As your children grow, their innate inquisitiveness and desire to learn about the world around them will mean that they will naturally gravitate towards all forms of information – and that includes books!
When they learn to read, a magical world opens up before them, allowing them to explore in ways that they never could before. Of course, they’ll learn the basics at school, but to help to teach them a real love for reading it helps if they’re encouraged at home. The following tips and tactics are sure-fire ways to make sure that happens.
Familiarize Your Child With The Alphabet
Studies show that pre-school children who’ve been given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the letters of the alphabet find learning to read much easier. Good quality wooden alphabet puzzles that require your little ones to find the correct letters to fit the shapes on the board are excellent toys that make learning this key skill fun.
Alphabet Books Are A Great Next Step
You can support this process by using alphabet books that create letter associations with common items, colors, and shapes. Young children are incredibly visual and respond exceptionally well to this kind of book – you’ll often find that they still enjoy looking through them and reading along as their literacy skills develop!
Fill Your House With Books
Children learn behaviors by mimicking their parents and peers, so if your children grow up seeing you read they’re much more likely to develop a love of reading themselves. Having a house full of books for both you and your kids is a great way to encourage regular reading, so make sure that you help your children to grow their own library.
Fill it with colorful books appropriate for their developmental level, but also include books that are slightly beyond them at the moment so that they’re already familiar with them when they’re ready to pick them up – you might be surprised to find them thumbing through something quite advanced!
Get Out The Family Albums
Oral storytelling is a traditional method for teaching children about language, and one of the best ways to do this is to pull out your old family photos and tell your kids stories based on them. Using the pictures as a visual anchor you can either tell the tales of the photos or be as creative as you wish. Children love it when you make up stories on the spot; you don’t have to be Roald Dahl – just let yourself go and encourage them to join in!
Improve Skills With A Word Jar
Learning should always be fun – especially for your children! One way you can help your kids improve their vocabulary is by introducing a word jar to your home, which can be used in a number of creative ways:
- We know that it’s really cute when your little ones mispronounce words, but it’s not helping their development to ignore it. Try writing these words down, putting them in the jar, and then pulling one out every day to help your child learn to pronounce it correctly.
- Teach your kids how to use words in context by pulling out a word every day that they know but rarely use – then ask them to use it in a sentence that makes sense.
- Practice using words that have multiple meanings and can be nouns, verbs or adjectives. Kid’s eyes light up when they start to understand how magical words can be when used this way – for example, bowl, foot, mouse, and stick.
Matching Written Words With Sounds
Reading aloud to your children is an essential part of the parenting process and helps their development, as well as building strong bonds between you. It can, however, be challenging for your little ones to associate the words on the page with those you’re speaking, so try to make it a habit of following along with your finger on the page so that they can begin to recognize the words as you read.
Use Your Local Library
The internet age has rendered libraries almost redundant to the vast majority, but they’re still wonderful treasure troves of fun and knowledge for growing minds. Regular visits to your local library will help to cement a love for books and a sense of excitement at the endless possibilities within.
Read Together
Making regular ‘book dates’ with your children is a lovely way to bond and improve literacy skills as their reading improves. The following ideas will make that time extra fun and productive:
- Take it in turns to read a page of their key stage book, but don’t enforce this if your child becomes frustrated. In fact, as soon as frustration kicks in it’s time to stop whatever you’re reading and shift focus to something else– the goal is to make reading a joy rather than a chore!
- Read comic books together because they’re engaging on many levels and help your child to learn to follow the narrative through visual and written prompts.
- Read more advanced books to your kids with storylines and character development that’s engaging and challenging. Ask them if they’d like to read a few lines every now and then, but again, don’t push this.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this collection of our favorite ways to help your children develop and grow a lifelong passion for reading, and here at Kiddit we know just how important this can be to help in so many other areas of life. We’re sure that with your help and encouragement they’ll learn to love books and come to thank you for giving them such a wonderful gift. If you need any inspiration for other ways to help them learn to love to read, check out our alphabet soup starters, story boxes or reading and writing toys.
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