NC Reading Corner
Literacy News: Winter 2019
Celebrate Winter Reading
This winter season consider adding some new traditions for your family that will make meaningful memories and strengthen foundations for reading and learning success.
Listen, laugh, learn
- Listen to audio books while you're traveling to visit family, wrapping gifts or cooking for the holidays.
- Lyrics to holiday songs are fun to read and sing together. It is also good fun and good collaborative writing practice to make up your own lyrics to familiar tunes.
- Start a story-telling tradition by revisiting holidays of the past. Old family photographs at holiday gatherings will help prompt stories about your own life and family traditions.
Read, relax, respond
- Put reading and writing skills to practical use. Plan holiday meals by reading cookbooks together, writing the shopping lists and finding the needed items at the store by reading signs and labels. Read the recipe and cook together. During the simmering and baking, kids can write and decorate menus or place cards for special holiday meals.
- Set aside time just for reading. Curl up on the couch together and read aloud an old favorite or check out books about another culture's winter celebrations.
- Work on those letters. Improve writing skills with notes or letters to relatives and friends, thanking them for their holiday gifts.
Literacy Games for Winter Break
Apples to Apples Junior
- The game of hilarious comparisons
- Award-winning card and party game for ages nine and up
- Players will delight in the crazy comparisons while expanding their vocabulary and thinking skills
Blurt
- LISTEN TO A DEFINITION AND RACE TO RESPOND! The first player to "Blurt" correctly moves ahead on the game board. Make it around first and you win!
- IMPROVES VOCABULARY AND WORD RECALL! Fast-paced, rapid recall board game that encourages quick thinking skills, develops vocabulary, promotes good sportsmanship, and social skills.
Bananagrams
- FUN FOR EVERYONE – Gather your family and friends and race against each other to build crossword grids. This anagram game that will drive you bananas.
- ENTERTAINING AND EDUCATIONAL – While this game is easy to play, Bananagrams is also educational. Teach your kids how to spell words and have fun at the same time.
Books Make Great Gifts
The Cool Bean
Everyone knows the cool beans. They’re sooooo cool.
And then there’s the uncool has-bean . . .
Always on the sidelines, one bean unsuccessfully tries everything he can to fit in with the crowd—until one day the cool beans show him how it’s done.
The Forgotten Girl
"Do you know what it feels like to be forgotten?"
On a cold winter night, Iris and her best friend, Daniel, sneak into a clearing in the woods to play in the freshly fallen snow. There, Iris carefully makes a perfect snow angel -- only to find the crumbling gravestone of a young girl, Avery Moore, right beneath her.
On a cold winter night, Iris and her best friend, Daniel, sneak into a clearing in the woods to play in the freshly fallen snow. There, Iris carefully makes a perfect snow angel -- only to find the crumbling gravestone of a young girl, Avery Moore, right beneath her.
Scholastic Year in Sports 2020
Scholastic's annual Year in Sports returns with brand-new, exciting coverage of the past year's sporting events. This 2020 edition features colorful photographs from right in the action, completely updated facts and stats, plus special features on the X Games and other major sports events.