Storybook Quilts Rocks! » Reading to children

Rainy Days and Mondays

Nancy — Mon, 03 May 2010 13:09:06 +0000

It IS Monday — and rainy and grey and very, very green. It’s really quite beautiful to an adult, but not so much for a young child. Despite the myriad of electronic gadgets, children still experience that feeling of being trapped and being trapped often turns in to being whiny or cranky. Haven’t we all recited this chant to try to charm the rain away? (I used to think it was mean to wish rain on the children in Spain, which I thought was just a few miles down the road from our house in NYS.)

RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY
Mother Goose

Rain, rain, go away,
Come again some other day,
Little Johnny wants to play.

Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never show your face again.

What can children do inside on such a day? Or what can Mom do with them? Here are a few suggestions.

• put on a show — sing, dance, or create a play (American Idol!)

• make up a story — each person adds a sentence

• make up a poem about the rain — or anything else

• draw pictures, or cut them from magazines, maybe to illustrate the story or poem

• take a walk in the rain!

• find pictures of flowers that will bloom after the rain

• bake cookies

• build a tent with blankets

• exercise, pretending to be in the Cirque de Soleil!

• get out paper and crayons and watch the magic appear

• play pet store with stuffed animals or grocery store with canned goods

• have a picnic on the floor and pretend it’s the beach — wear bathing suits!

• make paper airplanes

• read a book together

• cuddle up under a Storybook Quilt, read the adventure, and make up a new one!

Do you have a special way of passing a rainy day? We’d love to hear it.

The Story: Magic Boots and Horses

Nancy — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:45:52 +0000

Our newest theme quilt is done and we are finalizing the matching story. In the story, our heroine receives a pair of boots for her birthday and a ticket for a trip to her uncle’s ranch in the West. She’s excited! Not only does she love the West, and her aunt and uncle, but she also loves the wild horses. Of course, this wouldn’t be a good horse story unless she fell in love with one particular wild horse, and through some trick of her magic red boots, has a chance to ride it – into an adventure. The story uses all of the fabrics in the quilt, including the three cats in the field of tulips!

As you can tell, our heroine does not yet have a name. You can help us decide on a name by voting by May 7th in the box on the right — or contact us with other ideas.

The Thrill of Storytelling

Nancy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:58:36 +0000

Have you ever listened to a really good storyteller – someone whose choice of words, twist of thought, lilt of voice and turn of body had you totally captivated? Perhaps the storyteller you remember was a grandparent or parent, or your pastor, or a teacher, or maybe your physician. Few of us realize how critical storytelling is to passing on information in a way that makes the information relevant and ensures that it sticks with us. It also can be just plain entertaining.

For children, storytelling can be critical for development. Think of little girls playing with dolls or boys with cars and trucks, for example. They tell stories to their playmates — or just to themselves — one after the other in endless variety. These stories help figure out how to deal with the world.

Storytelling has been a fascination for me since childhood. My father and uncles (one complete with pipe for the perfect pause effect) could turn an everyday event into a story that was totally enthralling, even to a young child. They delighted in this art and everyone who heard them did, too. The enjoyment of that was one motivation for creating Storybook Quilts.

Our new Storybook Quilts contest, set to begin on March 21st, is all about storytelling. More details appear below in our March 4th blog post and additional information will appear as we near the start date.

We also will be posting a series of blog articles here about storytelling – the renaissance of the art that has taken place, how children can become involved, and the value to us all.

So, come back here to visit us often! And start thinking now about which theme you might pick for your storytelling entry.

Read Across America Day: March 2nd

Nancy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:00:50 +0000

Reading. As adults, we take for granted the ability to read and what we learn from reading. Those of us who love books know that nothing is a better escape than a good one — reality flies away and we inhabit an entirely different world.

Reading, and literacy in general, is an essential component of everyday life. Anyone who’s traveled to a country where the language is unfamiliar is suddenly struck by the importance of reading.

Passing this skill and love of reading on to children is not just a good idea, it’s essential to their development. Brain cells are turned on when a toddler is read to; reading aloud to children is essential to the development of literacy; and learning to read English, a recent study showed, requires “a rich home literacy environment” and that reading “lots of books to children. . . is absolutely necessary.”

Reading the Luna the Turtle Storybook Quilt

So, just how much time should you spend reading to your child? The National Children’s Reading Foundation recommends 20 minutes a day.

A Storybook Quilt is a great way to achieve at least half the daily goal! Each story takes about 10-15 minutes to read; each also provides an additional opportunity for building language and visual skills by matching the events in the story to the fabrics in the quilt.

Oh — one last thing. Do you know why Read Across American is celebrated in March 2nd? Why, it’s Dr. Seuss’s birthday, of course!

Read, read, read!

Today is Tell a Fairy Tale Day!

Nancy — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:00:06 +0000

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” Albert Einstein supposedly said that. He evidently was read a LOT of fairy tales!

