The Best Way To Read A Book

One of my most cherished times with my daughters has always been storytime. I love my littles, I love books, and I love storytelling, so there’s no surprise there. But one thing you may not know is that our storytime rarely happens at bedtime.

I didn’t own any books when I was growing up, so I really wanted my girls to take full advantage of theirs, to be fully awake, live the story, and act it out. I wanted my daughters to love reading as much as I do and to be transported to another time, another place, another dimension.

Enter the middle of the day story time, always personalized, dramatized, and often expanded – with randomly added chapters and alternate endings.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis believed that the love of books is the best way to enlarge your child’s world. And the more our children can learn, the better!

There are three main types of learning styles: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic, and I believe the best way to read a book is to engage all the senses and to combine all three learning styles.

There’s an ancient Chinese proverb that reads:

“Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I’ll remember. Involve me, I’ll understand.”

When we read a book to a child, we show them the words and illustrations, and we tell them what is going on, or what the words say… but how do we involve them?

By incorporating other senses besides hearing, listening, seeing, and observing: feel, touch, smell, taste, right brain, left brain, and experiential learning. Involving a child helps ignite the imagination, ensures long-term retention, and works with all children, no matter how differently they learn.

Thankfully, my 2-year-old Pigeon is a big fan of my reading method, so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. She loves the story and reading time because she’s always the star!

I love to make up my own story, where she is the leader, the princess, the hero, the warrior, the genius, the virtuous. Every time I start:

“Once upon a time, there was a little girl… Her name was…”

She knows the reply is “Eliana.” She looks at me with those flirty brown eyes and that adorable smile and says her name with such pride and joy. She’s fully engaged in the story and chimes in from time to time.

I exaggerate my voice, act out many parts, make weird faces to illustrate emotions, and use the occasional onomatopoeia to make a point or to make it funny, and lots of analogies, metaphors that are relatable to her age and interests. I’ll even use props (which is why daytime works best; at night, I’m often too exhausted to go all into it).

Besides the stories of my making, I love personalizing the book by replacing a character’s name with hers. The most magical aspect of this method is that they can even have a different part each time you read the book to them.

And of course, nowadays you can personalize books with the child’s name, which is amazing! I did this for Eliana’s first Christmas. I know she was four months old, but I just couldn’t help myself… and she’s loved having it read to her… and “reading” from it herself. She knows all her ABCs and can already read and recognize a few common words!

When you personalize a book, it’s not just content, it is now a meaningful experience. By involving your child seamlessly in the story, making him an active participant in the plot, you can make your child’s dream come true through the power of imagination.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” ~ Albert Einstein

I recently went to Hallmark.com and created a fully personalized book for Eliana, where she gets to go to the ocean with “La Sirenita” (The Little Mermaid).

It was an incredible experience because it wasn’t just the name I could change: you can customize the hairstyle, hair color, eye color, skin color, and even the gender of the main character. Their name appears all throughout the book!

I also loved that every book lets you add your very own name, so it is a family keepsake your child will love and cherish for years to come. I wrote Elisha, Elyssa, mama and papa, because I love that Eliana is already bilingual. Some books can be ordered in Spanish, too!

Personalizing Little Pige’s book was very simple. I simply picked a book from the available titles, customized it, and previewed the entire book before the purchase.

You can find a great variety of books to personalize at Shop.Hallmark.com and they are $5 off til December 13 (there are many other great deals for people who like to show affection through presents in the holiday season)!

 

Just like I suspected. Eliana’s favorite things about her personalized #Hallmark book are: Eliana… And the ocean! She’s a happy little pigeon!

A video posted by Elayna Fernandez (@thepositivemom) on Dec 4, 2015 at 7:18am PST

Eliana loves her Sirenita book. She says that I am Ariel because she loves to be with her mami. She definitely is a mami’s girl and that totally melts my heart. I pray I can continue to be home with her and to reinforce in her how much she’s loved and the values I want her to live by. I’m definitely savoring this time, before she starts reading thick books to me – or writing books, even – just like her older sisters.

Whether you read during the day or the story is a part of your child’s bedtime routine, you can raise a reader by providing her extra incentive, excitement, and enthusiasm, simply because in this storybook they get to be the protagonist.

[Tweet “Involve your child and used personalized books to instill a love of reading! #Hallmark”]

Integrating the child in the action helps our little ones feel a sense of ownership over the story you are reading or telling, which in turn, encourages them to develop a love of learning, a love of reading, and a love of using their imagination.

And guess what? You can also enter for a chance WIN one of these unique gifts for a child in your life by commenting below and answering this question: What book title would you order and who would you order it for? I look forward to knowing the answer – and announcing the winner!

Founder of the Positive MOM® and creator of the S.T.O.R.Y. System: a blueprint to craft and share powerful stories that will transform your results and help others do the same. Dr. Elayna Fernández is a single mom of 4, an award-winning Storyteller, Story Strategist, and Student of Pain. She’s a bestselling author, internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, and 5x TEDx speaker. She has spoken at the United Nations, received the President’s Volunteer Lifetime Achievement Award, and was selected as one of the Top Impactful Leaders and a Woman of Influence by SUCCESS Magazine. Connect with Elayna at thepositivemom.com/ef and follow @thepositivemom. To receive a gift from Elayna, click HERE.

Want to support the Positive MOM blog?

The mission of the Positive MOM blog is to help moms break trauma cycles, find peace, and feel emotionally whole, so they can practice supportive parenting and create a positive and healthy environment for their children. If you found Elayna’s content valuable, please consider donating a love offering to enable her to keep creating content and helping more moms worldwide. Donate HERE.