Reading is one of the most vital skills that children need to develop in order to achieve lifelong success. However, the bitter truth is that today kids prefer to watch TV and spend most of the time on mobile phones, laptops and tablets. The reason is simple, today’s generations of parents don’t focus on how to encourage good reads in their child’s daily routine.
Reading tremendously enhances the children’s brain development, develops their language skills, and increases memory retention and concentration. The sooner you introduce them to books, the easier it is to instill reading as a habit. Parents should be encouraged to take necessary steps to help motivate their tiny tots for becoming rampant readers from a younger age.
Incorporating the habit of reading in children can be a challenging task for many parents. Isn’t it so? If yes, here are some of the tips you might find useful for encouraging your child to be a bookworm.
- Create A Reading Area
Good reading habits start from home. One of the best ways to nurture a love for reading in a child is to create a designated reading space in your home. It isn’t necessary to be huge or have a lot of bookshelves but can be a tiny little corner equipped with lots of good reads that your child will love. Make it cosy for reading by bringing up a cosy chair with some pillows and can also put other necessary things that will help your child to enjoy curling up while reading their favourite book.
- Start at an early age
Start cultivating the habit of reading stories, bedtime stories at an early age like after 1 year. This will foster imagination power, exposure to learning new words & help develop reading habits in kids in near future. Invest in some good short stories or board books and read them to your child whenever you both have quality free time.
- Set An Example
Be an avid reader yourself and read in front of your child as much as you can to instill a love of reading in your child. Children observe and follow the behaviors of adults in their lives. Whether you prefer reading magazines, books, newspapers or any other reading materials, what’s important is to make your child realize that you love reading and learning new things. Hence, try to set a good example for your child.
- Make a mini library
Providing a mini library with a vast array of reading materials to your child can help in developing the interest in reading. Surround them with all types of books including comics, magazines, sci-fiction books, and other sorts of reading materials so that the child can easily pick their interest. This will help demonstrate that reading doesn’t have to be limited to just academic books or in the classroom. Rather, they’ll see that reading is actually fun, entertaining and can be a great hobby.
- Discuss What Your Child Is Reading
Discuss the book he is reading, ask him the relevant questions like what has happened so far, what do you think will happen next etc. The more you ask questions to your kid, the more his love of reading will grow.
- Expose Your Child To Different Book Genres
Don’t limit your child to reading only a single author or one genre of books. Encourage your toddler to select and read different types of genres of books such as mystery, comic books etc to expand their knowledge and boost their level of interest in reading.
Developing positive reading habits can benefit your child in numerous ways. Partner with the best school in Bangalore, Ekya Schools, which is focused on building the reading & learning skills of their students. This will surely help your child to grow well and become a better citizen of tomorrow.