Five Counties Children’s Centre is encouraging parents to start a new chapter when it comes to gift-giving this year by including books under the tree for their children.
The regional treatment centre suggests parents should consider passing over the usual toys and electronic gadgets and instead give their children the gift of reading.
“The fact is that all of us spend way too much time in front of a screen,” Five Counties communications coordinator Bill Eekhof told kawarthaNOW. “Kids do too, and that isn’t always good for their growth and development.”
Clinicians at Five Counties bring a special perspective to the benefits of reading, as they support children and youth with speech, language, and communication needs.
“One of the biggest benefits of reading is having family time together without screens, without noise, and you can focus together on an activity that’s fun for the whole family,” said Five Counties speech-language pathologist Ida Lloyd. “You get to try and instill a skill in your child that they will need for their whole life … and you’re starting it from a fun way.”
Lloyd noted reading books benefits kids of all ages, especially by expanding the language and communication skills they will use throughout their lives.
“An engaging, age-appropriate book can take you to new worlds and introduce you to interesting characters,” she said. “Books allow families to connect and spend time together, having fun and discovering a mutual love of reading.”
Reading with a newborn, toddler, or pre-schooler can give them comforting contact and establish an early reading routine. Reading also exposes young kids to new words and ideas, allowing them to become familiar with sounds and rhythms of language.
It doesn’t just have to be books, Lloyd added, noting that anything with print or letters can be read together with a young child — even traffic signs or grocery lists.
For older children and teens, reading can help them to think, better express themselves in new ways, and introduce them to a new topic that engages and interests them.
The speech-language pathology team at Five Counties has put together a list of different book authors and titles that make for great holiday gifts for children, including popular children’s authors such as Sandra Boynton, Richard Scarry, and Robert Munsch.
Specific titles include Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy E. Shaw, Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell, Where’s Spot? and Spot’s Birthday Party by Eric Hill, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann, and any of the Little People Lift the Flap books.
“Five Counties is providing these tips to help families think outside the gift box, by selecting recommended titles and types of books that will appeal to children of all ages,” Eekhof said. “It’s meant as a reminder that the greatest holiday presents don’t all require batteries or screens.”
Five Counties’ speech-language pathology team recommends certain types of books that are better at capturing and holding a young child’s interest.
For very young readers, these include books that have few or no words, like Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann, because they give adults and children the opportunity to describe what is happening on the page.
Books like Where’s Spot? and Spot’s Birthday Party by Eric Hilland and the Little People Books that have flaps that lift or different textures to touch make reading more interactive and interesting, especially for kids with short attention spans.
Books with a repetitive structure like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle and Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy E. Shaw are fun for kids because they can start to fill in the blanks themselves when an adult pauses from reading.
Books with words that vividly describe sounds, like any of Robert Munsch’s books, can let adults make silly sounds when they read, which are more likely to catch a child’s attention and make reading the book more fun for them.
Finally, search-and-find books like those by Richard Scarry and Little People Lift the Flap books can be fun for kids, because there is so much to talk about on each page.
When reading books with very young children who have short attention spans, Lloyd recommends parents and caregivers allow the child to choose what book they want to read and how they want to read it.
“Let them hold the book and show them how to turn the pages,” she said. “Those are all early skills that you need to become a reader. And remember, it needs to be fun, because if it’s not fun, kids will be gone.”
