School Holidays

The year-end holidays are here again and it's a busy time for parents. Why ? as we need to keep the kids busy and also find things to occupy their free time. Should we be letting them join some holiday programs or should we just let them enjoy the holidays.

We find kids to be quite 'programmable' not too sure on the real terms used. If you set a timetable and follow them strictly, they will eventually follow it. Since there's no school which takes 50% of their time, now we have to fill-up the 50% of the school time with some academic/brain stimulating activities just to ensure that they do not become lazy. We are just afraid that if we let them have the lazy attitude during these few weeks, we will have a hard time tuning it back to their school timetable.

So we have decided to let them spend an hour on either writing, coloring or drawing. And not forgetting to read with them or encourage them to read. We were quite amaze that when we read to them, they can actually remember the words thats read to them. We started to read bedtime stories to Ian in the beginning of the year and we read the same story over and over again, and to our surprised, one day he read it back to us. He does not know the words, but because he's been hearing the story over and over again, he's able to repeat it.

We were so delighted and went on to buy more story books. We buy simple ones and read with them.
Once you have read the story a few times, the kids are able to tell you what's going to happen next and sometimes they do act out as the wolf or the bad guys. It becomes interactive once the kids knows the stories. We find it good to read them the moral stories about honesty (not telling lies), hard-working, etc and it's kind of good to relate it back to the stories if we want them to behave accordingly.

It does not matter how old or how new the books are, JUST READ THEM and of course parents would need to choose appropriate books to read with the kids. This is their first and favourite story book.


What does Reading Do ? .........
In a paper called What Reading Does for the Mind, Anne E. Cunningham, associate professor of cognition and development at the University of California, Berkeley, makes the case that reading:
* increases vocabulary more than talking or direct teaching;
* substantially boosts general knowledge while decreasing the likelihood that misinformation will be absorbed; and
* helps keep our memory and reasoning abilities intact as we age.