Reading books and sharing stories can be such a fun part of parenting. It can also be tricky to figure out how to move beyond the bedtime story to foster a love of reading that spills into other parts of our lives and routines. How can we naturally encourage more reading and a love for stories? What if our kids are reluctant readers? How do we know if there is something more at play? We tackle these questions and more with help from our guests. 

• Part 1: How to foster a love for reading and encourage reluctant readers?
• Part 2: When is it more than reluctance? Dyslexia and learning disorders

Supplemental Resources

Meet our Hosts

Amanda Chavez, Owner & Creative Director, WiscoFam / Go Valley Kids / Go Oshkosh Kids
Born and raised in Appleton, Wisconsin, Amanda Chavez has a deep love for her community. As a busy mom of 2 little girls, she and her husband are always on the lookout for fun things to do and share with others. Her work combines all of her passions – motherhood, design, and community. Some of her other interests also peak through as well, including baking, photography, and sewing!

Tania Harrison, Women’s Fund of Oshkosh and Owner Harrison & Co. Creative
Tania Harrison is the founder of Harrison & Co. Creative and a freelance creative consultant. She is a mom of four with a passion for compelling visuals, meaningful words, and an entrepreneurial edge. Tania specializes in helping businesses and organizations strengthen their branding and marketing efforts in social media spaces to make authentic connections with their customers and audiences. She is also part of the steering committee for the Women’s Fund parenting initiative.

Special Thanks

Liz Schultz, Producer, WiscoFam / Go Valley Kids / Go Oshkosh Kids

Marlo Ambras, Audio & Video Engineer, Ambas Creative

Transcript

Amanda Chavez  00:00

Hello and welcome to Let’s Talk, the show that connects families and Oshkosh with local experts to talk about your parenting questions. I’m Amanda Chavez here with my co-host, Tania Harrison, and today we’re going to talk about reading and literacy with Kelly Steinke and Kallie Schell. We’ll be talking about reading and sharing stories with our kids, ideas for encouraging more reading, and when to worry about our reluctant readers. How can we fit more time for reading into our schedules? Where do we get help if we’re worried about our learning readers? And how do we know if we need help in the first place? We’ll talk about this and more with Kelly and Kallie. I would like to introduce our guest host, Tania from the Women’s Fund. Thanks for joining us.

Tania Harrison  00:38

Thanks for having me. I’m gonna just give a quick introduction of our guests today. Kelly is a mom of twins, twin girls, both of whom have dyslexia. Kelly began her career as a special education teacher and taught for 20 years. Kelly went on to found read learning Educational Services LLC, and has been a dyslexia specialist for seven years. Kallie is from the Oshkosh Public Library. Kallie graduated from St. Catherine University in St. Paul with a master’s in Library and Information Science in 2019. Thanks so much for being here.

Kallie Schell  01:14

Thank you for having us.

Kelly Steinke  01:15

Thank you for having us.

Amanda Chavez  01:17

We’re so excited to be talking about this and the timing is great, right? End of the school year, almost summer’s upon us. And something I think reading as parents, we’re always trying to figure out how to do that more, or it’s always changing, right? As soon as we figure it out as a parent, then something changes and having these resources I think are a great place to start.

Tania Harrison  01:39

We’re gonna take a quick break and we’ll be back to talk about reading and literacy with Kallie and Kelly.

Amanda Chavez  01:44

Let’s Talk is brought to you through the partnership of Go Oshkosh Kids and the Women’s Fund of Oshkosh. The Women’s Fund of Oshkosh works to improve the lives of women, girls, and families of the communities of Winnebago County through philanthropy, grant-making, and education. Okay, let’s start with Kallie. Kallie, how do we, start building those habits right when they’re little right when they’re babies? And what do you have tips there to start with?

Kallie Schell  02:14

Yeah, so what’s really important is getting kids familiar with books. So what does that mean when they’re six months old, because they’re not going to pick up a board book and read. So I learned through some seminars that kids just knowing what a book feels like, what it what the shape is, what it looks like, what a pretty picture is. So have a board book around, I know they’re probably going to gnaw on it a little bit. But that is them getting to know what a book feels like. They can open it up and see pretty bright picture one word. So they’re getting they’re getting themselves familiar with what the format looks like, even if they’re six months old, and can’t say, hey, look, this is a book. And that’s where your local library really can come in. Because we are trained in how to connect kids at a very young age with how to equate reading with pleasure. So what does that look like? So at the Oshkosh Public Library, we have something called high hopes. And this is a baby and toddler time where our wonderful librarian, Lindsay will sit down and read stories to them, she interacts with them a little bit. And then they have an activity that goes with it. So you’ve, you’ve read them a story, what we love to do is do voices and singing and dancing. So that equates reading with pleasure as well. And then they get to use their hands to develop those fine motor skills, or just play with each other. So I guess what it comes down to really is equating reading with pleasure. And that seems like such a simple thing. But going out in the community and going to your library, we love to have kids around, we’ve missed them during COVID. So we’re so excited. And then, as they get older, we do have programs like family storytime. So when they’ve reached two or three, they’ve kind of hit that transition from very simple books to having a more complex understanding of concepts. So when we talk about equating reading with pleasure, you also want kids to feel confident in what they’re reading. So if you sit down and storytime and I’ll do a flannel story, and we’ll identify colors, I’ll ask them to count with me. Well, they’ve achieved something with me together, we’ve read a story and they’ve, they feel empowered. They’re very excited. It’s always fun to see kids excited about reading. So those are a few programs at the library. And then another one that we have is High Hopes, we are transitioning the program, but it’s a reading program for kids that they can take home. So it’s similar to 1000 Books Before Kindergarten, if anyone’s heard of that, that’s a very popular public library program. And we just have parents take home a sheet for their kids to read. They mark it off, they get a prize for some incentive. Yeah, so some incentive to read and that’s something we encourage throughout the year. So during the winter, we have wild winter read off. Kids are out of school but we want them to still read we want them to still have fun and they get to come spend a fun little wheel like Wheel of Fortune and get a prize. And then summer reading is our big, big, big program. That’s our marathon for the year. And we put a lot of work into connecting with the community so that kids can come in, get prizes from, you know, maybe Culvers, or the swimming pool. Yeah, so we have a lot of that, because something that’s always worried about, it’s always read educators, and we really think about it is what’s called the summer slide. Sometimes their reading levels will slide then and we don’t want to see that because then they go on to the next school year would realize they have a little less confidence. And as confidence wanes, kids are going to be more resistant to reading. And that’s, we don’t want to see that. But we also understand where it comes from.

Amanda Chavez  05:49

We were talking earlier that some my kids are nine and 11. Right now for you forget sometimes those earlier stages, but you see a lot of people asking for books for their library for baby showers, right? And you ask any parent, right? We’re not in that picture book, like, but I can tell you what my kid’s favorite one was right? Like what our favorite ones when they were little and what are still on our bookshelf. So I like that idea of and we also like to read gift our books, we we purchase a lot of our books, and it does get I mean, if you add it up, right, it can get expensive or can go to your library. But I always think it’s fun to just hand off those well. Oh, well love to book Yeah, your favorite, although my kids read them their favorites over and over again, that they start to now we’re starting replacing books, which is fun. But those are great tips. Thanks for sharing. Kelly as a mom, do you have any other reading tips?

Kelly Steinke  06:47

Getting kids to enjoy reading? You know, as I was sitting here listening to the conversation, my first t