Tag: reading

Reading fairy tales helps children fight fear – Italian Cuisine

Reading fairy tales helps children fight fear


Reading fairy tales relaxes them and helps them grow better. Find out what benefits it has and how to make it more engaging

Reading fairy tales and fairy tales aloud is a very useful activity for entertaining children at home. In addition, it has countless benefits. In fact, it promotes their growth and their emotional well-being. "Listening to stories is a nourishment for the child's psyche", comments the psychotherapist psychologist Rachele Bindi, expert in book therapy. «Through stories and characters, emotions and imagination, the child has a way of accessing the sense and understanding of the world. Listening to the stories also allows him to acquire better language skills and a greater propensity for creativity over time, "says the expert. But the advantages are also others. «Reading strengthens the relationship between adult and child. In fact, both can benefit from this activity. While reading, the adult manages to disconnect from daily worries and relax. Instead, the child feels deeply cared for and pampered, "says the expert, who explains to us here what benefits reading aloud fairy tales has and how to make it more engaging for children.

Promotes relaxation

Children, especially in difficult moments, need the stories told by adults to better experience feelings, emotions, situations and experiences. "Listening to a fairy tale or a fairy tale for the child becomes a small ritual. The fairy tale, in particular with its fantastic atmosphere and its imaginative language, creates a sense of shared magic, which gives the child an immediate sense of relaxation. While imagining what is being read, the child transforms the word into a mental image. This small exercise allows him to develop better problem-solving skills over time .

Helps manage emotions

"While listening to the fairy tale or fairy tale, the child identifies with the characters. In this way he manages to give voice to the deepest emotions such as fear and to tell them. Through stories you learn to recognize them, to give them a name and, consequently, to manage them better in daily life, "says psychologist Rachele Bindi. «On a purely auditory level, the tone of the reader's voice helps him to contain his anxieties and to feel more secure. A good way to understand if it is the story is the right one is to look at the reaction it has while reading. If it is involved too much or, on the contrary, it is not involved at all, it is not the right story for the moment it is experiencing, "says the expert.

The tricks to follow to make listening to fairy tales and fairy tales more engaging for children

Read slowly

Reading fairy tales must follow the child's understanding rhythm. Read slowly, trying to understand if the child is following well or not.

Vary the tone of your voice

A monotonous reading easily gets bored. Try with your voice to interpret the emotions and voices of the different characters.

Explain the meaning of the new words to him

As you read the story, look at the child to see if he has understood all the words.

Recreate the settings of the stories

To involve him more in reading, create the settings of the story using the soft toys or dolls as characters.

Favor listening to emotions

Try to stimulate the child while reading. Ask him what he loves about the story and how he feels while listening to the story.

Soup For You!

I’m not sure where youre reading this from, but for the sake of this post I’ll assume it’s freezing outside, and you’re craving a huge bowl of steaming, hot soup. Sweaters are great, but when you need to get warm from the inside out, there is really only one way…well, two actually, but this isn’t a cocktails blog, so we’re just going with soup. Here are a few of my personal favorite cold weather soups. Click on caption to read the post and watch the video. Bundle up and enjoy!

Spicy Coconut Shrimp Bisque

Bumblebee Soup – Bacon, Black Bean and Corn Chowder

Minestrone Soup

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Classic Chicken Noodle Soup

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Bread and butter pudding

My mind has gone. I felt it fading away about two months ago but it’s really gone now. Bye bye. I can’t read anything and am starting to do things like order 5 of the same thing on Ocado when I only wanted 1 and leaving the iron on.

When I was just newly up the duff I was reading Bring Up The Bodies and although I didn’t really understand what was going on, there was no doubt that I was genuinely reading it, enjoying the, you know, atmosphere, if not actually taking on board any content. But then, like the bloke in Flowers for Algernon, I gradually ground to a halt, got stupider and stupider, more vague. I read fewer pages every night until my Kindle battery ran out and I just didn’t bother to recharge it.

And that was the last literary thing I read. Now I read newspapers and Twitter and that’s it. I can’t even really concentrate on films. It’s not forever, I know, but it is annoying. It happened with Kitty, too, but things were easy then. I just sat about humming to myself, eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and ordering things off the John Lewis website. Now, with nothing to read and nothing to think about all I do is obsess over when this will all be over and I don’t have to be pregnant anymore – or ever again.

I am constantly struck by the pitifulness of the pregnant woman-with-toddler combination. Whenever I saw them in the playground I always used to think “Oh god, you poor cow.” And now it’s me. Yesterday, as I pushed Kitty’s buggy through the freezing rain I was brought to mind of a character in The Mayor of Casterbridge*, the tedious Thomas Hardy novel, (which I hope for your sake you have not bothered reading): little Fanny Robin, pregnant out of wedlock by a scoundrel soldier and forced to walk for miles and miles through the snow, 8 months gone. I think that’s what kills her. Or maybe she dies in childbirth. Anyway, it’s grim and I dwell ghoulishly on poor Fanny Robin as I am forced, bookless, to focus inwards.

It will do that to you, being pregnant – it makes you selfish, self-pitying, green-eyed. It makes you covet things – slimness, agileness, more help or the life of the woman whose children are all at school.

This is an inappropriate introduction to my recipe today, which is for bread and butter pudding – probably the antithesis of all this stark moaning. If stark moaning were a foodstuff, it would be a bad cheese sandwich from a motorway service station. Bread and butter pudding on the other hand, is the food equivalent of a really brilliant wedding speech.

I am not going to provide you with completely exact quantities for this because your pudding dishes will all be different and it’s a very simple thing to make, so being very precise doesn’t matter and you can judge things by eye yourself. And if I say that, you know it must be true.

This is based on Delia Smith’s recipe, so if you can’t handle the vague quantities thing (and I wouldn’t blame you), do seek hers out online.

So here we go, Bread and Butter pudding.

Some white bread
butter
currants
sultanas
ground cinnamon, allspice or nutmeg or all three
some mixed candied peel might be nice? But don’t go out specially for it
3 eggs (ok you really DO need 3 eggs here)
double cream
milk
50g sugar
some lemon zest if you have it

Preheat your oven to 180C

1 Generously butter your pudding dish. Then start buttering slices of white bread on one side, cutting them in half – rectangles or triangles, up to you, (crusts on) and arranging them in the dish.

2 You ought to be able to get about two layers of bread in here, and between the two layers, throw in some currants and sultanas and a sprinkling of spice or spices. Be generous. I used only Allspice, but a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg would be lovely as well.

3 Repeat this on the final layer.

4 In a jug beat the three eggs and then add to this the sugar, lemon zest then the double cream and milk in a ratio of about 2/3 double cream to 1/3 milk and mix.

NOW – this is the bit where you have to judge for yourself how much cream and milk you need. You don’t want the egg-and-cream mixture to be slopping over the sides, but you want the top layer of bread to be soaking up the mixture from the underneath. Err on the side of caution and add less than you think you need – you can always top up the cream and milk afterwards.

Stir all this round and then pour over the bread. Give it a small jiggle. Mix some more cream and milk together and slosh over if you think it needs it.

5 Finish this off with a sprinkling of granulated sugar, if you have it, then shove in the oven for 30-40 mins. The eggy mixture ought to be just set.

Eat with custard or more cream, while staring into space.

*Fanny Robin is not, of course, in The Mayor of Casterbridge but in Far From The Madding Crowd – I TOLD you I’d lost it…

 

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