How Can I Teach Book Genres to My Kindergartener?

Question

I homeschool my son and we are learning:

fiction/non-fiction, myths/legends, fables/folktales and poetry through this year. What are some good books to compare? What are some good ways to get the facts in quickly (he's a boy with a limited attention span), but make sure he gets the difference between each and the distinguishing traits of each type?

Answer 1

I agree totally with kd5bel.  We used 5 in a row..it was wonderful and we also used My Father's World...wondeful also...but FIAR is more what you are looking for....the Charlotte Mason approach is AWESOME!!!

Answer 2

Five in a Row is an excellent program - I wish I had known about it for my son at that age!

One thing to remember is that in Kindergarten, it isn't all that important that he understand the fine points between a myth and fable, etc.; the main thing is to make sure that he can tell the difference between fiction and nonfiction.  You'll be teaching this again later, and you can refer back to what he's learning now.

"Remember Paul Bunyan?  That's a tall tale.  It's a story that exaggerates things."  "Remember Anansi?  That's a myth.  It's a story the Ashanti people used to explain how things in nature came to be."  Etc...This is something I'm working with my 5th grade son on, and he's just now really grasping the differences.  In K, kids - even gifted kids - don't generally have the attention span or critical thinking skills to delineate the differences between these genres.

He is old enough to understand the difference between poetry and prose, and this could really be fun.  This is something he can "hear" the difference in the meter, the rhythm, etc.  You can work with him on how poetry uses "word pictures" (which you can later name as metaphor, simile, onomatopeia, hyperbole, etc.) and sometimes rhymes, sometimes doesn't.  You can work on how the meter and rhythm (use "speed" and "beat") help tell the story - in The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, for example, the meter and rhythm sound like a horse's hoofbeats.  Things like that.

He really won't understand the differences and traits of most of these; he's just not old enough yet.  And that's ok.  (This is something I wish someone had told me when mine was that young!)  What you're doing with him now is building a foundation for what he'll learn later, and giving him an enjoyment and love for learning.  

What you can do is when you read a fable, introduce it as "let's read a fun fable by Aesop".  When you read a myth, intro it as "I found a really cool myth from the American Indians that lived in _______.  Let's go read it!"  Things like that.  This will give him a basis to draw from later and will help him understand the differences more easily.

Hope that helps!

Answer 3

These 2 programs are designed for young children using read-aloud literature from a variety of genres. Both are excellent in their quality of literature and activities and age-appropriateness.

Drawn into the Heart of Reading

http://www.heartofdakota.com/

Five in a Row

These will also make not only the explanations of genre easier, but bring the stories to life in the activities that go with the books.

Answer 4

Try this web site http://www.charlottemason.com/

Charlotte Mason was a 19th century School Teacher who ran her own schools and advocated teaching the whole child, not just filling the child with facts and dates. She advocated what she called "Living Books" these books brought to life the subject matter at hand and the children walk away from reading the book with more knowledge than if they used text books.

To address the "how does he get to understand each type" take one subject matter at a time start with his favorite books and just tell him this is a fiction book when we say ficition we mean that  the story is make believe like how you like to play Power Rangers, can you really be a Power Ranger? No but you like pretending so that is they way fiction stories work, people like to pretend so they wrote the story down so other could pretend too. Sometimes a story that is fiction is based on facts but it has been changed a bit so that it tells a story. (The "Little House" Series is a perfect example of this.)  Don't read anymore of the book than he is willing to sit and listen too, just put a book mark at the spot and pick up there tomorrow.

YOu might also want to try a series called Five in a Row. This works really well there is a great variety of stories to read and an activity to do each day (you start on Monday and end Friday or what ever works for you) The projects are like a story time at the library.

Children will start to understand the differences in each book they read by just reading good books either on their own or with you.

And don't worry that he doesn't understand the differences right away sometimes it takes a bit to absorb all the information and he has plenty of time.

You may also find in later elementary years that you will be teaching genres again, this is perfectly fine it just means that although he may have understood that ficition is stories and Non-fiction presents facts now he understands that the "Little House" books are fiction that presents facts which makes it "historical fiction" a genre all to itself

Answer 5

You can explain the genre to your son before you read a story and then reiterate this information after you have read the story.  I would highly recommend the "What Your ??? Grader Needs to Know" books.  They have explanations about different types of stories, i.e., Aesop's Fables, folk tales, etc.  I have used the kindergarten and 1st grader levels of these books and am now using the 2nd grade level book.  

You can buy the books used off amazon.com for a reasonable price.  (Make sure you get the revised/latest version.)  They are worth it for the classic literature alone, and they also explain terms like author, illustrator, etc.

I hope this is helpful.