Some of my favorite childhood memories were spent close to nature. Whether it was a visit to the local picnic area, being on a family camping trip, or reading a book at the base of a tree, being outdoors surrounded by growing plants was restorative and stimulating. When I became a parent myself, I saw the same benefits for my children as they grew—they were more engaged and enthusiastic when learning took place in an outdoor setting.
Spending time outdoors in natural green spaces provides major benefits for raising readers, and being in nature may even make kids smarter. Researchers (and parents) have observed a plethora of mental, physical, and emotional benefits to getting children outside and active. According to the Journal of Pediatric Nursing, exposure to green spaces promotes memory, self-discipline, and attention. It also reduces stress, encourages positive social growth, and improves behavior.
Being in Nature Can Help Kids Learn
A study in Barcelona followed just over 2,500 primary-school children for a year to better understand the effects of green space on their cognitive development. The researchers found that exposure to such spaces correlated with an improvement in the kids’ working memory and a significant boost in attentiveness. A related study even suggested that regular exposure to such spaces during childhood was associated with increased brain size.
Another study, this time by a group of medical professionals in Rome, showed improvement in kids’ attention levels when they spent time in green spaces, and a positive association with their verbal IQ as well.
And researchers following preschoolers in Norway found that “high exposure to outdoor environments might be a cheap, accessible and environmentally friendly way of supporting and enhancing children’s self-regulatory capacities and cognitive development.” Those researchers even suggested that outdoor exposure could be used to “treat” children with attention disorders: “For some children, high doses of nature may be an effective alternative to medication,” they speculated.
Green Spaces May Reduce Stress & Improve Mental Health
What’s more, scientists in the UK were able to link reduced stress levels to green spaces by measuring levels of stress hormones in participants’ saliva. Researchers saw an increase in the hormone cortisol when subjects were deprived of natural environments.
Similarly, another study found that children between two and five years old who lived in areas with more green spaces around had fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression.
So, if you find teaching reading to your child a stressful endeavor, why not take the literacy learning outside? Both of you may enjoy a breath of fresh air.
How to Find Natural Areas in Urban Environments
While I was fortunate to grow up in a time and place that offered abundant opportunities to explore nature, in many areas those opportunities are shrinking. Many urban areas were built without regard for nature, and it may be difficult to find a patch of green in some areas. This is particularly true of disadvantaged urban areas.
Fortunately, cities are starting to see the value in prioritizing natural areas. Small areas of green are popping up all over the place. Communal gardens and green spaces have been created by reclaiming derelict or vacant properties, like Platt Farm Open Space in Denver, once a dumping ground for industrial waste.
In addition, many public libraries, such as those in Los Angeles, Denver, Orlando, and New York, offer a limited number of free cultural tickets to library cardholders. Most of these programs have a few nature-centered destinations, such as botanical gardens and zoos, among the museum and theater options. In most cases, parents can take advantage of these free programs via their library’s website and book their free passes online.
Cities frequently have nature and discovery centers to visit, as well. Nature centers often offer educational walks, maintained trails, habitat restoration, and sometimes even wildlife rehabilitation services. Those who want to get more involved may be able to volunteer, helping with tasks such as clearing invasive weeds, planting trees, and cleaning up trash.
How to Help Your Child Learn In Nature
The research suggests that letting your child play and explore in outdoor spaces is beneficial for their cognitive development all on its own. Adding in fun activities that are specifically designed to fuel their development of reading skills will make the time outdoors even more constructive.
You can name the plants and animals you encounter, weaving in spelling lessons when you encounter a B-U-G on a leaf or a C-A-T in a tree. Vigorous activities like a rousing scavenger hunt or a game of alphabet hopscotch will help your active preschoolers get their excess energy out so they’ll behave better at home. After allowing them to expend their excess energy outdoors, you can sit down with your kids and read a book about the outdoors.
Check out these curated lists of recommended picture books about the outdoors and picture books about gardening for a great start!
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When the holidays and school vacations roll around, they bring family time for many of us. Not just time with the members of your household—visits with extended family. Big gatherings and family meals. Going to stay with relatives, or hosting them at our homes. Grandparents visiting or coming to stay. Cousins, aunts, uncles. So. Much. Family.
Gathering and reconnecting with loved ones near and far, within and across generations, is a source of great joy. It can also represent an upheaval: sharing space, dealing with differences, and getting along with others, to name a few. Not to mention handling a bunch of extra noise and chaos on the one hand and different rules or expectations on the other.
As with just about any subject under the sun, we believe that sharing a book is among the absolute best ways to broach this topic with your kids. A great story can simultaneously validate children’s feelings while gently helping them see how to resolve, accept, or evolve them. The truly great ones will even help us parents, too.
Below are a couple of moving picture books that are well suited for prepping young children (and, really, the whole family) for gatherings and visits with extended family.
More Books About Relatives
Has your child ever refused to sit on the lap of a grandfather they hadn’t seen in a while, wiped off a kiss from Grandma, or otherwise been embarrassingly less than effusive around relatives? Have grandparents or other family members ever looked askance at the noise or, shall we say, energy levels of your little ones?
