Learning to read can be difficult, and sometimes as parents, we are unsure of exactly how to support our kids’ developing reading skills. That’s why having fun apps to assist us can make us feel more confident and even give us brand-new ideas for learning activities. Lee paso a paso and Lee paso a paso 2 are two great resources to have on your iPhone or iPad for those moments when reading practice with your child becomes a chore.

The first app focuses on matching syllables to pictures to form an entire word and counting syllables. For each letter, children practice beginning sounds as the app continuously asks which of three pictures begins with the given sound. This activity really makes the app multi-step and thus appropriately challenging for a child who already knows basic letter sounds but is in the process of learning to piece them together.

The second app is a bit harder. You must form an entire word by choosing the correct sequence of syllables. It’s like a memory game, confirming your choices with matching pictures. As you increase in level, you have more sounds to choose from.

Using these two apps to complement each other will ready your child for more advanced Spanish reading and perhaps relieve some pressure on days when reading seems too daunting a task.

Find Lee paso a paso and Lee paso a paso 2 in iTunes

Available for iPhone and iPad

Recommended for ages 4-7

Price: $2.99 each

Image source: Molly Darling

BabyCenter en Español has released the results of yet another survey. This particular survey was about fathers and how they interact with their children. Here is the data that caught my eye:

Actividades preferidas que los papás disfrutan hacer con sus niños:

• Jugar con él: 60%
• Dormir con él: 18%
• Bañarlo: 13%
• Leerle un cuento: 1%
• Otra cosa: 9%

Source: BabyCenter en Español

Do you see that? Favorite activities for fathers to do with their children and “Read him/her a story” received only 1% of the vote… That disturbs me and I’ll tell you why.

When my younger son, (now 10 years old), started preschool, I volunteered a lot in the classroom. One project I ended up taking over was the “reading bags” … Basically each child had a cloth tote bag and they would take home two or three books in the bag each week. I would rotate the books out, talk with the kids to see if they had read the books or had been read to, find out their interests so I could choose books they’d be more likely to read, etc.

My son’s classroom was at least 90% Latino, (mostly first generation American, with parents being recent immigrants from Mexico), and so a lot of interesting things came into play. First, most of the books I had available in the classroom were in English and the kids were telling me that their parents couldn’t read the books to them. I requested more Spanish language books and once I got those, some of the kids seemed to be getting read to more often, although some still did not. Some of the challenges we faced included parents who couldn’t read well (or at all) even in their native Spanish, parents who didn’t have time or were too tired to read, and parents who didn’t see reading with their child as a valuable activity because they weren’t raised with books.

A couple of these children weren’t even sure how to hold a book when they started the school year, (they would hold it upside down and/or backward, flip the pages the wrong direction, etc.) Once I pinpointed the children who were not being read to, I volunteered more time to not just rotate the books in the bags, but to stay and read one-on-one with those children. I came close to tears sometimes because the way they snuggled into my lap and looked forward to this time together made me realize how many kids out there are missing out on something that is so incredibly valuable and absolutely free.

The benefits of reading to your children from a young age have been proven, but if one isn’t raised in a book reading household, the chances that they’ll read to their children are significantly lower. This is a problem for the Latino community in particular because although the BabyCenter survey refers to fathers, the truth is that even Latina mothers are less likely to read to their children than Caucasian/Anglo mothers.

Getting kids hooked on reading at an early age is especially important for boys, who are less likely to read for leisure than girls.

Even if you weren’t raised in a reading household, you can change that for your kids – read to them regularly and some day they will read to their children regularly – It’s that simple. You can set future generations of your family on a new path with this one act, (and you may even come to love reading yourself if you don’t already.)

Other ways to encourage reading in the Latino community

• Next time you’re invited to the birthday party of a niece/nephew or friend’s child, why don’t you gift that child a book? I always try to do this and my husband, Carlos, says that culturally books are not seen as “a good gift” – If you worry it will be perceived that way, choose a gift pack that includes a toy along with the book.

• Donate bilingual books to your local library and/or schools. Teachers love when people buy books for their classrooms through Scholastic.

• Tell people with young bilingual or Spanish-speaking children about Read Conmigo. It’s 100% free – Just sign up and a bilingual book is delivered to you each month in the mail.

• Support (with your money or time), programs in your community that teach illiterate adults how to read, (English or Spanish), as well as ESOL programs.

• Volunteer in the classroom – especially if you’re bilingual and can help meet a need not being met due to staff cuts and tight budgets. Teachers often love having their newsletter translated to Spanish so they have a better chance of keeping non-English-speaking parents informed. Ask your child’s teacher, or the local Elementary school how you can help.

• Get caught reading! Let your kids, nieces, nephews, neighborhood children, see you reading a book. If they admire you, this will affect their view of books and reading in a positive way.

• Other resources: Check out Mommy Maestra and this article by the author of Mommy Maestra, Monica Olivera, on Mamiverse: Improving Latino Children’s Literacy.

What do you think? Is the Latino community behind when it comes to teaching kids a love of books and reading? What are your experiences as a child and/or as a parent? Were you read to? Do you read to your kids?

As I’ve mentioned several times before, my daughter has been learning how to read in English at school and coming home and transferring what she’s learning into Spanish. Although we have tons of books in Spanish at home, we don’t really have a lot of books for early readers. I’m not a huge fan of translations and so I’ve kind of stayed away from those, so I was curious to see what Scholastic Club Leo‘s Paquete Amigos Favoritos — a set of three books specifically for children who are just learning how to read — was all about.

The packet includes the following titles:

• Clifford y los dinosaurios
• Hombre mosca conoce a chica mosca
• Bizcocho sale a pasear

Whenever I get more than one book, I don’t like to give them to my daughter all at once because she won’t concentrate on each one individually. This time was no exception. So I decided to give her the last one on the list above: Bizcocho sale a pasear.

I never imagined that she’d be so happy to get it, but it turns out that she’s seen and read other books from the series from her school’s library. In English, they’re called Biscuit and she couldn’t believe I’d gotten a version in Spanish. I’m not sure why it was, but she was simply ecstatic that she recognized the character and that she was able to read in Spanish a book with which she is familiar in English.

She was able to read the whole book all by herself even though it does contain a few difficult words such as simpático and revolcarse. She didn’t really get them the first time around, but that’s because she wants to read faster than what she currently can. She loves the book so much that she offers to read it to anybody willing to listen!

Just last week, I gave her the Hombre mosca conoce a chica mosca and although she didn’t recognize it, she has been really excited about reading it because it’s divided into chapters. Go figure!

I plan on giving her the Clifford one tomorrow. I’m sure she’ll love it too because we already have a few of these in Spanish.

The Giveaway

We’re giving away one Favorite Friends Pack in Spanish to one lucky winner.

To enter, all you have to do is leave us a comment telling us how you promote reading in your home.

That’s all you have to do to enter this giveaway. If you want to up your chances at winning, then this is how you can get additional entries (only after you’ve completed the step above):

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This giveaway ends Tuesday, April 10 at 11:59 p.m. EST and is open to everyone with a U.S. mailing address over 18 years of age. Check out the Giveaway Rules.