Family Read-Alouds
Reading together is a powerful experience for all, whether it's at home, at the library, in a waiting room, on the bus, or in the park. Here we have resources for having your own family read-aloud times and for building family story time events in your community. Refer to our Book Lists page for a variety of materials for your reading times.
The Reading Tree: Tips and strategies for a family read-aloud from the Vancouver Public Library
Making the Most of Reading Aloud: Practical Strategies for Parents of Young Children from PBS.org
Read Aloud Tips for Families, Start with a Book (en español)
How to Read an E-Book with Your Child / Cómo leer un libro electrónico con su hijo
Tools for Read-Alouds and Story Time events in your community
Beyond Bilingual: Making Story time Friendly to Families who are English Language Learners,
How to host the perfect read aloud for World Read Aloud Day
Local Events
Join NYU students and faculty from the Department of Teaching & Learning for Bilingual Family Story Times (Mandarin-English and Spanish-English) at the Constantine Georgiou Library!
Watch our Bilingual
Family Story Time in action!
During our story time, we first read “Red is a Dragon.” We used pictures of the colors to talk about colors in Chinese (“RED in Chinese is 红色。”) We then read “小年兽” with actions. We said “Show me a Nian” and did a monster action! We read the story with dramatic gestures and facial expressions.
At the end, we read “The Squiggle”. We read it mainly in English with a few simplified Chinese sentences, all starting with the word “look” (“看！一条大龙”) . We asked the children to say back the onomatopoeia (“Snap, tah-dah”). Between each story, we sang interactive songs in both English and Chinese with hand motions and movements to help keep young minds and bodies engaged and happy.
A special bilingual bookmark for all our Story Time families