Reading to your children is a great bonding experience crucial for their overall cognitive development. It also helps to nurture their imagination and creativity.
Even newborns can benefit from being read to – high-contrast picture books introduce infants to shapes, colors, and words. Reading with kids at a consistent, scheduled time (like before bedtime) sets the foundation for a lifetime of learning.
Develops Language Skills
Reading aloud to children is incredibly powerful for boosting their language skills. Reading books aloud helps kids learn phonemic awareness (connecting letters with sounds in spoken words), phonological awareness, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.
Stories are also great for teaching children to interpret and understand feelings and making connections between their own experiences and those of characters in a story. This builds emotional literacy, theory of mind, and social thinking skills.
Reading to young kids helps them build a wide base of general knowledge, making it easier to learn about new subjects once in school. Reading together can be a daily experience that creates strong parent-child bonds and fosters a lifelong love of reading.
Develops Listening Skills
Parents often read aloud to their children and, despite their busy schedules, make time for this special activity between them. This time books as children’s learning materials also develop good listening skills, as children listen intently to stories and learn more about their world.
Reading stimulates real focus, unlike watching TV, which requires only visual stimulation, so children have to concentrate and work hard to follow a storyline. This will help their ability to focus in school and when they need to concentrate on a task.
Younger children sometimes need to keep their hands or bodies busy while they listen so that they can concentrate, but most will eventually learn to focus and sit still during read-aloud. Discussing what they have heard after the book is finished can enhance this focus and understanding.
Develops Vocabulary
Reading helps children develop vocabulary and better understand the world around them. Books are troves of knowledge describing people, places, and things children may not otherwise encounter.
Reading to children frequently can expand their vocabulary by 1.4 million words before kindergarten, giving them an academic advantage over those who are not read to.
When you make reading a regular activity in your home, your child will see that it’s important to you and feel more confident and comfortable with language and print. Reading with your child can enhance your relationship and establish trust. Encouraging creativity is a great benefit of this approach.
Develops Writing Skills
Reading is a great way to build a strong bond with a child. Whether sitting together and enjoying a humorous tale or sharing a bedtime story, this can instill a lifelong love for reading.
Children also learn that writing is a way to express one’s creativity. Children who write creatively can think outside the box, thus encouraging them to be innovative when doing other activities like artwork or playing sports.
Additionally, reading to a child can help develop their imagination. By reading stories that draw from various cultures and worlds, individuals can expand their perspectives and delve into characters they may have never encountered before. This will inspire their imagination, lead them to dream bigger daily and create more imaginative projects.
Develops Creativity
Aside from the emotional bond you’ll build with your child through reading, children will also develop their creative thinking and imagination. This is because of how they learn through books – often, the text provides a logical progression of ideas that inspire kids to mimic the process in their imaginary play.
This imaginative play will help your child think outside the box later on when she is working on science projects in school or even helping build a bridge. Your child’s creativity developed through reading will enable her to tackle any challenge.