If you’re planning some time with relatives that your children don’t know well, or just haven’t seen in some time, a good picture book can help, such as Oliver, Amanda, and Grandmother Pig by Jean Van Leeuwen.
Picture books are a fantastic way to broach topics of importance with your little ones, and one topic that could use more attention is the relationship between senior citizens and the community at large. Increasingly, children’s books are being published that paint the elderly and the aging process in a positive light—instead of focusing on frailty and diminished capacities.
Interesting children’s books about seniors share the life experiences that shaped older adults, explore the bonds they have with others, and show that older role models are all around us, if we know where to look and who to ask! Take a look at this list of books about senior characters and aging that present a positive view and support meaningful intergenerational relationships.
What picture books about senior citizens and aging will you be reading with your children? Let us know!
I’m a teacher, and as November approaches, parents often ask me to recommend books by Native American authors or with Native American characters. I always have a list handy. But it got me thinking: Why now; why November?
Well, we know the answer, of course. Thanksgiving. It’s generally the only time of year schools and media celebrate the contributions of Indigenous Americans to the current version of this nation. What’s more, many kids’ Thanksgiving books tell a similar (and often falsified) story of the first Thanksgiving.
As parents, you have the power to change this just by the books you put on your children’s shelf—all year long. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, a leading multicultural children’s literature expert, says, “Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror.”
By making sure your child has access to quality books by and about Native Americans all year long, you can create those mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. This post will show you how.
How Should We Choose Picture Books About Indigenous Americans?
This is a great question and the answer is important. There are two good ways to choose:
- Look for kids’ books by Indigenous American authors. Often the author’s bio on the book jacket will tell you. If not, you can typically find the answer in a two-minute Google search.
- Also, read the book before you buy or borrow it. Does the book frame Native Americans as “others” or compare them to white people to make it “relatable?” For example, phrases like “Today, Native Americans dress the same way we do.” If so, pass on those. Does the story center Indigenous American characters and create authentic, well-rounded stories? Then get it!
Happily, in the past few years, more Indigenous American authors have been getting published and winning awards. We Are The Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom even won the Caldecott Medal in 2021! Because of this, it has become even easier to include such stories in your child’s life.
Awesome Kids’ Books by Indigenous Americans
For some great books to get you started, here are a few of my favorites:
Mission to Space by John Herrington
Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun’s Thanksgiving Story by Danielle Greendeer, Anthony Perry, and Alexis Bunten
We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom
I Sang You Down From the Stars by Tasha Spillett-Sumner
My Heart Fills with Happiness by Monique Gray Smith
We Are Still Here by Traci Sorell
The Walrus and the Caribou by Maika Harper
Where to Find More Ideas & New Books by Indigenous American Authors
You can also check out the American Indian Youth Literature Awards for books for children of all ages. To dig in further and find more awesome recommendations in real time, follow these accounts on Instagram to find reviews, releases, and recommendations:
- @indigenouseducators
- @indigenousbookshelf
- @thunderbirdwomanreads
- @paperbacks_n_frybread
- @massybooks (a female Indigenous owned bookstore)
- @mollyofdenali (a PBS Kids show about an Alaskan Native girl)
Why and How to Build an Inclusive Library for Your Kids
As you build out a more inclusive bookshelf, keep in mind that quite often children’s books about Thanksgiving feature racially insensitive stereotypes about Native American characters and give the false impression that Indigenous Americans:
- lived a long time ago and no longer exist
- had/have a single shared culture, religion, and language
- only exist(ed) to serve as guides or “assistants” to white people
Indigenous Americans live and exist in the United States 365 days a year. There are 574 federally recognized Native American tribes within the United States. As such, books by and about these Americans deserve to be celebrated on your bookshelves and in story times all year round.
This will help families of all backgrounds counteract the white Euro-centric viewpoint kids can learn when they only see white children in picture books. In turn, it will prepare them to act with empathy for others. And for Native American children, seeing themselves represented in a positive light will empower them and give them self-confidence to speak up for themselves and positively advocate for their communities.
Change can begin on your bookshelf. Investing in quality picture books about Native Americans will affect your child as well as the lives of others. It’s a ripple in a pond. Keep sharing books by Indigenous American authors all year round and watch those ripples grow.
Picture this. It’s Christmas eve, and your family has gathered to give each other books, then cozy up for an evening of reading and hot chocolate. (Maybe throw in a roaring fire and marshmallows for good measure). Sound almost too good to be true? Meet the Icelandic Yule tradition of Jolabokaflod, which means “Christmas book flood”—a festive celebration of reading and simple pleasures.
The tradition has been going strong for more than 75 years in Iceland. Over the last few years, it’s been capturing imaginations beyond the Nordic island, resonating with book lovers and those seeking a more conscious holiday experience versus unsustainable consumption. After all, what could beat giving loved ones, and especially your children, the gift of reading—and all the treasured memories that go along with it?
