Quick pop quiz! How can you accomplish the following things with the push of a button:
Help your kids improve their reading skills?
Grow their vocabulary?
Help them sit quietly (willingly!)? and
Entertain them too?
Easy- Play audiobooks!
That's right Mom and Dad, listening to books on tape provide all these benefits and more.
Did you know that for a significant part of their childhood, your kids' intelluctual capacity will be greater than their reading ability? That means that they can understand material when it is read aloud to them that they would not be able to read. Interesting isn't it?
My kids love audiobooks and I love that they love them. As a homeschooling Mom of 4 kids, I do a lot of reading aloud. Audiobooks give my voice a little break.
You can play books on tape when you're in the car running errands. Naptime and bedtime are also favorite times to listen to a story. (And if your kids are like mine, you wear out long before they do so books on tape are a lifesaver for helping them nod off after you've done the bedtime story!)
Listening to audio books strengthens your child's ability to listen, a skill very crucial for their academic achievement.
Audio books also let your child hear fluent reading with a bit of flair... a lot of them are read by the author or professional actors.
If your child is struggling with reading, audio books associate reading with pleasure...so important if your child is to develop a lifelong love of reading!
Audio books help your child learn to visualize a story by using their imagination instead of the pictures (in contrast, watching television trains the brain to be lazy and rely on
images).
Why not get your child on the fast track to reading success with the push of the play button too? To get you started, here are some of my kids' favorite titles:
Charlotte's Web (read by the Author, E.B. White)
The Jamie Lee Curtis collection (And I dare you to get through "Tell me about the night I was born" without crying!)
www.InsteadofTV.com helps you think of fun things to do as a family that don't involve zoning out in front of the tube. Sign up for your free "101 Things To Do Instead of TV" today.
