CBeebies Fun with Phonics - Video and Books

CBeebies Fun with Phonics available from all good book stores

Diglot Bilingual Books for Children - Dutch English ABC

Diglot Bilingual books for toddlers.


Alison O' Dornan of Diglot Books is on Twitter if you are hunting for new multilingual language resources.

You will be impressed by her books, also by her drive to make excellent products for the bilingual children’s market.

Alison’s concept is simple, produce quality books and products which support language learning in bilingual children.

What makes Diglot different is the attention to detail. There are lots of books which give you the alphabet in English or Dutch, but Diglot produce the only A-Z where the word in both languages is the same, promoting word recognition equally in both languages.

Diglot Books are also stocked in Waterstones, Amsterdam.

Diglot Books also provide Dutch-English A-Z Going Shopping Flash Cards as well as their ever popular Nederlands English ABC.

NB: Unfortunately at this point in time their website is experiencing difficulties and is under maintenance.

Henry Winkler: Podcast by the Dyslexic Author of Children's Books

Actor Henry Winkler: Insightful Podcast by the Dyslexic Author of Childrens' Books

Henry talks openly about his children's books and how they were lossely based on his own childhood and experience as a dyslexic child and man.

Henry is the father of 3 very successful children who also experience dyslexia in their daily lives.

Kindle Fire for Kids: Best Children’s Books, Apps and Child-Friendly Settings

The Kindle Fire is one of the most popular holiday gifts this year for adults and children alike.

The Kindle Fire can be used to read magazines, books and watch movies, but it can also be used for educational purposes to help kids learn to read interactively.

We took a closer look at some of the most popular children's books, top apps for kids and some child-friendly settings parents can use to protect their children.

Best Children's Books
The Amazon Online Store offers an impressive collection of colorful children's books and easy readers for young book enthusiasts (some Free!). With over 1,000 tiles, kids can enjoy reading the vibrant and popular books on the crisp Kindle Fire screen.

The Kindle Fire also offers special features to help children read the books including singsong text, a read-aloud option and "Text Pop-Up," which allows children to zoom into text over images to read the smaller font.

Some of the most popular children's books for the Kindle Fire include:

1. "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Eric Carle

2. "A Wolf Pup's Tale" by Rachel Yu

3. "Hooray for Fish!" by Lucy Cousins

4. "Curious George and the Firefighters" by H.A. Rey and Margret Rey

5. "Fireman Small" by Wong Herbert Yee

6. "Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed" by Barbara Park and Denise Brunkus

The children's books can be downloaded directly from the Kindle Fire by entering Amazon's Online store (UK).

Top Apps for Kids
There are an endless number of fun and educational apps that children will enjoy using. The most popular children's apps are iStoryBooks, Dr. Seuss books, Kids Place - With Child Lock and Angry Birds.

1. iStoryBooks: This free app allows toddlers and young children to interact with storybooks through pictures, text and audio. The app is targeted for kids between the ages of 2 and 8 with stories for different reading levels. Some of the popular books included are: Cinderella, Snow White, A to ZX Animals, The World of Trucks and Children's Ramayana.

2. Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Seuss: This app is $2.99 and gives children an interactive way to follow along with the Dr. Seuss classic. The app provides a book-like experience where children can read the book themselves, have the Kindle Fire read the book aloud, or use "auto play." The book includes the original Dr. Seuss illustrations. Other Dr. Seuss books are also available in app form, including: The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Dr. Seuss's ABC, and more.

3. Kids Place - With Child Lock: This free program is the dream app for worried parents who may not trust their children with the Kindle Fire. The app allows parents to block certain programs and capabilities on the Kindle Fire so parents can control what their kids see and which apps they have access to. The app also allows parents to set a password PIN to protect parental data through a Child and Toddler lock.

4. Angry Birds: The extremely popular "Angry Birds" game can be purchased for free in the Kindle Fire App Store. Users fling birds across the screen to try to strategically destroy structures and boundaries. This puzzle game is fun for people of all ages, but children will especially enjoy watching the colorful birds fly across the screen.

Child-Friendly Settings for Kids
In addition to the "Kids Place - With Child Lock," there are a number of other ways parents can make their child's Kindle Fire more secure.

A major complaint with the initial Kindle Fire software was the lack of privacy controls and security features that allowed children, for example, to browse the web freely giving them access to adult content. The new software update allows users to turn on "restrictions" to make their Kindle Fire more secure and prevent security breaches or wandering children.

