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Galway Advertiser 1991/1991_10_10/GA_10101991_E1_014.pdf
M A R Y
O'C 0 N N 0 R
L E A R N I N G T O L O V E B O O K S
The first five years in a child's life are when learning takes place at breathtaking pace.
THE NUMBER OF THINGS A CHILD HAS LEARNT BY THE TIME HE GOES TO SCHOOL IS CLEARLY PHENOMENAL. Children's memories are like a book that is open to the world and everything they hear, see and ex perience is recorded on the pages without the slightest difficulty or effort. As a child may spend a lot of time with its mother or childminder during this crucial time of learn ing and growth, it is easy to see why the home is the first learning environment. There are no hard and fast rules about what ex actly constitutes the best and most stimulating cir cumstances for a child except that it has very little to do with how much money you have. A love of books is one of the best gifts a parent can give its child. Access to books, through parents and other adults, greatly increases a child's chances of becoming a happy and involved human being. Educationalists advise parents to see the book as a tool which will do more for the dual purpose of establishing the parent-child relationship and en suring the child's adequate language development, than any amount of talking to babies. You may start with simple books with pictures of things he likes and recognises such as animals, toys and everyday objects. Althought they have no text you can make up little comments and "plots"to match the mood of the moment and there is always something to talk about: you ask the child what he thinks the little cat is doing standing there? Is he waiting for his owner, looking for his dinner or enjoying a well earned rest? It helps the child to be asked specific questions so that he can express an idea or impart information. Almost any picture has something in it. By the time a child is three years old. you will have gone through a good many of the colourful books with very little text. You will find children get to know their favourites by heart and then you cannot change one word without their correcting you. You can always read to a child at a higher level than he can speak because you can make the mean ing clear by your tone of voice or by gestures and explanations.
NEW
LIFE
Books tap the magic and wit of the centuries and bring them within easy reach of your child. As he begins to explore the wonderful world of books, he regards his favourites as old friends. He turns to them when he is bored and looking for a little diversion. The more books children are exposed to, the more they will return to them, again and again, revelling in their favourite passages. None of us can endlessly initiate speech, we run out of ideas or just get plain tired of it. But books
Access
to Books,
through parents becoming
and other adults, greatly increases a happy and involved human being
a child's chances
of TRUE EDUCATION
can open up an entirely new life for children. Get your child to join the local library and ex plore its wonderful world. Of course, he can build up his own collection too. Encourage friends and grandparents to give books as presents. Having his own books has advantages. They can be read as the humour takes him
GRASP OF WORLD This holds through throughout childhood in fact, so it is very useful to continue it as a source of both pleasure and true education. It is difficult to say why reading is to different from watching television, but it is. Perhaps it is simply that there is nothing passive about reading and a child does not get up from a book feeling that he has merely been a spectator at events. He will feel completely involved with the characters since you have given them all faces and movements and have dressed every scene yourself. He has used some creative energy and because of it, has become part of the book. For whatever reason, it is usually quite striking that children who read, or are read to a good deal, reflect this by being more articulate, expressive, or lively in their ideas than those children who simply watch a lot of television. It is not that you notice how clever they are but how chatty and communicative they appear in comparison with other children.
increase in a child's grasp of the world that comes with access to books. You will be amazed at the way a two to three year old's understanding outruns his capacity for expression. Shades of meaning which would be quite unavailable to the child of limited language ex perience are startlingly present in the understan ding - and increasingly in the speech - of the ""wellread-to" toddler. It is often said provided a child has knowledge of books, he never falls behind other children in learning, even if he pays very little attention to other lessons. If your child is going to be one of those who finds reading for themselves very difficult and therefore boring, then reading a lot to him will help. It will not only keep him abreast of children's literature, but also give him a love of ideas and of different ways of expressing them that will help.
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SPECIFIC Q U E S T I O N S
Books tap the magic and wit of the centimes
and bring them within easy reach of your child
MM$