It's that time of year again for Florida Students, and very soon for other parts of the country! As a parent I know we all can have a difficult time encouraging our children to read. My husband, who is in the book business, shared an approach that was shared with him called Reading Education Assistance Dogs developed by Intermountain Therapy Animals. The concept is simple, children read to dogs. Reading out loud is start in helping to develop reading skills. The difficult part is the intimidation that children will naturally feel. Reading to a dog eliminates that and also makes reading very fun since they have the attention of a friendly dog.
You can approach this a couple of ways. First, you can contact the Intermountain Group and they can assist in making this a group program in your School or local Library obviously taking into account allergy issues and whatnot. Or, if you have a family dog, you're set! Most times dogs are very responsive to children and it is very interesting to see how they actually do respond to being read to. We have a dalmation . . . hyper is not the word for it. But around younger children, he is almost instantly calm. We actually tried this with him and he responded great and our daughter (although a teenager now) had some fun with this.
So try it out and have some fun reading!
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