Reading With Your Child Is Beneficial
Read with Your Child Ages Infant, Toddler or Preschool!
One simple activity, many developmental benefits.
Reading is one activity with many benefits to foster a child’s early development. When you spend time reading to/with your child, you are doing so much more than teaching them about the information in that particular book. Here is a look at some of the deeper levels of development being impacted by the act of reading to your child. All of these areas of development are included in Growing Brilliant Preschools key developmental focus areas.
Speech and language development
When infants and toddlers listen to adults reading, they are picking up on the rhythms of language and dialog. Their vocabulary grows as they are taught new words.
Social-emotional development
The very act of sitting down to read with your preschool-age child promotes positive interaction with adults and siblings. Encouraging their active participation in the experience gives them a space to voice their ideas and opinions.
Creative thinking
As humans, we have a long history of story-telling as a means to teach lessons and share ideas. (Think parables, nursery rhymes, and mythology.) When we read children fictional stories and fairy tales, we are inviting them to use their imaginations. Imagination is a critical tool in developing creative thinking. Creative thinkers are the resourceful change-makers of this world.
Critical thinking and reasoning
Use the experience of reading aloud to your child to sharpen their critical thinking ability. Stop during the story to ask your child things like, “What do you think will happen next?” “How do you think that made the boy feel?” “What would you do if that happened to you?” “Why do you think she chose to do that?” Allow your child to interrupt your reading if they have comments or questions, as well.
Remember: The goal is not just to finish the story; the goal is a rich learning experience. You can provide that by following their cues toward deeper inquiry.
Love of learning
When we get excited about reading with our children, their natural curiosity is nurtured as they learn new things and hear stories that evoke emotion. Because they learn that there are worlds of imagination and information available to them through books. A love of reading that begins when a child is young is likely to follow them throughout their life!
Knowledge of the world
Books give us access to the world outside of our everyday experiences and encounters. It’s a big world out there! Through reading books, we can encourage children to learn about places, perspectives, and ways of life outside of their own family and community.
Longer attention span
We live in a world filled with technology and ever-decreasing attention spans. One way to encourage children to develop longer attention spans is through reading them engaging stories. Don’t be discouraged by a young child’s inability to make it through an entire story. Just keep at it and develop the habit. A great attention building activity for emerging readers and older children is to begin to read chapter books together. The habit of reading a couple of chapters together per day, and
the anticipation of finding out what happens next is a fantastic attention span builder.