So, if you’ve been searching for fun and rewarding Christmas traditions for kids—and grown-ups—this holiday season, maybe it’s time to start your own Jolabokaflod. But what exactly does it consist of? How should you go about it?
This article will answer those questions. As with so many of the best ideas, its appeal lies in its simplicity.
The Story of Jolabokaflod, the “Christmas Book Flood”
Iceland is a nation of readers, boasting one of the highest literacy rates in the world (99 percent) and reporting more published books per capita in recent years than almost any other country. Its literary heritage stretches back through the ages to the famous Norse myths and sagas recorded on the island in medieval times, and it remains at the core of Icelandic cultural identity today. Stories have been a flame to see its people through the long, dark nights of their far-north winter. No wonder, then, that it was there that such a strong book-giving Christmas tradition took root.
In 1944, paper was one of the few commodities that wasn’t heavily rationed due to World War II, yet Icelanders had money to spend on Christmas gifts. The solution? Going all-in on books as gifts. The publishing trade sent a “Book Bulletin” catalogue to every household to make placing Christmas book orders extra easy, and so the Jolabokaflod tradition was born.
Fast-forward to today and the Book Bulletin still goes out every year during the Reykjavík Book Fair in November—alongside a flurry of literary events—marking the beginning of the “Christmas book flood” season. It’s a time when books become the talk of the nation.
Iceland’s literary scene is thriving, its authors published in translation throughout the world (Nordic noir is an especially popular genre). Writers are respected. Supposedly one in 10 Icelanders eventually write a book. And there is even an Icelandic saying: “Everyone has a book in their stomach,” meaning “everyone gives birth to a book.” In 2011, Reykjavík was the first city with a native language other than English to become an UNESCO City of Literature.
The ripple effect of Jolabokaflod has had a lasting and profound impact on Iceland’s people, arts, and economy.
The Joy of Jolabokaflod and Book Gifts for Christmas
These days, the “Christmas Book Flood” may come with more marketing hype and author competition than when it first started out, but its spirit remains true to Icelanders’ deep love of books and stories, perhaps best summed up by people who grew up with it.
As author Hallgrímur Helgason puts it, “Thanks to Jolabokaflod, books still matter in Iceland, they get read and talked about. Excitement fills the air. Every reading is crowded, every print-run is sold … At the average Christmas party people push politics and the Kardashians aside and discuss literature.”
Gerður Kristný—Icelandic poet, novelist and children’s writer—recalls, “I have always been given books for Christmas. I remember vividly being an 11-year-old getting nine books that year! Looking at the pile I felt very grown up.”
“Nothing has prepared me better for life than the books I read as a child,” continues Kristný. “They taught me what kind of a world I wanted to live in as an adult and how I could be a part of making it fair and just. They also showed me into worlds I would never otherwise have entered.”
In today’s economically unpredictable times, books remain one of the more affordable luxuries—small investments that deliver rich rewards. And, as well as providing opportunities for relaxing holiday downtime and enjoying the benefits of reading together, bringing books into the heart of your Christmas family tradition gives your children a powerful, and long-lasting message: that books are special and reading matters.
Are you ready to include Jolabokaflod in your Christmas traditions?
How to Hold Your Own “Christmas Book Flood” this Holiday
One of the lovely things about Jolabokaflod is you can go as big or small as you feel like.
In the run-up, get your kids excited by talking about your “Christmas Book Flood” and encouraging them to suggest ideas for making the evening special. You could ask them to share their “wishes” for books or book themes, browse bookstores together, or attend some children’s author events in your area. In turn, ask them to choose a book for you or another family member to read. Want some instant inspiration for choosing great children’s reads? Check out our book lists!
Remember this is your Jolabokaflod, so if you don’t want to buy your books new, you don’t have to. You could find your books in a thrift store or book market, or even pass on a treasured book of your own. Nor do you need to stick to the literal meaning of the expression and “flood” your family with books. A Secret Santa-style exchange, with each person giving and receiving just one book each, can work just as well.
On the day, take time to savor the celebration. Get creative with wrapping. Prepare snacks and hot chocolate together. Make your reading chairs and book nooks extra cozy with throws and cushions, and add the twinkle of fairy lights.
Find ways, too, to personalize the book-giving—people might want to inscribe and date the books they’re giving, or share why they chose a particular title. Then enjoy snuggling up together and poring over those lovely new reads!
In the days that follow your “Christmas Book Flood,” keep the book love flowing! Talk about the books you each received and read. And why not try some book-related craft activities and games? These can enrich the experience, as well as provide fun, screen-free holiday time and further learning opportunities. Maybe everyone could write a short review or draw a picture about their book—these could be turned into a collage or kept in a Jolabokaflod box that comes out every year.
However you choose to celebrate it, the “Christmas Book Flood” might just end up becoming one of your family’s favorite holiday traditions for many winter seasons to come. Happy book giving!
