The ice cream shop as an allegory

I took my kids yesterday afternoon to the ice cream shop. To be honest, it is not just an ice ream shop, an ice cream boutique would be a more accurate term.
For kids, it is more of an ice cream amusement park. So many different flavors are mounted and decorated in a very attractive way, the customers can taste as many flavors as they want before they order, and an endless choice of toppings is offered.

My children take it for granted. For them this is how an ice cream shop should look like. They can't even think about anything less extravagant.

This always makes me think about the ice cream shops that where available when I was a child, not to mention the fact that ice cream was a luxury item that was consumed only in rare occasions when my parents were kids.

If you think about it, this is true in almost every aspect of our daily lives. the last few generations face tremendous changes that occur very quickly.

I think that by telling  my kids how things were in the past, when I was a child, when their grandparents were children and even when my grandparents were children, I give them a great tool to expand their point of view.

This will give them a better perspective, some comparison points and will prepare the grounds for them to live in a fast pace changing environment.

Naturally, I use Batalugu to write stories for them in the form of books. This way I can upload pictures and visualize the stories in a better way.

I encourage you to tell your children about things that you remember or heard in your family's  private past in order to better prepare them for the future.

Tell a tale,
Dorit Rosen
Co-founder
http://batalugu.com

Increase affect and effect your children's literary experience

I am attending nowadays a 10 meeting workshop that teaches how to play meaningful and effective games with children. The workshop is moderated by Mrs. Sigal Huri, and I thank her for the great insights.

One subject that keeps on poping during the workshop is emotional affect and how it effects the way kids play.

"Affect refers to the experience of feeling or emotion.^[1] Affect is a key part of the process of an organism's interaction with stimuli. The word also refers sometimes to affect display, which is "a facial, vocal, or gestural behavior that serves as an indicator of affect" (APA 2006). " (WIKIPEDIA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affect_%28psychology%29 ).

The principal is very simple, increase your kids' emotional affect during the game, and the game will become more meaningful, effective and fun for them.

I suggest to use the same techniques of affect increasing when reading books with the kids, and turn the reading to a much meaningful, memorable and joyful experience.

So, how can one increase emotional affect?
Usually by stimulating the hearing and touching  senses.

Examples for stimulating the hearing sense:

• Whisper or increase your voice according to the content
• Use different musical scales producing the same sound
• Use your sound going  extremely from high to low tone or the other way round. It is known that sirens are great affect increasers

Examples for stimulating the touch sense:

• Tickle or hug the kids in the middle of reading
• Jump, clap your hands or do other physical actions with the kids that are related to the book content

As always, those are just simple examples, use your imagination and you will probably find much better ideas to stimulate your kids senses when you read books.

Another suggestion I can provide: if you write a book for your kids using http://batalugu.com , you can combine elements that increase affect in the text itself, and use them naturally  when reading the book.

Tell a (meaningful and effective) tale ,
Dorit Rosen
Founder
Batalugu