The restrictions option can be found under the Kindle Fire's settings menu. Select restrictions and then select "turn on." Users will then be prompted to give a password and confirm that password. Once a password has been chosen, users have the option of whether or not to password protect web browsing.

If you have children using the device, the password protected Wi-Fi option will prevent your child from browsing adult content. Once your Kindle Fire is password protected, a small key icon will be located in the top right hand corner of the screen next to the battery.

*NB: The Kindle Fire is not avaialble in the UK until January 2012 at the earliest. 

Related Article: How-To Get The Most Out of Your Kindle Fire: Top 10 Tips And Tricks

The Refracted Alphabet Video

Refraction - The Alphabet from Jesse Zanzinger on Vimeo.

A brilliant visual experiment by Jesse Zanzinger. Refraction: The Alphabet — a stunning visual exploration of the alphabet, rendered in type refracted through backlit signage lettering and images on an iPhone, with voiceover by the late and great Richard Pryor from his Sesame Street ABC. Beautiful.

The 3D Alphabet Book - Pop-up Letters

We’re suckers for a good pop-up book, but Marion Bataille‘s ABC3D takes it to a whole new level.

Slick, stylish and designerly, it’s hard to capture its tactile, interactive magic in static words — you have to have it in your hands to truly appreciate it.

The Washington Post hit the nail on the head:

Does for paper what Claymation did for mud. It’s a three-dimensional, interactive, cinematic treat for the littlest fingers right up to the oldest eye...

Visit the Publishers website or read more and see the illustrations and videos: The Alphabet Book Rethought | Brain Pickings

David Sacks' Alphabets

A new book by David Sacks offers much more depth than the designerly eye candy the genre lends itself to.

Alphabets: A Miscellany of Letters is an ambitious exploration of the pervasiveness of letters in everyday life, tracing our visual vocabulary to its roots in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Kanji characters and other ancient alphabets with rich illustrations, beautiful graphic design and typography, found objects, graffiti and more.

Read more at the Brain Pickings website

Natalie Merchant Sings Children´s Poems at Ted

Natalie Merchant’s absolutely breathtaking live performance at TED earlier this year, which, though not doing justice to her live stage charisma. The rich emotion oozing from Merchant’s voice as her melodic storytelling unfolds is just otherworldly.

Where Children Sleep: James Mollison's Poignant Photographs

Kenyan-born, English-raised, Venice-based documentary photographer James Mollison explores Where Children Sleep — a remarkable series capturing the diversity of and, often, disparity between children’s lives around the world through portraits of their bedrooms.

The project began on a brief to engage with children’s rights and morphed into a thoughtful meditation on poverty and privilege, its 56 images spanning from the stone quarries of Nepal to the farming provinces of China to the silver spoons of Fifth Avenue.

From the start, I didn’t want it just to be about ‘needy children’ in the developing world, but rather something more inclusive, about children from all types of situations. It seemed to make sense to photograph the children themselves, too, but separately from their bedrooms, using a neutral background.” ~ James Mollison

Perhaps most interestingly, the book was written and designed as an empathy tool for 9-to-13-year-olds to better understand the lives of other children around the world, but it is also very much a poignant photographic essay on human rights for the adult reader.

See more illustrations at the Brain Pickinfs website: Where Children Sleep: James Mollison's Poignant Photographs | Brain Pickings

A Book of Sleep

A lovely 2009 children’s book titled A Book of Sleep — the American debut of Korean illustrator Il Sung Na, whose beautifully textured drawings tell the poetic, quiet story of creatures going to rest.

When the sky grows dark
and the moon glows bright,
everyone goes to sleep . . .
except for the watchful owl!”

Read more at the Brain Pickings website: A Book of Sleep | Brain Pickings

Children's reading: Real Books versus the iPad and Kindle

Apple's much-anticipated iPad is expected in the UK at the end of April. But I'm not expecting its e-book features to take off in my family.

From the Apple demo there's no denying it looks like a great new way to read a wide variety of previously printed media, but we aren't ready to hang up our dusty hardcopies quite yet.

Having educated them in the ways of Star Trek (for my sins), I'm sure they will be intrigued about the device when they see it, and are going to want a PADD of their own. But this thought raises mixed emotions for me.

I've had a love of physical books from my own childhood that's never died. There's nothing that can replicate the same smell and feel of turning pages or seeing the hand-drafted illustrations of the old fairytale storybooks.

Maybe it's genetic, but having these classic old books around has also piqued the interest of my own kids. They are always keen to pull a book from the shelf and flick through the pages.

