Hoot Reading Blog

What a year it has been. Over the pandemic, as offices and schools shifted to operating remotely, we saw a complete shake-up in the way we live our lives. Most parents — ourselves included– found themselves sharing an at-home office with their children, while simultaneously managing their kids’ daily schedules, most notably their kids’ online schooling. As a result, many working parents found it nearly impossible to keep up with the demands of their jobs in addition to the needs of their children at home. Feelings of needing to be ‘always on’ with the invisible boundaries of work and home caused stress and anguish and burnout became a very real thing for working parents.

“The Reality is that each new reader – that is, each child – must build a wholly new reading circuit. Our children can form a very simple circuit for learning to read, and acquire a basic level of decoding, or they can go on to develop highly elaborated reading circuits and add more and more sophisticated intellectual processes over time.”

Have you subtly compared your child to others and wondered if your child could be doing better? It happens easily.  Maybe you run into another parent at the store and catch wind that their kid is reading several grade levels ahead.  Maybe you overhear praise for a student who has just excelled at the science fair and is moving on to regional competitions. Maybe a relative has hinted that your child seems behind compared to what you accomplished as a child.  Whatever the source, the question is nagging at you. Is my child behind? 

Fun Tips From Ms. Elizabeth Hawkins Lincoln, a Hoot Reading Classroom Teacher

It’s time for Part 3 in our Reading Activities series and this one is all about literacy games! If you missed them, you might want to catch up on Part 1 (about sight words) and Part 2 (about fiction and nonfiction reading activities).

We know that you’re looking for ways to keep kids learning and engaged at home right now, and we’re happy to share some ideas! Last week, we shared Part 1 in this series that was all about working on sight words and the accompanying activities to do. Click here to read Part 1 now.

If your school is unable to provide lessons for your child during social distancing, or if you want to extend the materials being sent home, here are ways to keep their reading going strong. If you haven’t already, try a free Hoot lesson too!  Many parents find that having a qualified Hoot teacher removes a burden off of the parent-child relationship.  

Yes, this is really happening. And yet, at least once a day I find myself in a moment of hazy denial. If I don’t look at the news, I can almost forget that a pandemic is taking place. I feel extremely fortunate that it hasn’t yet affected me personally, and I can barely imagine the depth of the fear and grief experienced by those in the midst of this long dark wait. I have family and friends all over the globe and know that each one of them is having a vastly different experience. The haze of denial doesn’t last long.

Our children sometimes face experiences where they are not able to able to make choices. School systems for example, make decisions on what literature our children will be exposed to with sometimes mixed reviews. Growing a love for reading starts with showing your children how reading is part of your everyday life. Modeling the behaviour you want your children to display goes a long way in influencing their actions. Also, thinking of new and creative ways to add reading into your family’s life encourages connections that will continue to affect your child’s academic ability. 

One of the best ways to engage little readers on a cold, blustery day is to work on their reading comprehension. By picking out a good book that sparks their interest, and incorporating a few questions about the content, you will start to see the wheels turning and your child think more critically about what they’re reading.