Subtitled "Fun Activities to Make Reading Happen", this special book from the Williamson Kids Can! series is designed for parents and kids to enjoy together. Learning to read is a fantastic and involving process that takes years to perfect. The activities and suggestions in this book help make it an enjoyable journey. The author shares her experience as a teacher and carefully addresses a variety of learn-to-read skills and styles.
The activity pages speak directly to kids. While children in the target audience (ages 3-7) are not expected to read these instructions, this style encourages parents to read the pages aloud to their kids and to include them in the creation of homemade learning aids. For example, a simple but fun activity involves creating a pointing "gizmo"—a homemade pointer that kids can use to identify and point out words that they find in their immediate environment. Kids are encouraged to cut out a shape, color it, and then tape the shape to a stick.
Interesting sidebars included suggestions for books that support and extend the learning presented in each featured activity. As well, they provide valuable teaching tips and align the exercises with state standards. Using these sidebars and the well-written introduction, parents are introduced to all the elements (such as rimes and phonics) they need to consider when teaching a child to read.
Activities are diverse and include things like a recipe for making letter-shaped cookies from dough that can be rolled into "ropes" and then shaped by hand into letters; creating a "feely" letter collection by allowing kids to glue objects onto handwritten letter shapes using items that begin with each letter of the alphabet (beans for B, and yarn for Y, for example); and creating simple, homemade beginning readers. On one spread, parents are reminded that teaching children to build and read words using rime families (such as at, an, and ig) can quickly and effectively boost their reading vocabulary. Instructions to make simple "flip books" and "word slide" cards allow kids to experiment with these letter combinations by either flipping or sliding beginning letters in order to build words from each rime. In another activity, the author turns sequencing (the ability to string events together in logical order) into a "sequence crown" that kids can proudly create and wear.
Parents will appreciate the holistic approach to promoting literacy adopted in this book. Activities that recognize the crucial relationship between learning to read and learning to write and that develop and encourage a strong awareness of print are given as much attention as those that teach letter identification and letter-sound association. Children use all of their senses to learn to read, and this book encourages active involvement by getting kids to read, write, look, feel, and even taste letters and words.
Wow! I'm Reading! proves that families don't need to spend money on fancy learn-to-read packages in order to create a home environment that supports literacy. Suggested activities feature everyday items from around the house, and are easy to reproduce. While the book is not designed to outline a system or course for learning to read, what it does do—and does well—is provide parents with an impressive variety of encouraging and practical activities they can share with their budding readers.
