Literacy

Practice Literacy Skills With Caribu On U.N. International Literacy Day

As communities around the world take note of United Nations International Literacy Day (September 8), Caribu is proud to be an outstanding option for families to read together and share literacy learning from almost anywhere across the globe. International Literacy Day was was established by UNESCO in 1966 as an opportunity to increase awareness of building literacy development worldwide. In 2015, the U.N. created a series of Sustainable Development Goal goals, one of which is to ensure that “all young people achieve literacy and numeracy, and that adults, who lack these skills are given the opportunity to acquire them.”

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Literacy

I’m A Mom And A Literacy Specialist: Here’s How To Read To Your Kids To Inspire A Love Of Books

When it comes to our family’s bookshelves, I’ve decided to ignore advice about decluttering because you can never have too many children’s books around the house. Finding time to read to your kids daily from the time they’re babies is the most important thing; I still read to my 10-year-old every day. But as a literacy specialist, I know that the way you read—your tone, the rise and fall of your pitch, as well as the expression that you incorporate—can matter just as much as the narrative and pictures in a book. Here are three simple strategies that you can use to help your child’s reading interest and level flourish as you cuddle up together.

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Family

Why Children Like Repetition, And How It Helps Them Learn

People often say that practice makes perfect. Research certainly supports this, especially in children. In fact, studies have shown that repetition can be critically important for learning in general—especially for memory and language learning. So while adults can easily pick up new information from a single exposure, when kids ask to watch the same movie they’ve already seen a hundred times or read the same book before bed for the 10th night in a row, it might just be their way of learning the storyline. And although it might be boring or even annoying to do the same thing over and over and over (and over and over) again, this extra practice might be just what children need to learn new things.

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Family

How Storytelling Builds Attachment And The Science Behind It

Any parent, grandparent, or teacher who has told stories to their children will recognize that at the end of a good story, you don’t just walk away with a good story – the two of you feel closer. Why? Doctors call this attachment. And to understand how it works we have to shift our perspective for a moment from the story itself to the relationship that arises between speaker and listener during a story.

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Family, Publishing

For A Lot Of Book Lovers, Rereading Old Favorites Is The Only Reading They Can Manage At The Moment

If you’ve been rereading books you adore, welcome to the club. Like a well-loved blanket and a favorite set of jammies, familiar books, worlds and stories may be exactly what you need when everything both changes by the minute and remains relentlessly the same. (Breaking news: The couch is still comfortable, and I am still on it.)

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Family

Storypod: The Perfect Addition To Bedtime

Do your kids ever ask for just one more story at bedtime? If your kids are anything like Daniel Buelhoff’s, this is a nightly occurrence. And for Daniel, life gets in the way of being able to read his daughters as many stories as they’d like each night. So he created a new-age storytelling device that his daughters could fall asleep to even when he was away or short on time to read many stories.

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Family, Social Tech

100 Military Kids Receive Sleep Kits With Caribu

On May 1st, one hundred kids were selected by Blue Star Families and Sleep Number to receive a Sleep Kit. The Sleep Kits include a Sleep Number Kids™ pillow, twin protection pad, twin sheets, ZZZ Bear bundle, Sesame Street military kid transition activity book, and a lifetime subscription to the Caribu reading app—valued at $650.

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