Wallowing in Words!

Dear parents, learners, and everyone else,
From the time we're, well, conceived, possibly, we're bathed in words. Maybe they're a distant rumble from outside Mom's abdominal wall, but we do register them, in one form or another. As we grow, our parents read to us (if we're lucky), from all sorts of books. In Maine, one frazzled mom confessed she could only find time to read to her kids when the two of them were in the tub. "I sit on the lid of the toilet," she said, "and we do a book a night. Or maybe a chapter of The Magic Schoolbus. It was the only way I could fit it in." She looked embarrassed.

I wanted to hug her. What an impressive set of priorities! So the books get a bit damp? Ms. Frizzle and the kids on the Magic Schoolbus go all over the universe and her kids learn about astronomy or the ancient pyramids while soaping themselves and splashing around. But what's more important is that they learn right now how important reading is to their mom. They also learn how good reading sounds - those words just wash right over them, warm and smooth and bouncy. Funny dialog, a clever adventure, twists and turns. Those kids have no idea how lucky they were.

Many parents stop reading to their kids as soon as their kids can read to themselves. "But they need to practice," parents figure. "I don't want to get in the way." You're not in the way. When you give a character a squeaky voice, when you pause to add a little drama, when reading to your eleven year old (who initially rolled his eyes at the idea of a "bedtime story"), you're showing that a book, a story in words, can be as fun as a movie, as a radio play once was.

So about that wallowing. There are many other ways to help your kids do that hippo in the mud thing. My mother used to play opposites in the car with us. I have no idea where she came up with this, but it's cutting edge educational thinking in 2012. (Way to go, Mom...you, with very little college education!) The idea is you give your kid a word, and she comes up with the opposite. Easy, right? Ok, so the opposite of right is wrong. Or left. Aha! Get it? And that's the fun of it. There are often more than one answers. Chat about it. This is not about keeping score. This is about the absolute COOLNESS of words.  Opposite of up? Ok, down. Opposite of hard? soft. Or.... easy! (By the way, the "official" term for opposites is "antonym" - thus the name of the online opposites game.)

Got you again.

Now, for you middle schoolers at heart in the audience. Opposite of castle?

Hmm. Hut? Motel 6? Tent? Pawn to King's Knight-3?

See how it works?  Make them explain how they're reasoning.It's important to see that there is more than one answer (sorry, chess geeks, if I wrote that wrong....but you get the idea). This kind of multi-directional thinking is key to problem solving in the real world. Can you take a problem and turn it around, like a Rubic's cube, and examine it from different angles? Are you capable of thinking of something in more than one way? Many people are not able to do this, initially, but it is a skill that can be taught.

Teaching them to play opposites, and encouraging them to discuss their answers, instead of competing against each other, is a wonderful way to foster more complex thinking strategies.

Ready for more difficult questions?

What's the opposite of a black hole?

That's high school level or smart cookie middle school I'm thinking maybe nebula, the birth of a star, since a black hole is usually the death of a star.

Analogies is another game that encourages kids to think about different relationships between two items that may initially seem very different. But start with the easy ones. This game is better for traffic jams, or sitting around the dinner table, when you can think a bit harder.  (The link goes to an online analogy game for kids, and teaches kids the different types of analogies.)

Start with the obvious analogies: Sister is to brother as aunt is to...uncle, obviously. And bird is to egg as dog is to puppy.

You can either give them the first half of the rest of it (dog is to ____) or let them come up with the entire second analogy themselves. Decide how challenging you want to make it.

The analogies game can become quite complex. You can use such relationships as part to whole (bird is to flock as bee is to swarm), or synonyms (nice is to kind as evil is to bad). The responder must figure out the relationship between the first two, in order to come up with the second half. (The link goes to an online analogy game for kids, and teaches kids the different types of analogies.)

Last but definitely not least is an introduction to poetry, and there will be much more on this later. Children's poetry has come so far since we forty somethings were kids; Judith Viorst, Shel Silverstein, and Jack Prelutsky are wonderful examples of fun, silly poets. Judith Viorst is my favorite, because she tends to be a bit more serious than the others, and often comments on some of the harder things in a child's life, although she maintains a light touch. She will write about the trials of being messy, and wishing that hamsters had longer life expectancies.

Many parents, though, are not aware of the great poetry that's available for older kids, and that's a shame. There is amazing sports poetry out there - who knew? Here's a triathlete's poem site! and poetry about the difficulty of being a young teen. Be advised that the poetry about middle school ages does include topics such as parents dying, feeling suicidal (although not committing suicide), and of course unrequited love. If these books did not include these feelings, no teen would take them seriously. You cannot bowdlerize poetry for teens - it just cannot be done honestly. (Poem Junction has poetry about just about everything... )

There are also websites to encourage the young writer; this includes examples of types of poems, and then a kind of template to encourage a student to try his hand at writing one of that type of poem. Be advised you CANNOT save the poem there - but you can COPY it to Word, or print it out. Here's that "write your own poem" site -  A particularly juicy site: the Poetry Teacher's page, with poems about very nearly every subject. Funny, not funny, and everything in the middle.  For middle schoolers there are a few collections that I have used, and the students quietly love them, and keep the copies I give them. I find them taped in lockers, in notebooks, and extra copies give to friends. One is Swimming Upstream by Kristine O'Connell George; her website is nicely little interactive.  Another writer, Mel Glenn, pairs his middle and high school poetry with photos of students that seem to fit his words. The people in the poems are not literally the subjects of the poems, but it does help readers visualize and understand how the speaker is feeling, and most of the poems are in the first person ("I"). Some of the poems are dialogs - the left poem is one person's perspective, and the right poem is another's perspective about the same event. I love his books Class Dismissed and My Friend Has this Problem, Mr. Candler. I've used the poems as jumping off points for discussions, especially when something's happening in the news, or in the school, that we need to discuss. Parents, and kids, can really use these poems to open up that can of worms that has been sitting on the shelf for awhile, or to finally address the elephant that's lurking in the room...the boyfriend Mom and Dad aren't crazy about, the fears a teen has about going away to school. Sharing these poems can lead to sharing of another sort.

And if you figure you'll get the eye rolling treatment...leave the book in the main bathroom. Works like a charm. They come out reading it and walk into the counter. When you ask them what they're reading they'll probably say nothing. But you'll know. And soon, maybe not now, you can address that elephant.

Elephants should have their own apartments, anyway.

Questions? Comments? Something you'd like me to write about? I'm a reading specialist and I have my own tutoring company - Lesemann Learning. See my website at www.amylesemann.com
 There are many learning websites there. I tutor 1st through 12th grade, remedial and accelerated "bored in school" kids, as well as test prep. Some kids need a writing instruction; I do that, too! Face to face, or by Skype. Write to me below in the comments section or by email at amy.lesemann@gmail.com.