Blog#1: 3321

In chapter one we went over the values of literature for children. We learned that children must establish the love of literature at an early age to promote early literacy. I totally agree with this from personal experience. Both my daughters (3 & almost 2) love books. They both know how to take care of books and look forward to reading times everyday. On the other hand, my nephews tear books, hate to read, and totally get bored when you try to read to them. Literature can also helps expand there vocabulary, which helps them communicate better, assist them in their development, and help their personality development. Literature can also help develop them socially.

Literature is just one of the values that one can learn as a child. I believe that a value is something one learns and applies it to our everyday life. Some values are more important to some than they are to others. Everybody values something different due to their life experiences. Some examples that I would consider values are; honesty, respect, and trust. Values are different for everybody because they vary due to our life experiences. For example, I think trust is a big value, but for others who have been hurt before or lied to all the time, they might not believe too much in trust. They have been lied to many times and can no longer trust the same.

I believe they all kind of come hand in hand with one another. I really think that respect is one of my most important ones. I was always taught by my parents to trust others. Respect was a huge thing in our family. We learned to respect our parents and siblings more than anything. Teachers were next on our list. Both my mother and father really praised teachers for their jobs and brought that home to us. Both with very little school were able to see what a good job they were doing with my oldest brother, who knew not one word of English when he started school. Disrespecting an educator was one of the worst things we could do. As a child I really believed this was taking it overboard, but now as an adult, and a parent, I can really see the importance in this. Teachers and parents are really the people who help shape the individual, not only mentally, but also socially. What this person learns as a child will help him/her become the adult that will one day teach others in our world.

I believe that respect can be taught anywhere. If a child simply talks back, the child can be corrected and will see this was disrespectful. Children are very smart and can learn right from wrong quicker than we think. Simple daily experiences give us the opportunity to teach this value, we just need to take advantage of these opportunities.