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<By Alice Wong>
We live in a fast paced competitive society ( Hong Kong), where children are generally expected to be multi-lingual, multi-talented by the age of 5 or 6 ( a bit of an exaggeration but parents out there, you know what I mean). A friend of mine was worried because his son (5) is not able to read a book yet whilst his neighbor’s 3 year old is already reading. Against my gut instinct, I also feel the pressure, the worry that if I don’t do something, my son might fall behind his peers and this will affect his confidence.
I want to help, but I just didn’t know how to do it in a fun and effortless way. My answer? Julie Fowlkes. A few years ago, she changed my family’s approach towards Reading-A-Loud. Today, she is the reason my children love books.
Julie’s passion and enthusiasm is contagious. At “ Helping your child with beginning reading skills”, she gave us invaluable tools, activities and games to play with our children.
My son, Patricio (5) loves the “ My Pile-Your Pile” game. You have a pile of sight word cards (words that can’t be sounded out phonetically). If he gets a word right, that card goes into his pile, if he gets it wrong it goes into my pile. Make sure you have easy words in there so that his pile is always bigger!
My daughter, Isabella (3.5) prefers making silly magnetic words on the white board, and sounding them out. They both love to give themselves points. They write these points themselves on the side of the board. Julie suggests points, stickers, toothpicks or even call Grandma and let her know how well they’ve done. I’m waiting for the right time to write a note to the teacher.
We’ve started playing word games in the car while we’re stuck in traffic. Games such as; Can you guess which animal I’m thinking? Who can break down the sounds of these words?
Patricio has begun to bring home-readers back from school. These are books specifically designed for learning to read. However, after all the spectacular colorful read-aloud books, we found these slow and dull. Try reading them in a funny, deep or squeaky voice, it changes the whole experience.
These are just a glimpse of Julie’s bag of tricks. They are the ones that resonate with us most at this point in time. I wish you could all come and experience her magic yourself.
Despite what have been said, I deeply believe sooner or later children will all be readers. The question is, will they be passionate readers? Julie reminds us time and again, don’t take the fun out of it. There is no need to play the games for an hour everyday. Let it be short, sweet and playful. A special bonding time for parent and child.
Bring Me A BookTM Hong Kong – The leading advocate for family literacy in Hong Kong.
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