Blitz with Books!
National Book Blitz Month
We’re almost through January and maybe the winter doldrums have set in at your house. The holidays are over; the candles and trees are down and the house looks a bit bare, eh? Perfect time for a book blitz!
Did your young readers get BOOKS for Hanukkah or Christmas? Now is the perfect month and opportunity to haul them out and start reading to and with your young readers!
Did you know that reading from infancy to entry into school is “doctor “recommended?” Well it is; by no less than the American Academy of Pediatrics! Please check out a group called “Reach Out and Read”. Begun more that 25 years ago at a Boston hospital, it incorporated READING as part of the annual health exam and gave books to children at their checkups in addition to discussing the importance of reading, singing and rhyming at early ages with children to encourage literacy.
More and more evidence-based research shows there is a small and quickly closing window to give kids a “jumpstart” on reading and from that, success in school, not to mention a lifetime of pleasure ahead with books. That window is from infancy to entry at school.
In the Reach Out and Read program over 4 million children are being served now at nearly 5,000 program sites in all 50 states. Books are put into babies’ and tots’ hands at their checkups, so they can begin developing their own library of books. Perhaps your own pediatrician is a participant, or may be encouraged to become one.
One of the primary reasons for starting Liz’s Book Snuggery was my firm belief, from my own experience as a parent, that it is vital to give young parents the oft repeated message that reading great picture books to our youngest is the portal to chapter books and everything beyond. It BUILDS sustained attention span that is central to learning to read.
My on again off again foray into weekly story times was proof enough for me. At the beginning of the school year, the three-year-olds are a bit wiggly squiggly during our half hour together. BUT, come January, a mere 5 months down the road, and their attention span had increased to the full half hour! The four and five-year-olds became better still, and a joy to read and listen to, in their unique responses to a story.
January is the time for setting new goals. That said, I also DO remember how hectic life can be with young ones. Exponentially, how that must have increased in the time since I had infants and toddlers, and life was lived pell mell, going 24/7!
BUT, that said, it’s also a finite amount of time we parents have to model to our children that reading is a habit like any other and best begun early as in “Blitz with Books.”
So please make this the month to start! It’s also doctor recommended!