This year is the 7th edition of the Asian Festival of Children’s Content. It aims to celebrate children’s books and content, with a focus on Asian themes. The event is for writers, educators, parents etc. hosted by the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDSC).
Our Parenting World team was invited to two exciting media preview workshops. The first workshop was on reading “Wordless Picture Books” conducted by Dr Geraldine Teo-Zuzarte. “Huh? How do we read a book which is wordless?” We were asking ourselves until Dr Teo explained to us how to read these books. The books have pictures but no words, and thus the readers who can be children or adults are expected to use their imaginations to think of an appropriate story based on the pictures and they are also encouraged to use post-it pads to write their comments or speech and stick on each of the pages to tell their story.
This is an excellent way to develop a child’s imagination and also strengthen the child’s oral and written language as he/she is expected to say and write down what he/she thinks of the story. For a younger child who is not able to write the sentences yet, the child can actually draw what he/she thinks the story will flow.
The second workshop was on reading poetry. It was conducted by Assistant Professor Bascal Rhoda Myra Garces for both children and adults. For many of us parents, we encountered poetry as one of the compulsory topics we needed to study in English Literature during our secondary schools and most of us would have forgotten about reading poetry by now. This workshop actually taught the children and adults how fun and entertaining poetry can be, because it needed not be something serious like what we used to dread during our English Literature lessons. The poetry workshop encouraged us to adopt a lighter view on the abstract thinking of poetry.
Both workshops are very interesting for both children and adults. In this media preview event, the younger children of around 2 years old can participate as well as the older children who are around 12 years old. The books used in both workshops are mostly available at the National Library. This AFCC 7th edition will be an interesting event for all to participate.
The Asian Festival of Children’s Content will be held from 25 to 29 May 2016.
More information on the details of the various workshops is available at their official website: http://afcc.com.sg/
