I've really enjoyed using Little Reader. It's sometimes not easy getting your playlist to be *interesting*.
I've already witnessed playing back my recordings that are so boring, slow and graphically, just yuck!
So here goes, some of my tips:
Graphics:=======
Once you've found your graphics, if you just add it to LR, it can stretch out and turn out very pixelated. To improve my graphics, I use the free graphics programme, Paint.Net. I create an empty graphic, making it a size of 640 x 480. I then open my graphic and copy the whole graphic (Ctrl+A). I then go back to my empty graphic and paste it in, positioning it in the centre of my new larger graphic. Soon I will upload a document showing how I do this.
Add sound:========
I can't stress enough in adding sounds to your words. For instance, in the Actions playlist download by BrillKids, for eat and drink I found a 'munch, munch, munch' and 'glug, glug, glug' sound respectively. With the animals, I've recently shown 'Donkey' and found 'ey-ore' sounds - which my bubbie laughs at. I've really begun to understand how important it is to make learning fun.
There are loads of places to download sounds from. I personally use
http://www.findsounds.com/ISAPI/search.dll.
Be creative. For instance, when I get to showing kangaroo, I'm going to make a recording of 'boing, boing, boing'. Look for ideas from the dvd's your children use, for instance, Hi5 or Wiggles. They often use *human* sounds for things, which your bubbie already can associate.
Your recordings:
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I've discovered if I *smile* whilst recording my words, they sound much better. It's not easy getting the balance right of pronounciating correctly and just saying them toooo slow. So I try really hard to sound excited, like I would sound if I was reading the words out and trying to get my bubbies attention.
All the best
Tracey
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