Sunday, January 6, 2013

Peep, peep, peep- do you have the digital beat?


My newest favorite books with Baby Lipstick is Lindsay Craig's Farmyard Beat and Dancing Feet. I'm thinking these upbeat books are exactly what we need to get us up and moving and back to being excited about school.

I discovered Farmyard Beat because I checked it out from the public library as a digital copy. My daughter's been reading it with me on my ipad mini (can I tell you how much I LOVE the fact that I have digital board books we could read over Christmas break instead of hauling an entire duffle bag of board books around? Obviously we still took board books, but not nearly as many as we took over Thanksgiving. And now she associates my ipad mini with books and reading instead of playing games. She sees it and says "book, book? so we can read together).

I'm pondering whether I should buy the kindle copy of Farmyard Beat and read it to my kids on the smartboard. It's like a big book- just without the actual book for them to hold and read independently later on.

I love that I can put the book on the smartboard- and that it would mean I'd have the book for my daughter and my class at the same time. I just don't like that it means there isn't a physical copy of the book in my classroom. I want my kids to engage with the book- touch it, turn the pages, read it to themselves. I want them to act it out with the physical book right there.

I don't know when the last time was that I read a real book. I've been reading books on the kindle ap for the iphone for years. With my active little one I find that I miss reading real books for pleasure but that it is so much easier to read digital books. I'm reading more than I would otherwise. I am thankful to digital books for this reason. A story is a story no matter the format.

But can I make the transition in my classroom? Would my kids get the same experience out of a digital book? Is it worth it?

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