With the holidays approaching and shopping lists and letters to Santa getting longer every day, it’s easy to get stressed looking for the perfect gift. So we’re making holiday shopping just a little bit easier. We’ve compiled a list of terrific educational gifts for preschoolers that will become household favorites the whole year through. These fabulous gifts spark early learning and a love of reading in your child. And best of all? None of them sing or have flashing lights.
Educational Gifts for Kids Who Can’t Read Yet
Orchard Toys Big Alphabet Floor Puzzle
This giant floor puzzle is so fun. It’s bright and colorful and has illustrations kids are drawn to. My favorite part is that the puzzle features lowercase letters rather than uppercase letters. So your child will be learning an important new literacy skill. With its large pieces and simple shapes, this gift is great for ages 2-4. I bought this puzzle for my own nephew and he began to understand the alphabetic order while assembling this puzzle. He also began to ask questions about why letters matched the pictures, introducing him to letter sound correspondence. A big thumbs up from me (and my nephew).
Storytelling cards like the Create a Story set from eeBoo are fantastic fun and learning for kids long before they begin reading, though they remain fun for years after, too. These are sets of cards with pictures on them meant to inspire storytelling. There are different themes, so you’ll be able to find a set that appeals to your child. The child can lay out cards in any order and create their own story right in front of their eyes. When they’re finished, they’ll love explaining the plot to you! Alternatively, you can spare your wallet (and the planet) by making your own DIY story cards or story cubes by upcycling an old card deck or a few building blocks.
Montessori Phonetic Reading Blocks Wooden Words Spelling Game
These blocks are fantastic for children who are ready to start learning to read simple words. They’re strong, interactive, and a great practice tool! Children spin the blocks around and learn to spell and read basic words. The blocks come with cards, so children can replicate words and match them to an image. However, children can also play with them independently and learn how to sound out words that they create themselves.
If you are a fan of the Montessori learning method, you’ll really like these Montessori language objects. These collections of small materials align with different phonetic skills. For example, some collections contain objects whose names rhyme, and others have groupings of objects whose names start with the same letter sound. The small items help children learn to associate letters with sounds while playing. They make great stocking stuffers, too!
Touch Think Learn: ABC by Xavier Deneux
This beautiful board book combines dynamic graphic art with uppercase letters. It’s tactile and fun for all your little learners. This book is great for helping young kids identify letters and introducing them to the sounds that letters make. Your child will fall in love with their ABCs with Touch Think Learn: ABC. (Plus, see our list of awesome alphabet books for more book ideas.)
Educational Gifts for Kids Who Are Starting to Read
Create Your Own 3 Bitty Books Kit
For the little budding author in your life, this make-your-own-book set from Creativity for Kids will be an inspiring gift. The set includes three blank hardback books (yay, durability!), markers, and stickers. Your child can dictate stories for you to transcribe, then they can illustrate them. If your child wishes, they can simply create an illustration-only picture book. As your kids are ready to tackle writing themselves, these books are a great opportunity to sit together to practice sounding out and writing words to create their own story. Their creativity will flourish, as will their love of books. Once they’ve finished their literary masterpiece, they can read their story to you. What a wonderful way to choose a bedtime story!
Mad Libs are a great gift for older preschoolers! They’re a fun stocking stuffer for your child and a playful, silly way to spend some time together. Even if your child can’t read or write yet, they’ll love supplying you with words for the Mad Libs, and you’ll be teaching them about nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. There are dozens to choose from, so you’ll be able to find one for every child you know!
uKloo Early Reader Treasure Hunt Game
This game is set up as a treasure hunt. The adult hides cards throughout the house. The child must read a clue on each card in order to find the next card. What if your child doesn’t know a word? There’s a visual printout included to help your child learn to read new terms. The game also has three difficulty levels, as well as wipe-off write-your-own cards, so it can grow as your child’s reading skills do!
Early Bird Readers from Lerner Books
Say goodbye to outdated Dick and Jane and colorless BOB books. These lively books are wonderful early readers. They’re funny, brightly colored, and organized into color-coded difficulty levels. The books are well thought-out and well paced. The stories grow longer with each level and at a certain point even begin to include fun comprehension questions. These books are dynamic, so children don’t feel like they’re being forced to do practice reading. I highly recommend these!
Designed for kids 4 to 9 years old, This goofy game teaches children to read common words as they compete to be the first kangaroo to get some pizza. What’s really nice about this game is that there are three levels with increasingly difficult words. This means the game can grow with your kids, and it also means that if you have multiple children at different reading levels, they can still play together, each with their own personal set of challenges. Another aspect I like is that the players can compete against one another OR you can play a cooperative mode, where everyone works together. The flexibility and fun is really what puts this game on my list. And, after all, shouldn’t reading be fun?
Educational Gifts For Children of Any Reading Level
Literati Kids Club Subscription
Like Stitch Fix crossed with a library, Literati is a book subscription service that’s fun and fabulous. You sign up for a group based on your child’s age and then each month you receive a box of books. It starts with board books and goes up through high school. Keep the ones you like, send the rest back, and only pay for the ones you keep. You also get a monthly art print and cute little extras like stickers or temporary tattoos. A fresh stack of books each month—what could be better? Having new reads available keeps kids engaged and eager to read, and it keeps the adults in the household from getting burned out reading the same tattered tales again and again.
