Image from Los Tres Cerditos on Speakaboos
Reading plays a critical role in raising a bilingual child. My sons and I always enjoy reading books together. Thanks to modern technology, we are able to have a wide range of exciting and interactive reading experiences. While traditional books have always been fun, we also enjoy stories and books on-line.
The website Speakaboos offers an engaging and interactive way to develop your child’s reading skills. This educational site features well-known and fun stories presented through video. The text is also provided which enables children to read along while listening and watching the story. The illustrations in the videos are beautiful, and many are narrated by well-known celebrities such as Tim Daly, Kelly Ripa, Daisy Fuentes and Clay Aiken. Many different types of stories are presented from fairy tales and fables, to holiday stories and nursery rhymes. There are even songs with accompanying videos that kids can listen to or sing along with in a karaoke format.
The site provides both parents and teachers with an abundance of resources and activities to make the stories both interesting and educational. There are worksheets, quizzes, puzzles, word searches, and even arts and crafts ideas to enable parents, teachers and children to delve more thoroughly into the on-line stories. This site is an educational resource that develops language and literacy skills.
I was especially pleased to see how international the site is. A whole section is devoted to Bollywood Stars and there is another section featuring stories in Spanish. The company is planning to grow its catalog of stories from around the world and to have them translated into different languages for children to enjoy. There are currently some stories in Spanish, with plans to release another album this spring and eventually there will be an entire Spanish-language site.
Using the stories, videos and resources on the Spakeaboos website is a great way for teaching both my sons and my students. While the site offers access to free resources and stories, the majority of the content is reserved for members. Membership is available on a monthly basis for a reasonable $4.95. This website is an educational resource that I am sure you will enjoy.
Speakaboos and SpanglishBaby have a Valentine´s gift for all of you–a free pass to enjoy ALL Speakaboos has to offer until March 31, 2011. Just use the following info when you login:
User: spanglishbaby@speakaboos.com
Password: spanglishbaby
We´d love it if you let us know how your Speakaboos experience went! You can let us know in the comments below, or at our Facebook page.