Just what is a “fairy tale”?
A fairy tale is a fictional story that usually centers on magical tests or quests and often involves spectacular imaginary beings (not just fairies, but also dragons, trolls, women with very long hair, mice that turn into horses, wolves that can blow down houses, and so on). Originally, fairy tales were passed on orally at a time when only a few people knew how to write. Many of the traditional ones we still tell are literally centuries — perhaps millennia — old.

Are fairy tales just stories or is there something else behind them?
Fairy tales are one way that cultures endure. They teach children about what the culture values and about acceptable behavior. Take Cinderella, for example. From this, children learn that people who are cruel lose in the end and that honest, humble people reap the greatest rewards. In Snow White, the seven dwarves (can you remember their names?!) all worked together cheerfully; each had his own thing to contribute to society. The Three Little Pigs also has a clear message: work hard and build a strong foundation or you will be in danger from evil creatures.

Do cultures share fairy tales?
Interestingly, the same fairy tale may appear in different cultures, but with slightly different twists. “Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world. Whilst the European version tells the story of a little girl who is tricked by a wolf masquerading as her grandmother, in the Chinese version a tiger replaces the wolf. In Iran, where it would be considered odd for a young girl to roam alone, the story features a little boy,” according an English newspaper. Amazingly, it appears that the common ancestor of all these fairy tales is 2600 years old!

Are all fairy tales “old”?
No, new fairy tales appear constantly. One great resource I found in writing this post is another blog — “Once Upon a Blog . . . Fairy Tale News.” It’s a fun collection of ideas and information about fairy tales old and new.

Michael with the Winnie the Frog fairy tale Storybook Quilt

Does Storybook Quilts create fairy tales?
Oh, yes! Several of our stories involve quests. A good example is Winnie the Frog, whom Ryan accompanies on his quest to obtain fairy cakes from the fairies — supposedly to cure Winnie’s sick mother. Their adventure is a quest to find what the fairies demand as a price for their cakes and it takes them to magical places. In the end, Winnie disappears and leaves us all wondering whether he really was a frog or a little boy . . .

One wonderful thing about Storybook Quilts is that children make up their own fairy tales based on the fabrics in the quilt — just as I did when I designed them.

Wouldn’t your child or grandchild love a new fairy tale, complete with cozy quilt?

Blue Monday is Today!

Nancy — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:38:23 +0000

SAD sufferers take heart. We have a lot of company today! The Monday of the last full week in January is “Blue Monday” – a danged depressing day, even worse than the “January blahs.” According to Scottish psychologist Cliff Arnall, the causes are: dreary weather, left-over Christmas debt, the time since Christmas (that is, no reason for cheer), giving up on our New Year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and the feeling of a need to take action. For Jets and Vikings fans, our course, this year is worse than usual.

Blue Monday is serious, folks. Some companies actually hire counselors to help and there’s even a Blue Monday website! Most of these efforts are based in the UK where, I can attest from my years there, the much shorter days and the general winter gloom are pretty bad.

So, what can we do to fight this scourge, which certain affects many of us in northern latitudes?

Here are a few ideas. We’d love to hear yours!

1. Make a special effort to bring cheer to someone who seems down – maybe a loaf of banana bread or a phone call or an e-mail greeting card. Cheer is infectious, so you should benefit, too!

2. Hide. Get inside an engrossing book and stay there until today passes.

3. Listen to Fats Domino singing, Blue Monday – all but guaranteed to get your toes tapping!

4. Connect with your favorite child and plan the Storybook Quilt you’ll create together or make up a new story around one of our existing themes

5. And, for those of you who already have one, cuddle up under your Storybook Quilt with the child(ren) you love, read the story together, and enjoy the special closeness that creates. The only thing “blue” will be the colors in some of the fabrics in the quilt.

Read Just 20 Minutes a Day to Your Children

Nancy — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:21:03 +0000

The National Children’s Reading Foundation is a great source of reliable information about reading to children and its benefits. “It takes hundreds of hours of ‘lap time’ for a child to gain the pre-literacy skills necessary to learn to read early and well,” according to the Foundation. They recommend spending just 20 minutes a day — and not necessarily all at once.

The wonderful poem below comes from their website.

20 Minutes A Day

Read to your children
Twenty minutes a day;
You have the time,
And so do they.
Read while the laundry is in the machine;
Read while dinner cooks;
Tuck a child in the crook of your arm
And reach for the library books.
Hide the remote,
Let the computer games cool,
For one day your child will be off to school;
Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice.
Let them hear their first tales,
In the sound of your voice.
Read in the morning,
Read over noon,
Read by the light of
Goodnight Moon.
Turn the pages together,
Sitting close as you’ll fit,
Till a small voice beside you says,
“Hey, don’t quit.”
– Author Unknown

Mom reading Maggie the Dog theme Storybook Quilt to her daughters

Remember, you can win Maggie the Dog or any of the Storybook Quilt themes by entering the Name the Turtle Contest!