Fun Read Alouds for Learning--Punctuation

Reading aloud to your children is an important thing to incorporate into your school day no matter how old they get. Even children who can read independently still benefit from having books read to them. I often like to align our read-alouds to complement what ever we may be currently learning about in our core subjects. Since Lynsey is a fluent reader, we have moved away from focusing solely on phonics into learning proper sentence structure. One day while learning about punctuation marks, I realized that both of us were bored. Punctuation is something that is essential for her to learn so it isn't like I can just skip it because it is dull. I embarked on a quest to find some books I could read aloud to Lyn that would put some color and excitement into the world of punctuation. Here are a few of our favorites:

Punctuation Station has everything a kid could want! Fun rhyming text tells the story of a giraffe family's journey to Punctuation Station. Clear definitions and examples illustrate the proper use of each punctuation mark. The book is so delightful and colorful that your kiddos won't even realize that they are learning about boring periods and commas! The back of the book has a helpful information page that tells you exactly what the function is of each punctuation mark.

Punctuation Takes a Vacation is a clever story that describes what happens to Mr. Wright's class when the punctuation marks take a holiday. The fun and silliness of this book made it my children's favorite one to read. Their favorite part was trying to decipher the "clues" in the postcards to guess which punctuation mark had written it.

Punctuation Celebration describes each punctuation mark through a series of individual poems. It does not have a page with punctuation rules like Punctuation Takes a Vacation or Punctuation Station do, but it did cover things such as parentheses and ellipses-both of which were not found in the other books.

Read-alouds are a fabulous way to enrich your school day and breathe life into the less-than-exciting topics. Whether it is Science or Math(or anything in-between), your local library should have resources to help you add both fun a depth to any subject. Grab a book, snuggle up on the couch, and help your kiddos love to learn!