While contemplating what to get Reilly for Christmas and his birthday this year, I’ve started noticing toy commercials more.  I tend be one to give creative or fun educational toys. Yes, I’m the aunt you can thank for the washable markers and the “Make your Own Stalagmites” kits.  It’s not Grand Theft Auto: Punch a Hooker Edition, but they’ll thank me later.

Anyway, I’ve been seeing a lot of these Leapfrog books advertised lately. I’m not really sure what I think about it. I’m not an education expert or a teacher or a children’s development specialist, so I don’t know how to measure scientifically the impact these books have on reading. But, and correct me if I’m wrong here, I kind of think if you drag a pen over the word and hear the word read to you, that ceases to be reading. I’d say that’s listening.

I don’t entirely get it. Sure, it seems cool and fun and how exciting that the book talks!  I see the appeal.  I was a little old for them, but I had step-sisters, so I remember those books with the buttons down the side that added sound effects to your story. It’s not like the concept of sound in books is new or unusual. I’d go as far as fun. But, I don’t really see how dragging the pen over a word and hearing it said for you teaches you to read it, but maybe it does.  What happened to sounding things out? What about recognizing the letters and learning what sounds those letters make and what happens when you string them together?  Maybe I’m just old school.

I know people learn other languages that way. Rosetta Stone uses an visual/audio connection to teach you to speak a foreign language, so I suppose the same principle applies here.  Perhaps the combination of using both hearing and seeing helps solidify the information. I’ve always been more an auditory learner, was never one for much note-taking in school. I spent too much time writing things down and I’d miss the next thing the lecturer was saying, so I just paid attention unless it was imperative I take note.  So I can understand how hearing the words read would help drive the point home.

I guess I just wonder where the line is drawn between reading and storytime. Or maybe its teaching that reading is play… and I agree it can be. Reading is awesome and as a child, I was a voracious reader.  Adding the voices of the characters and hearing the story told for them robs the child of a piece of their imagination, part of the joys of reading.  The ability to create your own scenario when you read is part of the fun of it, not having it spoon fed to you in the voice of Jack Black.

I have mixed feelings. What do you think?