Disclosure: Compensation was received for this post.
Reading is such an important skill to master in life. I think it is easy to forget that it is a skill that begins developing long before you are actually reading words on a page. Communication skills begin to develop from day one with your baby and become increasingly important as your child grows.
iRead With is a new shared reading program on the iPad designed to foster language development and help preschoolers get ready to read. Each page in these ebooks includes regular text and discussion questions. These questions encourage kids to describe illustrations, respond about what is happening in the story, make predictions, and actively participate in the story reading process, really connect with what they are reading. These are all skills that make a successful reader.
One of my favorite features are the phonological awareness prompts. Phonological awareness refers to the sounds that make up the words, these question may ask the reader to identify a rhyming word or a specific sound. Being able to identify these sounds is a fundamental skill in early reading and will lay the foundation for preschoolers to start forming and decoding words and learning to read.
We have been playing with Caillou: What’s That Funny Noise? for a little while and my 3-year-old thinks this app is really cool. We read through the story and answered the prompts. He loved recording his voice for the Living Words. These words allow you to record your own voice saying them and then each time you come across them and touch the word your hear it on your own voice.
He really enjoyed reading the story but his favorite part of the iRead With ebook is the retell feature. While you are reading the book you collect different characters and items. You can then retell the story by adding the characters and items to different setting pictures, like Caillou’s room. You can record yourself retelling the story and then play it back, almost like an animated show. It is so cute to listen to him retell the story or make up new ones using the characters.
You can see an overview of the app by watching this video:
iRead With has 2 ebooks available in the app store with 6 more coming this year! For a limited time Caillou:What’s That Funny Noise is FREE and Caillou: Show and Tell is only $.99 instead of $2.99. My preschooler thinks these iRead With ebooks are so cool, I can not wait to see what the other new releases are!