Diane Frankenstein

Teach kids empathy before its too late.

admin — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:16:47 +0000

“When is a Problem Child Truly Dangerous?”, a recent article in the NYT Magazine draws attention to the challenge to teach kids empathy before its too late. “>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html?pagewanted=all

Stories give readers the ability to identify with and understand another person’s feelings or difficulties. Stories encourage a person to step inside the shoes of another person. Once inside those shoes, questions arise: How does it feel? What would you do? Do you know what is the right thing to do? Does knowing what is the right thing to do, make it easier to then do it? Through the lived-through experience of the literary experience, readers make the essential connection between individuals and the moral choices they confront in their own lives. Literature stirs our emotions and makes us feel—in attempting to understand anyone, empathy counts for much. Reading and talking about stories with children encourage us to experience and think about what empathy really means.

Talking about empathy inside a story yields a richer conversation than having a universal conversation about empathy. Universal conversations only go so far, because they are about someone or someplace else and not personal. Here are some suggested conversation starters you can use when you are taking about empathy that gets away from the universal and closer to the personal.

~ Is thinking about a person’s well being the same thing as doing something about it?
~ Does empathy require action?
~ Do you have to like a person to have empathy for them?
~ Can you think of a situation when you put yourself in someone else’s
shoes? How did it change your perspective?
~ What would the world look like if nobody was able to have empathy for others?

“Don’t touch that button yet” versus “And then what happened in the story?”: A parent’s choice.

admin — Wed, 23 May 2012 17:00:59 +0000

Studies that aim to answer the question of whether a child gets a different experience from a book than an e-book are just getting under way. Studies of how such a device affects the development of young children typically take three to five years.
When a parent reads a physical book to a child, the child tends to take away more of the actual content, because the conversation between parent and child is most likely about what’s happening in the story. A recent study found that children using electronic console books that have buttons, tended to learn navigation, such as what different buttons do. Instead of talking about the content parents said things like “don’t touch that yet.”

Bookshelves as home decoration.

admin — Fri, 18 May 2012 17:17:41 +0000

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” A. Quindlen

I made the deal with my sons: I supply the books, and they supply the bookshelves.

Diane comments in “Baby & Toddler” Spring+Summer 2012 “RAISE A READER”

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:02:58 +0000

Here are some suggestions made by Diane W. Frankenstein, author of the award-winning book. Reading Together: Everything You Need To Know To Raise A Child Who Loves to Read (Penguin)

“SET YOUR CHILD UP FOR SUCCESS IN SCHOOL (AND LIFE) BY INSPIRING HIM TO LOVE BOOKS.”

~ Make reading to your child a daily routine.
~ Choose age appropriate books for your child in terms of their readiness to understand the story.
~ Build a child’s vocabulary. The skills children need to enter school, ready to be successful learners, is directly tied to their vocabulary. Reading and talking to your child is the best way to ensure children enter school with a rich vocabulary which is the key to literacy.
~ Many of the benefits of reading aloud are lost without the verbal interaction between a child and an adult during reading time. Children learn language though face-to-face interaction.
~ How many books you read your child is less important that how many conversations you have about the books you read.
~ In addition to the many benefits of reading aloud, the most important outcome might be the closeness you establish with your child and the habit you establish of reading a book and talking about the story. In our fast paced, media saturated world, thoughtful conversations are more important than ever before.

Make room for conversation & create opportunities to talk face-to face with your children.

admin — Sun, 06 May 2012 23:51:34 +0000

I am an enthusiast for conversation and I firmly believe we need to make room for it by creating opportunities to talk face-to face with our children. Good conversations are where children acquire the vocabulary they need to become good readers. Talking with children is how we best prepare them to enter school, ready to be successful learners. I suggest that hanging a colorful map of the world where you eat your meals can give your family countless enjoyable and interesting conversations.
A good conversation during family meals just doesn’t happen. A little ingenuity and effort can change that and the benefits are great and rewarding. At our home there is never any shortage of what to talk about at family meals because a colorful map of the world hangs in our kitchen. Before the map, our dinner table conversations became trapped in the sand pit of “What happened in school today?” with the usual forthcoming response: “Not much, nothing.” The map is like a gigantic game board—and it’s fun and a challenge to discover and find the exact locations of world and national events. Conversations are where children learn the language they need to shape their thinking—it teaches them how to think. As E.M. Forster said; “How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?” Face-to-face conversation teaches patience. In a recent article, “ “The Flight from Conversation” it was noted: “When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits. As we ramp up the volume and velocity of online connections, we start to expect faster answers. To get these, we ask one another simpler questions; we dumb down our communications, even on the most important matters.”
In our fast paced, media saturated world, thoughtful conversations are more important than ever before.

