Whether or not we like it, technology influences our children’s growth in a major way. They have access to smartphones, tablets, and the Internet much earlier than we did. This shapes their mind and personalities differently from how ours were shaped.
But is that necessarily a bad thing? It doesn’t have to be – it just means that we have to find different ways of piquing their interest.
This usually goes two ways. They’re way more proficient with gadgets but have shorter attention spans. But with a little more effort and understanding from parents, there’s a way to work around that.
Most children learn more through visual images and moving pictures as they’re easier to engage with and remember. So PowerPoint presentations can be of great help here, combining both important information and visual elements – a golden ticket.
The primary purpose of such a presentation is to showcase information easily and understandably. Add appropriate visual elements and animations to the actual plot of the book—and you’ve got yourself a win!
So can we use a PowerPoint presentation to help children read?
Yes, of course! We can use these presentations to spark their interest in any age-appropriate area of learning. Here are a few things to try:
1. Have a Colorful and Attractive Slide Deck
As mentioned before, the design will play a major part in getting our children’s attention. Having a colorful palette and playful images in your presentation will make your child more eager to see what’s next.
It’s even better if you can match the design of your presentation with the feel of the book. This will help children understand the storyline better as well as offer encouragement for their natural creative and imaginative talent.
Luckily for you, there are plenty of ready-made templates out there. All you have to do is find something that matches what you’re looking for and tweak it a little bit. If you’re planning to tell a story, you can use timeline templates to visualize what’s happening in the story timeline. You can edit these templates and add some designs to make it visually appealing for the children.
2. Use Animations
There is a reason why kids like to watch an animated series. There’s something about moving pictures that trigger their creativity. They get inspired by the drawings and the plot, and then they make up their own stories.
While simply animating some text will work for some children, it might not impress others. If you want to take it up a notch, you can create something that resembles a play. Find some characters and let them play out some actions that are in the book’s plot.
By doing this, you can turn your presentation into a learning experience. You can teach them the reasons behind the character’s actions—and they will understand better since they can actually see and feel what you mean.
But you can also test and see if they’re interested in how you made such an amazing presentation. Who knows, maybe your child has a passion that you haven’t discovered yet. Enjoying your animation might make them curious and want to make their own someday. What is important is that they have the inspiration and as many chances as possible to act on it!
3. Break Down Information
This is one major benefit of a PowerPoint presentation: it’s such a great way to share information. With this method, you can show your child little bits of the book content–without overwhelming them with the whole thing.
Another idea you can try is just leaving some major key points on one slide. Children could try to guess what happens or try to come up with their own stories, based on what they see. It’s a pleasant way to stimulate their creativity, and it will also, importantly, be fun for them.
The key point here is that children might get overwhelmed when they see that they have to read an entire book. And, because of that, they might reject the idea from the start. So you can think of these presentations as a way to “trick” them into trying, with little bits. And, perhaps, after they see what they can achieve, they won’t feel so intimidated.
4. Make Use of Fun Quizzes
No matter how fun your book is, it’s likely that there will be a low energy point during this activity. So it’s good to find some ways to get the spirits back up. There are a few ways to do this.
After a few slides, you could play a little game with your children. Like a short, fun quiz. Or you could make up a little puzzle based on the plot of the book. Who did what and why?
By doing this, you get to check to see if what you’re doing is working. If they haven’t been paying attention, perhaps it’s time to change the strategy. Or if they have paid attention, but haven’t understood a thing, maybe the book you chose is too complex. Checking in from time to time will help you put your efforts in the right direction.
5. Reward them at the End
Everybody likes to be rewarded, and children are no exception. But these prizes shouldn’t always be tangible things. They could be something that your child enjoys seeing or hearing, presented as a surprise at the end of an activity.
If your child has a favorite animal and enjoys, for example, watching cat videos online, you could surprise them with a cat video at the end of the book. Or a short, fun animation that is related to the content of the book.
This way, your child will feel like he did something important because he was rewarded for doing it. Children will associate reading with something pleasant, even if it’s educational at the same time!
Of course, making presentations for every book you want your child to read isn’t practical. It’s a lot of work for you and doesn’t count as actual reading. But it could be a method to spark a child’s curiosity about books and encourage reading in general.
Making reading look like a fun, rewarding activity can only encourage enjoyment in reading on their own time. And, besides that, if they see you putting so much effort into this shared activity, they’ll have a much better chance of understanding just how important, and how fun, reading can be.
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