Pictures Tell The Story

After a week long vacation at the beach, there are plenty of memories to recall. If you took pictures, they can be a great way to talk about the wonderful event to secure those memories. You can also use them to make a personalized book for your child to read and improve word recognition. Snapfish is a great website to help you create a simple book.

Pictures are great to encourage self-esteem and help with memory. There are many ways to use your pictures to help your preschooler.

One way is to make a book. I used Snapfish to make a small 4 x 6 spiral bound book of my son's birthday party. You can add backgrounds and captions under each picture. If you use simple captions with names, words to label the major object, or places, your child will begin to associate the picture with the word. Try not to write too many words if you are using it for reading recognition. This is to encourage reading, but not "teach" reading.

If you are interested in trying it out, here is a way to get free prints. The book is a different purchase, but it all works together.

Special Promo: 30 FREE prints plus free shipping with coupon code SNAPYFRSH07

Vacations Improve Reading!

Vacations are always a good idea- for relaxation, for exploration, and for information. Vacations can be elaborate or simple. Whenever you leave the town or city you live in, no matter how big or how small, you are giving your child's brain more to absorb. This is particularly important in reading. When children read a story, they have to connect it to something they already know. The technical word for this is "schema." If you hardly ever leave your house, your neighborhood, or you town or city (especially if you live in a small or rural area), your child will be a less likely to put words to pictures of ideas that are new to him.

Vacationing helps build new ideas and new discoveries. If you cannot afford a long or far away vacation, take a trip to the nearest city (driving distance) to you, even if it is smaller than yours. Small towns are good to teach big city kids about rural life so they know why country mouse was different than city mouse.

So try to take a vacation. Find a relative to visit. Find a new place to explore.

And on that note, I will be vacationing for a few days at the beach!