Read With Me!
According to www.kidcentraltn.com, reading together as a family has postiive and lasting effects on both the children and the parents. Consider this, a family that reads together for a mere 20 minutes a day, 7 days a week, creates over 120 hours of bonding time each year. Furthermore by reading to a child for 20 minutes every day, a child is exposed to over 100 million words of text each year. That equals 137 new words per minute. Studies show that for every year that you read with your child, that child's average lifetime earnings increase by $50,000. So if you read to your child from birth to age 5 for 20 minutes a day, you potentially increase that child's income by $250,000. This is above and beyond the tremendous benefit of improved literacy skills that will lead to a child's academic success. With all of these positive results, why wouldn't a family read together?
Here are some books to help your family get started -
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
A year in the life of two young girls growing up on the Wisconsin frontier, as they help their mother with the daily chores, enjoy their father's stories and singing, and share special occasions when they get together with relatives or neighbors.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Each of five children lucky enough to discover an entry ticket into Mr. Willy Wonka's mysterious chocolate factory takes advantage of the situation in his own way.
Holes by Louis Sachar
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.
The Good Dog by Avi
McKinley, a malamute, is torn between the domestic world of his human family and the wild world of Lupin, a wolf that is trying to recruit dogs to replenish the dwindling wolf pack.
Stuart Little by E.B. White
The adventures of the debonair mouse Stuart Little as he sets out in the world to seek out his dearest friend, a little bird who stayed a few days in his family's garden.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg's father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government.
A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.
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