Reading to Kids

May 29th, 2018
kids
There are a range of ways people read to kids, and I think it's good to have variety:
  • Reading in an entertaining way, trying to make it as fun as possible for them. Voices etc.
  • Leaving pauses for them to fill in words or phrases they've memorized or can guess.
  • Stopping frequently to ask them questions about what's happening, asking about details of pictures, asking about counterfactuals.
  • When reading a new book, ask them to guess what's happening next.
  • Once they start learning to read, or at least learning letters, see if they can read little bits. Can you find any 'o's? Is this word 'foo' or 'bar'?
One thing I haven't heard people do or recommend, though, is reading really fast. [1] I stumbled into this one time when I was curious how fast Lily would let me read, but they seem to like it. It also seems like it ought to be good practice for them in pretty core skills.

I don't know how much their comprehension drops when I do this; I definitely make more mistakes and I suspect they miss some things. I could read novel stories and ask reading comprehension questions, but I suspect they'd be uncooperative.


[1] Timing it, it seems like about 1.7x what I'd normally do: example recording.

Referenced in: Kids Posts Retrospective

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Thing of Things AI use policy

dynomight recently wrote an article calling for bloggers to state publicly whether and how they use AI

via Thing of Things July 6, 2026

Agentic test processes, LLM benchmarks, and other notes on agentic coding from Galapagos Island

I've been using AI fairly heavily since last November and the whole thing is a funny experience. An agent will do something that, if a human did it, you'd immediately fire them. My reaction, of course, is to act as if this is great and spin up a t…

via Posts on July 3, 2026

Variable fonts aren't universally supported

I make a lot of webpages. I also use Lockdown Mode on iOS and MacOS for a bit of extra security. Sometimes I realize that I forgot to test on Safari and it looks like crap, or I test and don’t notice that there’s been a problem for months (as was the case…

via Home June 27, 2026

more     (via openring)