By the time your grandchildren enter fourth grade, most of them have already developed the skills to read and write confidently and independently. They are also beginning to use language effectively for oral and written reports. This year, teachers are primarily concerned with keeping students engaged in all of these activities, while introducing them to more complex subject matter. Fourth-graders read books from a variety of genres, including science fiction, mythology, poetry, and in some schools, graphic novels, along with traditional fiction and nonfiction, including biographies. As readers, children develop skills such as comparing and contrasting, predicting and inferring, and drawing conclusions about characters, themes, and morals. Vocabulary lessons become more challenging as students work with
synonyms (words that mean the same thing) and
antonyms (words that are opposites). This year, your grandchildren will work on lengthier research assignments for written and oral reports, and will be expected to know how to use the library to find sources of information, including books, newspapers, encyclopedias, and magazines.
Making Good Choices. As your grandchildren get older, their teachers give them more freedom to choose what they will read in the classroom and at home. This is a good thing, but kids still need guidance from parents and grandparents to make choices that will help them become better readers. In today’s hypercompetitive publishing marketplace, thousands of children's books are published each year, and not all of them are educational, challenging, or even well-written. Some contain mature content more appropriate for middle-school students. For example, Scholastic recently dropped a series of books based on the Bratz dolls from its book-club catalogs after parents and teachers complained that the characters were overtly sexual.
• If you're seeking a birthday present for a book-loving grandchild, consider a subscription to
CRICKET, a magazine for upper-elementary school readers, which features short stories, poems, biographies, and games, but no advertisements.
• New student dictionaries like the 912-page
Merriam-Webster Children's Dictionary (DK, 2008) are packed with illustrations and bonus material.
Join My Book Club. Starting a book club with your grandchildren is a terrific way to learn about what they're reading, and to introduce them to favorite books from your childhood. Take turns choosing books for club meetings, then read each new selection and make plans to get together and talk about what you both learned. (Don't forget to provide snacks.)
Climb the Family Tree. Now that your grandchildren are learning how to research nonfiction subjects, ask them to help you draft your family’s history. Interview family members together, then go to the library or visit a website to find out more about the countries your ancestors came from, the places they first lived when they came to the U.S., and the activities they enjoyed. When you've finished the research, work together to write your family's own story.
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