Homer is a digital reading program for kids. It serves kids from two years of age just learning their letters to first graders working on fluency and comprehension. It has fun games, adorable characters, original fiction and nonfiction stories, and adaptations of well-loved favorites like Thomas the Tank Engine or Angelina Ballerina. Children learn how to read through song, animations, interactive readers, and excellent curriculum. Their program can be done on a tablet or on a computer, so it works with the technology that best suits your family. Kids are so enthralled with Homer that they feel as though they’re getting playtime as they learn.
Epic is, well … epic. It is a digital collection of tens of thousands of books, audiobooks, and educational videos. Your child (or any child you know) will love the ability to browse and choose the content they want. Adults love that it is a safe digital platform that’s educational too. You can learn more from our post How to Get Your Child to Read More at Home with Epic! Digital Library.
Give the Gift of a Book Date
This gift isn’t one you can easily wrap. Buy the child you love a gift card to a local bookstore. Then, choose a day and time to go together on a book date. Tell your child that they can use the gift card to buy books—whatever book they want and however many the card can cover, but they have to choose a book. (Otherwise you might end up with $25 worth of fairy tattoos.) You can explore every area of the bookstore, taking time to read stories together, finding old favorites from your childhood, asking the store clerk to help you find books on rocket ships or baseball or mermaids, or just marveling at how many Llama Mama books there are.
A love of reading doesn’t just happen overnight. Children must be introduced to books and reading. It can come through reading together at bedtime or snuggled up on a rainy day. It can be as simple as finding letters on a cereal box. But the more fun you make reading and the more pockets of joy you create surrounding books and words, the more your child will feel drawn to reading themselves.
Whether it’s for your own little ones, or the children of friends and family, these great educational gifts for preschoolers and toddlers will make everyone on your list happy. (No batteries required.)
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You know Dasher and Dancer and Comet and Vixen. But do you recall the newest Christmas character of all? I mean, of course, the Elf on the Shelf. This little magical Christmas elf has found its way into millions of American homes and sparked a modern-day Christmas tradition.
The concept behind the Elf on the Shelf is simple. It’s a small toy elf that arrives at your home a few weeks before Christmas to watch the children of the house and see who’s being naughty or nice. Each night, the elf flies back to the North Pole to report to Santa, then flies right back to its adopted home. Families name their elves, love their elves, and design elaborate outfits and scenarios for their elves to show up in each morning.
It can be great fun and stir up the feeling of magic so often associated with Christmas. However, it can also create a hole. Because the elf is purportedly there to report on kids’ behavior, and that behavior leads to getting gifts, a child’s relationship with the elf can tilt away from Christmas values such as charity, togetherness, and love. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, you can make your elf a tool for social-emotional learning, family bonding, and literacy! Just turn your elf into a Christmas pen pal for your kids.
How and Why to Start an Elf on the Shelf Pen Pal Tradition
Kick off the season by having your elf show up with a note addressed to your child(ren) on the first morning it appears. The elf should initiate the pen pal relationship and request a reply.
Later in this article, we’ll share some more tips on what to write. But first, let’s look at why this activity is so valuable.
1. It fosters social-emotional learning.
Children watch how the adults around them act and react. If, at Christmas, the adults are consumed with buying and wrapping presents, children think that gifts are the sole point of the holiday. Commercialism and “me” thinking will become its cornerstone for them.
Developing a pen pal Elf on the Shelf activity opens up the opportunity for your children to grow their social-emotional skills, instead. Unlike Santa letters, which are primarily centered around what they can get, these letters are focused on connection, empathy, and communication. That’s why this simple Elf on the Shelf idea is so revolutionary.
When writing these letters, steer your child to ask questions about the elf. Where are they from? What is it like being an elf? Do they go to school? And so on. Then, when you write as the elf, include questions that allow children to reflect on themselves. Beyond just questions about how their day was or their favorite color, you can ask about their feelings, hopes, or dreams. Talk to one another about traditions or values your family shares, either through your letters or directly as you sit together to write to your elf.
By making these moments with your child about others as well as themselves, you will help foster their social-emotional development.
2. It facilitates family bonding.
Writing letters with your Elf on the Shelf is a sweet way to strengthen family bonds. Letter writing allows you more festive time together that’s outside of gifting and receiving. It also allows you insight into how your child thinks and other aspects of their personality they may have trouble communicating verbally.
If there are older children who don’t believe in Santa, you might invite them to help you write the letters “from the elf” to their younger sibling. This way, they’re still included in the family activity and are able to feel that they’re creating a magical Christmas for their sibling. It’s all about making this Elf on the Shelf activity something for the whole family!
3. It develops your child’s literacy.
By writing letters to your elf, your child will be able to practice the art of correspondence, as well as building their awareness of writing skills. Whether you write their letter for them or they write it themselves, they’ll be developing their knowledge of how writing conveys speech.
