When the child becomes the sound designer

There is probably a book in your house that you could recite with your eyes shut. You know which page gets turned quickly and which one gets stayed on, and you know exactly how the last line goes.

Here is one small change to that book. You keep reading the words. Your child does all the sounds.

One job, and only one

That is the whole thing. Whenever something on the page could make a noise, they make it. The rain. The dog. The lorry going past. The door. The kettle, if there is a kettle in it.

It stays one job on purpose. You are not asking them to read, or to act it out, or to answer questions about what happens next. One part of a book you have both read before is the only thing that changes.

It also means you are still doing your usual job. The book proceeds as normal. There is just somebody else in charge of the weather now.

Starting it off

One way to open it is to pick the page yourself and name the job.

Something like: I will read, you do the rain. Or: this page has a dog on it, you are in charge of the dog.

That is one possible start rather than the required one. Once the first sound has happened you can widen it out to any page, or carry on pointing at things and waiting.

You can also do this by pausing rather than asking. Read up to the moment, stop, and look at the page. If nothing comes, name the thing on the page and wait again.

Following rather than correcting

This part is worth deciding before you start.

If they decide the cat says woof, the cat says woof. If the tractor is a whistle, it is a whistle. If a page with nothing noisy on it turns out to have a very loud noise, that is their call. Handing over the job hands over the decisions with it. A correction is one you are making instead.

You can follow, though. Ask which page has the loudest thing on it. Ask what a character on the page sounds like when they are cross. Ask for the same page twice, once loud and once quiet. Do the same sound they just did, badly. None of those is a correction.

It is also fine if every page gets the same noise. If the answer to everything turns out to be a car engine, you can carry on reading and let it be a car engine. Nothing here requires the sounds to be varied, or matched to the right animal, or different from the ones they did last night.

Quieter versions

If no sound comes, there is no need to push it, and there are quieter versions available.

You can go first and leave a gap. You can whisper the sounds together. You can hum a page instead of voicing it, or tap the rhythm of it on the cover of the book with two fingers.

Each of those is a version of the activity rather than a substitute for it. Tapping a rain rhythm on a cardboard cover is a sound effect, and the job is still theirs.

One page is plenty

Worth saying plainly: you do not have to get through the book.

One page with sounds on it is a complete version of this. So is three pages and then a change of subject. There is nothing here that needs finishing, and no performance that has to arrive anywhere. The book can go back on the shelf mid-story.

The activity is listed as five to fifteen minutes, so stopping at the short end of that is still the activity as written.

Try it tonight

You need one picture book, and one you have both read before is an option. Nothing to prepare, nothing to clear up afterwards.

Read the first page as normal. Stop at the second one, point at something on it that could make a noise, and wait.