So, what do we mean when we talk about training children to listen and focus? Well, I’m sure you’ve seen the stories in the news about the impact of technology on our children, and how too much exposure to screens and electronic entertainment can cause children, and even some adults, to struggle with staying focused on anything for more than a few seconds.

On the other hand, researchers have found that reading improves your ability to focus because it stimulates the prefrontal cortex. 

While reading is good, it is also important to read good literature. I recognize that we are talking about young children here, so the complexity of the plot and the descriptions have to be appropriate, but I believe they can still be rich and meaningful. The Adventures of Zip, Zap, and Zup are not “readers”, per se. They are specifically intended for parents to sit down with their younger children and read them together .

The language we use in the stories is not “dumbed down”. From metaphors, like “the rain came down in sheets”, and “the wind whistling through the leaves”, to phrases with an onomatopoeia like “a buzz among the guests”, and “the gentle pitter-patter of the rain”, the Adventures of Zip, Zap, and Zup incorporate common literary devices to keep them interesting and relatable. We have also been purposeful in using descriptive vocabulary words like “howling”, “frantic”, “antiseptic”, “grime”, and “cozy”, in addition to words that are specific for insects, such as “cocoon”, “pupa”, and “antennae”. Reading to your children is an activity that can specifically train them to develop attention and focus, while engaging them in a fun activity that builds closeness with mom and dad.

It’s also crucial that children learn how to relate to other people and how to understand how other people feel.

How do we learn about caring, empathy, the world around us, and how to interact with it appropriately? One of the primary tools is through stories. Unlike direct instructions, such as do this or don’t do that, stories give context. They illustrate not only what to do, but why to do it and how to do it, or why and how not to do it. Narratives help us observe situations. They engage us not only intellectually, but also emotionally. They help us to look at motives, at circumstances, and evaluating what we should do.

For the Adventures of Zip, Zap, and Zup, our characters are small, little ladybugs who have to navigate a world where most things are bigger than they are. Just as children sometimes feel very small in a big world, we want them to know that being small does not mean that they are not important or that they can’t do important things. 

Animals are often used in children’s stories, where they are given some human qualities, like being able to talk and think and reason, and modified to look more like people, such as walking on two legs and possessing a posable thumb. The term for giving animals human traits is anthropomorphism, which makes them more relatable. In so doing, the children can see themselves in the animals and learn the lessons, and yet remain distant.

The final skill that we want to help you develop in your children is learning to be curious and to look at more than what is on the surface. Each Zip, Zap, and Zup book contains three separate stories, a ladybug fact page, and bonus pages that look at various subjects in relation to the stories.

Each story has a particular setting and within that setting is a conflict or a crisis. The conflict or crisis is never meant to be scary, but is designed to arouse curiosity, intrigue, and possible concern while it remains unresolved. The characters then work through the situation to arrive at a resolution which concludes the story. Learning to respond appropriately to situations is an important skill and often times that initial response is one of trying to fully understand what is happening. Wanting to fully understand something is at the root of curiosity.

The Adventures in Learning pages help you to get new things out of the stories every time you read them.  

The idea is not that you would sit down and read them all as a story themselves, but instead, if your child asks to read a story again, maybe you would read one of the bonus pages first, and then, as you re-read the story, you would look for what had been introduced on the bonus page. Extending the story to other ideas and real-life experiences you may have had, especially when you were a child, is a great way for you to build wonderful childhood memories with your children.