A Vitamin For the Spirit.

admin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:28:57 +0000

Take poetry off the mantle and celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day. All too often poetry is saved for occasions—happy or sad. I advocate taking poetry out of this exalted position. Instead, treat poetry as if it were a vitamin for the spirit. Poetry calls for being shared.

J.M. Barrie

Second star to the right
Was where he dwelt,
Straight on until the morn.

His childhood he kept well in sight,
It was what he truly felt
Under the breastbone.

Boyhood, like a bit of starlight;
No matter how tight the belt,
How hard the heart stone,

How old, how deep the night.
This is how he dealt
With aging till his time was done.

Part Peter, part Pan,
Part fairy, part small man.

~ Jane Yolen

Reading for pleasure is a luxury we can all afford.

admin — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:51:54 +0000

April 12 is Drop Everything and Read Day.
Beverly Cleary’s birthday and D.E.A.R. are celebrated on the same day for good reason. Ramona Quimby enjoys D.E.A.R.in Cleary’s book, Ramona Quimby, Age 8. The day is meant to celebrate, remind and encourage families to make reading together a family priority on a daily basis. Reading for pleasure is a luxury we can all afford. You can D.E.A.R anywhere and anyplace. All you need is a book! Making D.E.A.R. a habit is a lifelong gift. As Charles C. Noble said. “First we make our habits, then our habits make us.” Here is a site which offers terrific book selections for children of all ages. http://dropeverythingandread.com/book.html

A runcible spoon and a classic tribute to interspecies romance.

admin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 04:18:28 +0000

The aim of National Poetry Month is to encourage people to enjoy poetry. Though the aim is noble, I think we sometimes, with the best of intentions, ‘kill off’ the very poetry we are tying to encourage people to love. All too often poems feel like codes that need to be cracked. I personally meet way too many poems that I don’t understand and therefore I don’t like. I believe a poem can say what it means and it is not the reader’s job to figure out what the poet is really saying. No wonder poetry doesn’t have a bigger audience. All that code cracking. Who has the time—or the desire?

Having said that, I love meeting a word inside a poem that I do not know. I often fall in love with a word that I don’t know the meaning of, but I do know I love the word. For example. The Owl and the Pussycat is Edward Lear’s classic tribute to interspecies romance. Two lovers elope in a pea-green boat and after a voyage of a year and a day, are married and dine “on mince, and slices of quince,/ Which they ate with a runcible spoon.” and they dance by the light of the moon.

Does it matter if you don’t know what exactly is a runcible spoon? The definition of this term is a small fork with three prongs, one having a sharp edge, and curved like a spoon. However, I don’t believe that knowledge is critical to loving this whimsical poem. Here is the poem to love and as an added bonus—you now know about runcible spoons.

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are,
What a beautiful Pussy you are.”
Pussy said to the Owl “You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing.
O let us be married, too long we have tarried;
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?”
Said the Piggy, “I will”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon.
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand.
They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

In the end, poetry will appeal to people if they grow to love it. Lets help children fall in love with poetry!

TAKE TIME.

admin — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:44:50 +0000

Reading demands engagement and is most definitely not a passive activity. A rendezvous with a book demands that you let go of all distractions. Pico Iyer’s essay, ” The Joy of Quiet” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Joy of Quiet&st=cse is a plea for stillness. He says: “In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.” The average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen. The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day. Iyer’s article— urging us to slow down, to find time and space to think— brought to mind Ed Young’s 1990 Caldecott acceptance speech: “Take Time for 8 Matters of the Heart”

Take time for repose
it is the germ of creation

Take time to read
it is the foundation of wisdom

Take time to think
it is the source of strength

Take time to work
it is the path to patience and success

Take time to play
it is the secret of youth and constancy

Take time to be cheerful
it is the appreciation of life that brings happiness

Take time to share
it is in fellowship and sound relations
one finds meaning

Take time to rejoice
for joy is the music of the soul.

Talking Values with Elementary School Aged Children

admin — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:52:54 +0000

Diane does a Webinar for PJ Library
Part of a series of Talking Values with Elementary School Aged Children
http://pj.gijptech.org/?page_id=733
Click on Value Lesson Webinar found along the top bar of the page. Scroll down to #6. The Art of Conversational Reading with Elementary Age Children, ages 6-8.