc.

• Read often. For children to develop a habit of reading (rather than, say, turning on the television when they don’t have something to occupy them) requires that it is done often. It should also be a comfortable and inviting activity perhaps by having a reading corner with a comfy chair or beanbag and a variety of books to choose from. Story time can be a special time to spend together especially at the end of the day but be careful not to overdo it as this might put children off. 10-15 minutes is usually enough for children up to the age of about four or five unless they indicate that they want more. Little and often is usually the best.

• Pretend you are on stage! Putting on voices and acting out parts of the story you might just think were entertainment tools; but in fact they are a way of communicating the meaning of the story to children and will improve their memory of the story too.

• Continue to read to children even when they are learning to read or are confident readers. This should not replace their reading practice but will enhance their reading skills by improving their vocabulary and developing their love of books. Perhaps you can even read together by taking turns to read alternate pages or by them supplying a repeating phrase or a missing word.
• Allow children to choose their own book and follow their own interests even if it is a book that you have read twenty times already. This will still help children to remember the story and revisit language patterns. This is not to say that you should not also encourage and challenge your child’s reading. If they seem to consistently choose books far below their reading ability, continue to read those but also find space to start another story which is more suitable for their reading ability. Reading parts of it together might give your child the confidence to approach it by themselves next time.

• Use your local community. Community centres, bookshops and libraries usually run lots of events such as storytelling. They often also have author visits and story and music sessions. Many libraries offer reading challenges for older pupils not to mention a huge range of books at no cost! Libraries are also places where children see lots of other children enjoying reading.

• Be a reader. Children learn through imitation and if they never see you reading, why should they? Don’t just read books but point out all sorts of reading, whether signs or shopping lists, newspapers or instruction manuals. Children will learn that these words communicate meaning and that reading those words is not just to be associated with homework or story time. They will instead understand it as the essential day to day skill that it is.

• Follow up a favourite story with other games and activities for example role play, sequencing or arts and crafts such as these lovely play dough mats which support The Gruffalo story.

http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/3381-3390/sb3389.html

Let’s make reading a top priority for 2014. Please share your children’s favourites and if anyone ever needs recommendations please ask us or our readers. I’m sure that between us we can all come up with enticing suggestions.

http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/4061-4070/sb4065.html#.Usvk6fRdUzw

1)  http://readingagency.org.uk/news/reading-facts003/

Featured image:  http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Reading_and_Writing_g344-Reading_Written_In_Kids_Letters_p69169.html

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