Can That Screen Teach My Kid to Read?
A book that has been a big influence on me both personally as a parent and professionally is Jim Trelease’s The Read-Aloud Handbook. It’s the book I wish every parent would read, and should be the subject of about ten future posts on this blog. Today, though, I’m thinking about a section of the book where Trelease talks about the power of closed-captioning as a reading aid:
The number of words flowing across the screen (closed-captioning) in the course of three hours is more than the average adult would read in a daily newspaper or a weekly news magazine…
As for toddlers and preschoolers who are unable to read the words on the screen, as well as the words in the books and magazines in the house, those items help acclimate the child to print and sounds and meaning. The same thing happens with closed-captioning. In fact, you could easily argue that the characters on the show are reading aloud the closed-captioning to the child.
I’ve come across some products recently that provide a similar service as a way of helping kids learn to read. First up is Mobistories, Virtual Books for Kids. These online illustrated books have scoring and narration of the text that appears on screen. One cute book that caught my attention with its lovely jazz soundtrack is Miles the Crocodile Plays the Colors of Jazz.
I think that these are pricey for what they are, but fortunately Tech Savvy Mama has a $10 coupon good through the end of this month. Check it out!
While the text doesn’t animate in Mobistories, animated text is front and center in the charming Readeez videos. Musician and dad Michael Rachap created the animated father and daughter duo of Julian and Isabel Waters. All of the text in their skits and songs is animated, and prominently so, with each syllable appearing as it’s spoken (or sung, as the case may be). Each Readee is very cute and the songs are terrifically catchy. My favorite is Sandy Beach:
You can watch a bunch on the Readeez website and the Readeez YouTube channel, and it’s all available on DVD as well. If you buy a DVD by December 31st, you’ll get 15% off and Readeez will donate a DVD to a public library, preschool, or daycare. Cool!
And, if you’re trolling around the bargain bins this holiday season, you may stumble across a product I worked on a few years ago – Read With Me DVD. These DVDs also have animated text to go along with animated storybook pages, complete with great narration and scoring. I had the honor of producing Where the Wild Things Are and Curious George, among others. Giraffes Can’t Dance is one of my favorites. The Scholastic Store has the system listed for $15.97, and additional titles for $4.97.
I also hear that we’ll soon be able to read Shakespeare and Dickens on Nintendo DS. Well, in Europe, anyway. [via 1UP] So, who says all of these screens aren’t good for you?
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Hi! I loved this post. It’s very informative and rich. I think it is amazing to see how teaching to read changes, or better still, how learning to read changes. I can share my own experience, with kids who do not speak English, yet the exposure through the internet and digital games is so intense, that my 6 year old started to read English by himself, without understanding the words he is reading. So, yes, those screens can do it!
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I think its great theyre going to have the classics on the ds… along those same lines Ive been seeing a nintendo ds TV ad a lot lately for an animated kids cookbook-
which I think is pretty cool!
Cooking is the ultimate game/puzzler- especially baking.
Anyways- thanks again Media Macaroni for keeping up on all the fantastic posts.
Cheers