No Time to Read Before Bed? Have Storytime Lunch Instead!

Reading at bedtime doesn't always work out. Sometimes we are working late, juggling dinner and virtual homework, or our little ones are just too tired. But reading is such a valuable social-emotional tool for forming bonds between caregivers and parents. As PBS Parenting Minutes tell us, children who are read to when young are more likely to do well in school.

Naturally, when we skip the evening books, the parenting guilt sets in.

Enter storytime lunch.

One afternoon, to get my kids to eat, I whipped out some books and started reading at the lunch table. Something clicked and a sense of relief came. The parenting pressure of reading books for fifteen minutes at bedtime was off.

My family calls it “storytime lunch,” and it has become a favorite for my two preschoolers and me. We sit down at the table with a pile of books and our lunch. I read the stories while my daughters eat. Even my typically picky eater is too distracted to push back on any of the food. A win-win!

Storytime lunch is just one way to take a few minutes throughout the day to sit and read together, but there are many other ways to make reading even more fun at any time. Here are just a few of them.

Virtual library storytimes. Listen, move, play and sing along with librarians from all over the city! The Los Angeles Public Library offers daily virtual storytimes streamed live through the library’s Facebookand YouTube pages.

Connect virtually with faraway friends and family. Storytime lunch is a fun way to engage with our family and friends as we stay at home. Set up a scheduled video call with a family member during lunch time. As they share a snack or lunch virtually, have the family member read a book to your little one. Then, encourage your little one to read a book back on the video call.

Host your own pretend storytime show. Set up your cell phone video camera and have your child take the lead of a pretend television reading show. They can pretend to be the teacher or librarian as they read to their imaginary audience. Keep the video as a cute keepsake to watch again and again.

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Add a little math! As a bonus, add some early learning math skills to your family storytime lunch. Books are a great tool for number and shape recognition and counting skills. Some of my family’s favorite math-related bilingual storytime lunch books are:

• “Ten Little Ladybugs” | "Diez pequeñas mariquitas" (Ages 5-6) Written by Melanie Gerth and illustrated by Laura Huliska-Beith
  Turn this counting book into a song. The repetition of the storyline will have your kids singing along as you count down from 10 to one. Pause to count the number of toy ladybugs on each page.

• “Count on Clifford” / "Cuenta con Clifford" (Age 3) By Norman Bridwell
  With big large numbers on the pages, children can count from one to 10 with their favorite big red dog, Clifford, as he celebrates a birthday party.

• “How Big is a Million?” / "¿Cuánto es un millón?" (Ages 5-6) Written by Anna Milbourne and illustrated by Serena Riglietti
  Pipkin sets off to find out how big a million is. On his journey, he meets a new friend and counts to bigger and bigger numbers: 10,100 and 1,000 and even 1,000,000.

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• “Ten Tiny Toes” / "Diez deditos" (Ages 0-3) By Caroline Jayne Church
  Head, shoulders and ten tiny toes. As you read, count the number of toes on the baby’s feet together.

And remember:

• Read in any language. Reading a story together is a bonding experience and can be done in any home language.
• You can choose books with only pictures. While young children can not read yet, they can still make up stories and follow the illustrations. Flip through the pages together and make up a story.
• Add math talk. Math talk is the words you use to point out early math concepts in your everyday life with kids. Try counting out the pages and characters of your book together, find the shapes in it, or notice patterns in the words for added math fun.

The days are long and the years are short. And somewhere in between —whether bedtime or lunchtime — we can find small moments to flip through the pages of a book with our children.

Resources

• Los Angeles Public Library’sVirtual Storytime Calendar
• “Read with your Child” from PBS Parenting Minutes. Available in English, Spanish, Bengali and Mandarin.