The process of sitting down and reading together, turning the pages and looking at the pictures has a quality that the e-book readers simply can't match.

No matter how impressive the Apple iPad is, it can't take the place of that fifty-year-old tome of Grimm's Fairy Tales with its tatty cover, thick cracking pages and variety of ill advised scribbles.

I recently borrowed an Amazon Kindle from a friend to see how we got on reading together electronically.

My kids weren't having any of it. Sure, the Kindle looked cool with its creamy-white shell and excellent text-reproduction, but it didn't deliver the same experience. It's difficult to explain without coming across as an elitist bibliophile but I still find the experience of reading electronic media a little soulless.

There are, of course, plenty of great reasons to own an iPad. I'm looking forward to trying it out properly when the family goes on holiday in the summer -- carrying a ton of books on a vacation doesn't seem like a great idea compared to just having a Kindle or iPad.

But as a home device I'm pretty happy that my kids prefer the old and fusty way to read books and hope that technology, just this once, doesn't supplant the traditional way of being a parent.

Preventing Summer Reading Loss

Research has shown that the few months of loss in reading skills over the summer months compounds over the years; by the time children reach middle school, those who haven’t read during their summer breaks may have lost as much as two years worth of achievement.

Trying to balance the busy, physical activities that the warm summer weather brings with quiet reading time, is not an easy task for most parents. Some children welcome the idea of reading books during the summer months, while others, particularly weak or reluctant readers, will find this a tedious chore and will make many creative excuses to avoid doing it.


The good news is that if children read just six books over summer vacation, they will likely avoid summer reading loss! Try some of these tips to make sure your child’s summer reading goes smoothly:

• Set aside a consistent time each day for reading. Summer camps, play dates, and videos are all fun things kids like to do during the summer. However, by the end of the day, children may be too tired to pick up a book and read. When planning summer time activities for your child, remember to leave some time in their schedules for reading. Find a convenient time each day – before bedtime or over breakfast.

• Help your child select books at a comfortable level. If you are having trouble judging, consult your local librarian who is likely to be an expert in matching books to reading levels. Another great source is the Lexile Framework for Reading. This website will give you a Lexile Measure from a reading test. You can then look up books according to your child’s lexile measure. If your child makes 5 or more errors in reading a page of around 50 words – the book is too challenging.

• Become a reader yourself and lead by example! Read the newspaper at breakfast, pick up a magazine at the doctor’s office, and take a book to the beach or on your family picnics. If kids see adults around them reading often, they will understand that reading can be a fun and important part of their summer days.

• Read about your vacation destination before you go. Have your child read about your travel spots ahead of time and help plan the trip for you. If you go camping, explore the wildlife and scenery on-line.

• Read a book that is now a movie, and then take them to see the movie!

• Make sure to bring books on vacation, outings and errands to keep your children occupied and entertained with great stories. Pack books in your beach bag and picnic baskets instead of electronic game devices.

• Connect books with activities! Read a story that mentions something yummy to eat and then try out a recipe at home. Try some exotic foods from stories from other countries.

Henry Winkler becomes best-selling children's author

Henry Winkler: The series of 17 books follows a young dyslexic child called Hank Zipzer and is based on Winkler's own experience with the condition.

The actor, 64, has already sold 2.5 million copies of his books in the US and is now being published in Britain.

The series of 17 books follows a young dyslexic child called Hank Zipzer and is based on Winkler's own experience with the condition.

He said: "As a seven year-old I knew I wanted to be an actor. But if you want to know what means the most to me, it's the books."

Winkler is about to start working on a new set of books with his co-author Lin Oliver, called Ghost Buddy which centre around a 13 year-old boy with an imaginary best friend.

The actor has claimed that he did not read his first novel until he was in his 30s.

He said: "I was in the bottom 3 per cent at school. I was told I would never achieve. My parents had an affectionate term for me: 'dummerkind' [dumb kid]. I didn't' do well at school."

Winkler did not discover that he was dyslexic until his son Jed was diagnosed.

"I realised - that's me too," he said. "The first novel I read was when I was in my 30s. It was a triumph - all of those words in those covers."

He admitted that he always had difficulty reading the Happy Days scripts and said that he would memorise them on his own because he found it impossible to read in groups.

Winkler is currently touring 60 schools across the UK as part of the government's My Way campaign which is intended to encourage school pupils that there is no such thing as being stupid, just different approaches to learning.