For kids old enough to transcribe their own letter, they’ll be practicing important skills from handwriting to spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. They’ll also learn how to translate their thoughts to a page. When children tell stories verbally, they can get repetitive (“and then, and then, and then, and then, he, um … and then”). Writing allows them to slow down and clarify their thought process, to think about the words they choose and want to share with others.
And reading your elf’s notes will add one more opportunity for kids to develop their reading and comprehension skills, whether they read the letters on their own or you read them aloud. Your child will be looking for answers to the questions they asked their elf, and eager to see what questions their elf has for them. Especially since the elf is going to share a magical world with them that they can’t see. This attentiveness fuels your child’s comprehension.
Tips for Your Elf on the Shelf Pen Pal Activity
- Hand-write the letter clearly, or type and print it out, making sure it’s clear it’s from the elf. If your child isn’t reading yet, point out the letters and words as you read the note aloud to them. Show them what words you’re reading and point out some of the letters that key words start with (such as their name or “elf”). For beginning readers, encourage them to read the letter on their own.
- Write in words and sentences that are on your child’s comprehension or reading level. It’s okay to give challenging words, but overall, make it as accessible to them as possible.
- Whatever your child’s level, support them in writing back to the elf themselves. They can dictate their letter and then you hold their hand and guide them to write their names, or they can write some or all of the words as you tell them which letters form the words they want, or they can take the lead. Find the level that’s right for your child.
- In the letters “from the elf,” ask specific questions to prompt your child to write a response.
- When writing back to your child, make sure to respond to any and all questions they asked the elf.
- Help your child write their responses to the elf by making it a special time of day.
- Keep it fun! Encourage this as a fun Christmas activity rather than homework or a task that must be accomplished.
Christmas can become a hectic time that’s filled with endless to-do lists, parties, and presents. By carving out the time to form this new tradition with your family, you’ll be demonstrating for your child what really matters at this time of year—relationships.
Thanksgiving—it’s not just the day before Black Friday.
So, if you’d like to cultivate more than your family’s appetite this year (though we fully support that, too!), we’ve curated some of our best articles to help you build gratitude, kindness, togetherness, and love this season. Now there’s something to be thankful for!
Read Stories Together to Build Empathy and Kindness
Writer Andrea Hunt reports on the evidence that reading fiction can help foster empathy, which she shares is increasingly recognized as a “superpower” in fields from education and business to science and technology. She shares that empathy is believed to increase everything from personal satisfaction and creativity to leadership and negotiation skills.
But, she says, empathy is declining and the U.S. has an “empathy deficit,” according to researchers. “It appears that as a society we’re becoming more narrow-minded, more disconnected,” Andrea writes, but “making a habit of it—for example practicing loving-kindness meditation—can make our brains grow.”
Read Andrea’s article on how reading fictional stories can help your child develop emotional intelligence. Then check out her curated list of picture books that support empathy.
Teach Kids Gratitude with a Sweet Craft
As adults, we may recognize that gratitude contributes powerfully to our mental and emotional well-being, and that practicing appreciation makes us happier as people. That it supports us to be more resilient and improve our relationships.
And sharing this knowledge with our children can be a priceless life lesson. As contributor Penny Sebring reports, a 2019 entry in the Journal of Happiness Studies found a positive correlation between gratitude and happiness in children as young as five years old. Numerous other studies have also found that gratitude can improve children’s and teens’ empathy and overall sense of satisfaction.
That’s why Penny put together a Thanksgiving craft tutorial to make super-cute “words-of-gratitude” paper-chain animals. The craft emphasizes gratitude as you create adorable Thanksgiving decorations (and sneaks in some reading, writing, and spelling practice too)!
Cultivate Kindness by Supporting a Great Cause
You can help your family build emotional intelligence and cultivate thankfulness by engaging in an act of kindness together. Helping out a good cause will make your child proud and teach them they can take positive actions to make the world better, a very empowering realization.
There are many options to make a difference, from volunteering at a food bank to helping a neighbor to donating to a cause. And one cause close to our hearts is fighting illiteracy in our own neighborhoods and around the world.
Contributor Chrysta Naron curated a list of organizations around the world that support literacy and could use donations, volunteers, and books. Check it out for opportunities to make an impact this season.
Slow Down and Cook Together
This one may seem obvious on Thanksgiving, but the fact is that with small children, it can feel easier to cook without them. It’s well worth the trouble to do a little cooking together, though. The connection you build and interaction you share will set them up for success and fulfillment in so many ways, including developing language skills key to literacy!
Our Read With Me Recipes for Kids provide quick, easy recipes to make with small kids—in a printable format that’s specially designed to help them develop print awareness and reading skills. Try it out with our roasted pumpkin seed recipe, maybe with the seeds from a pie pumpkin!
Just keep in mind that while hours spent pottering in the kitchen together may sound idyllic, for cooking with the youngest kids to be successful, you should probably think more in terms of minutes than hours. And adding to family stress is definitely not the point. So our Read With Me Recipes are intentionally quick and simple to make. Bon apetit!
Put in Quality Time Doing a Fun Learning Activity
If your little one thinks you’re always on your phone (well, after all, someone has to work/shop/check Instagram!), cooking dinner, or otherwise not paying enough attention to them, the holiday may be a great opportunity to slow down for some quality time. And sitting down to make some old-fashioned crafts together is a fun way to do just that.
In addition to the sweet paper-chain gratitude animals above, we have some other project tutorials that are perfect for the season. Check out our turkey letter-matching game or a fall-themed clip-card spelling activity. You can also explore our site to find lots more educational crafts and activities for kids.
Share Picture Books By and About Indigenous Americans
Chyrsta Naron, an early childhood educator as well as contributor to this site, reminds us that we parents have the power to change the world through the books we expose our children to.
Chrysta quotes Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop: “Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror.”
Check out Chrysta’s post about books by and about Native Americans to create some of those mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors this year.
P.S. We’re thankful for you! Happy Thanksgiving.
By Laila Weir
Reading aloud from the start is key to setting your baby on the path to literacy. But with infants, you obviously don’t have to be reading stories per se. In fact, there don’t even have to be words on the page right at first. Early on, the idea is to capture babies’ attention and engage them with your voice, gestures, and facial expressions to spur a verbal or other response of their own. Coos, babbles, and book grabs encouraged!
As they get older, they’ll tune into the words and stories more and more, and notice the mechanics of how you crack open the book, turn the pages, and read from the front to the back. They’ll discover that books are for reading (not just chewing), that they’re read in a particular direction, and that they convey certain ideas that parents return to each time they open them. All these simple elements are actually crucial building blocks towards reading. A tip: Engaging with your baby around the book is key. See our post on how to engage kids during story time.
Ok, so hopefully you’re sold on sharing books with your little lump of sleepy cuteness. But what books should you “read” to them? Here’s the lowdown on baby books that will help you capture infants’ attention and set them out on the path towards reading.
Noise Books
Choo-choo! Moo! Baaaa. Tick-tock.
Books that focus on the noises and sounds that animals or objects make are perennially popular with babies, making them excellent candidates to capture your infant’s attention.
They also build the child’s awareness of the sounds that underpin speech. This is a crucial step in building early language—and it will eventually aid them in picking out individual sounds in words as they learn to read and write.
Noise books provide a particularly rich opportunity for adult-child interaction, as well. For example, as you read a favorite noise book to your child (probably for the umpteenth time), you may find yourself naturally prompting them to join in, even before they can really make the sounds: What does the doggy say? That’s right! Woof-woof.
This kind of interaction is gold. In fact, it’s more precious than that. Because, as it turns out, research has shown that babies acquire speech sounds by interacting with the people around them. Not by watching someone speak on TV. Not by listening to a recording of a person speaking. Only by interacting.
For all these reasons, books that feature farm animal sounds, transportation noises, and other exaggerated speech sounds of all sorts make a great addition to your baby’s bookshelf.
Bonus: If you want to dig deeper, books that emphasize the letter sounds of M, N, B, P, D, Y, W, and H are especially well adapted for building your baby’s sound awareness. Moo, baa, and bow-wow, here we come!
Nursery Rhyme Books
Rhyming (hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock) and alliteration (Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater) are also great for developing baby’s sound awareness. Both are common features in classic and new nursery rhymes—which are also playful, lilting, frequently silly, and all-around fun.
These features make time-tested nursery rhymes, as well as modern takes on the old form, excellent choices for reading with babies. They’re also perfect vehicles for encouraging some key parent behaviors that help babies learn language: making eye contact and speaking in exaggerated and sing-song tones, as well as interacting with and responding to the baby.
Learn more in our article about the benefits of nursery rhymes.
Books with Character Names
Many baby books don’t have characters, per se, and this is fine, up to a point. But reading infants books about actual characters who have names can heighten their attention, researchers have found.
“For infants, finding books that name different characters may lead to higher-quality shared book reading experiences and result in … learning and brain development benefits,” writes psychologist Lisa S. Scott.
Scott also points out that books with named characters may lead parents to talk more with their babies when they read together. So, whether it’s Jack and Jill or Pete the Cat, look to include some stories with character names in your shared reading with baby.
Photo Books
Books with simple text and real photography are also a great bet to capture babies’ attention. Plus, studies have shown that very young kids are more likely to connect realistic images of objects with the objects themselves—thereby better learning the words associated with them—than with more abstract artistic representations or less lifelike cartoons. (Don’t worry, there will be lots of time for the pretty art later on!)
Showing babies color photos of everyday items and reading the accompanying labels expands their vocabularies in ways they find fascinating. At the same time, if you point out the word at the same time, it can help them begin to realize that the letters on the page are also associated with the item. Learning the connection between an object, a spoken word, and a written word is a key literacy skill.
Bold and High-Contrast Books
You may have heard that newborns can only see in black and white, an assumption that spawned a whole genre of black-and-white books for infants, but current analysis suggests that’s not true.
While they can’t see as well as adults at first, research indicates that infants see much like adults, according to Russell D. Hamer of Florida Atlantic University. Hamer writes that a newborn’s vision is a “rapidly developing version of adult vision, rich in pattern, contrast, and color, and that it possesses some remarkable abilities for discrimination and complex pattern recognition.”
Nevertheless, there is scientific reason to believe that bold, bright, and high-contrast patterns and shapes best draw the attention of infants during the first few months of life at least.
Face Books (including Mirror Books!)
Babies are also drawn to photos and images of other infants and children with parents or siblings, and to circles and face-like shapes in general. In fact, one study documented fetuses showing a preference for face-like shapes before they were even born!
The Global Babies series from the Global Fund for Children is a beautiful set of books featuring photos of babies from cultures around the world. There are a number of charming books in the series, including the original Global Babies, Global Baby Girls, Global Baby Boys, and more. As your baby gets older, you may want to move into books with realistic illustrations, but baby faces will remain popular with your little audience.
Books with faces also offer an opportunity to expose your infant to people from diverse backgrounds. Research into “face bias” has shown that newborns look at all faces equally, but that as they get older, babies who primarily see faces from their own race can’t recognize and remember individuals from other races as well. Choosing books featuring a diversity of faces may combat that effect. Plus, they’re fun!
Tip: Your infant’s own face will fascinate them, too, so look for baby books that include a mirror as well. These cute books also give lots of chances for interaction and giggles together.
More Tips for Reading with Baby
Keep in mind that even as you move into books with more detailed illustrations and more complicated storylines when your baby gets a little older, not all books have to have words on the page. Check out our post on how to use wordless picture books to support literacy.
When the books do have words, though, be sure to point them out. Make them a focal point (albeit a lesser one) along with the story and images. Take a look at our post on 5 Reading Aloud Tips to Get Your Child Kindergarten Ready for tips on how to do this.
Also, be sure to look for board books or fabric books. Most popular children’s books, even longer and more sophisticated stories, are available in board-book form these days, and it’s well worth it.
When your baby reaches for a book you’re reading to them, it’s a sign of engagement, and you want to encourage that! Letting them interact directly with books increases that engagement. So go ahead and let them play with their books, turn the pages, look at the pictures while riding in their stroller or car seat, and, yes, even mouth them!
Have fun looking at, playing with, chatting about … and even reading … books to your baby! Then let us know your favorite “reads” for infants in the comments.
One of the best ways we can set our young children up for kindergarten and beyond is by introducing them to the alphabet and teaching letter sounds. This may sound intimidating to busy parents without training in education, but with a few tips, it can be easy and fun. Besides teaching the letters directly, one of the easiest ways to help kids learn the ABCs and understand their purpose is snuggling together while reading simple picture books and bringing the child’s attention to the writing on the pages.
Any and all reading together will help your child learn to love books and set them on the path to becoming a reader, but pointing out the text will jump start their journey and prepare your preschooler for reading (plus help them get the most out of story time). And certain books with simple drawings (or even none) and large, noticeable print are particularly good at focusing kids’ attention on letters. This kind of book is great for helping them understand the link between the letters on the page and the words they’re hearing.
Read on for tips on how to draw attention to print while reading and a list of 10 great books that are perfect for turning your child’s attention towards letters. For more on teaching your child the ABCs (including when, how, and why to do it), see our post answering six top questions about teaching your child the alphabet.
How to Get Your Preschooler Ready for Reading
“Research findings have consistently shown that when adults call attention to print, children’s development of print knowledge accelerates,” write Laura M. Justice and Amy E. Sofka in Engaging Children with Print: Building Early Literacy Skills through Quality Read-Alouds.
In other words, when parents and educators engage children with the printed words in books, we help them form a foundational understanding of written language, which will benefit them immensely going forward in their education. A key first step is to point out and explain the use of letters in books and elsewhere (for example, letters on signs and around your neighborhood).
There are quite a few easy ways to bring attention to print and help our kids develop print awareness while we read to them:
Nonverbally:
- Point to particular words, letters, or other print features in the book
- Use a finger to follow the words as we read them
Verbally:
- Ask questions about the print (for example, Do you know this letter? or What do you think this says? while pointing to a picture of a stop sign)
- Make comments about the print (e.g. This sign says “Keep Out!” or Look! There is an A like in Avery)
- Request that the child show you features of the print (e.g. Point to an N or Show me where I should start reading)
Great Books for Preparing Preschoolers for Reading
Note: You can start drawing your child’s attention to print and letters very early on. Then, as they grow, don’t think you have to set aside baby books or early favorites. Some of your tot’s beloved board books will be perfect for teaching them their ABCs later on, with their simple words and bold text. Your child may return to them again when they start reading on their own, too.
What are your favorite books to teach little ones the ABCs? Comment below or let us know on social media!
