Benefits Of Reading For Kids
Parents are always interested in stimulating their children’s minds. They know one of the best ways to get their kids’ interested in learning is by reading to them. Reading is the best way to encourage children to view pictures and gain an understanding of the meaning of pictures by looking through books. This is a great benefit for kids when it comes to learning the foundation of language and word recognition with the association of pictures in books.
It’s very important to start your children young so when they go to preschool, they are able to sit still and listen to a story. As your children grow and enter the higher grade levels, they will also have a chance to be in a higher percentile in their grade levels. This, in turn, gets them ready to learn how to speak and write well and helps them get into a good college. The key is to start young and be consistent with reading to your kids. This is a good way for them to gain confidence in their abilities to succeed and makes them stronger when it comes to problem-solving.
Babies Can Hear in the Womb
Parents should begin reading to their children as early as before birth. A growing fetus is able to hear through the womb and recognize their parent’s voices. This is why when babies are born, sometimes they start looking for their parent’s from the sound of their voice. Yes, babies can hear the voices of their parents and actually have an understanding of language before they are born. The understanding of language is the best for an unborn child during the last trimester of a mother’s pregnancy. It’s important for both parents to read out loud to their unborn child because this helps them with their language quest in the future years of their lives, and they also get a great lesson in the beginning patterns of speech development! How cool is that?
0-12 Months
Remember parents, you can start reading to your baby anytime at this point so they learn the building blocks of reading early. All parents know that it’s going to be a few years before their kids can read on their own, and helping them along at a young age with books help babies understand the concept of what the book is used for. It’s better to hold the books and read to younger babies so they don’t start teething by using a book, and an older baby learns visually how to hold a book and attempt to turn the pages by watching their parents.
This is also a good beginning for your baby to gain some social skills by reading out loud to them. Parents that read with expression in their voices help babies figure out different emotions. Pointing also encourages them to point and learn how to touch the book appropriately. This is a good way to help your baby develop the beginning of their social life.
Toddlers
At this point in time, your toddler is more interested in the pictures than the reading, however, they do still have their favorite stories. This is the time a toddler starts using their mind to make sense of what they are seeing and listening too when they are being read a story. When your toddler listens to parents read, this is what helps them learn how to talk and pronounce the words correctly.
This is also a good time for your toddler to use emotional excitement as they look at the different pages of their favorite stories, because they know what is happening next in the story. The older your toddler gets, they enter into the question stage and may repeat the same words over and over. They also may hold on to their favorite book and take it with them everywhere they go. Reading books helps toddlers understand what they are seeing and listening to in the world outside of their homes.
Preschoolers
By now your child has a favorite story or two. This is when they want you to read the same book many times in a row. You may tire of reading the same book 20 times a day, but remember this is when your child is learning and growing from the benefits of reading. The more parents read to this age group, the more word development and understanding your preschooler will have of the meaning of the words. They will start to use some of these words in their everyday vocabulary and start recognizing their letters that match the words in their favorite storybooks.
Reading to this age group will also help them to start to try and read on their own when they recognize a word. This is when they start looking at different books and ask you for help or simply want you to read them a new story. This is the beginning of their interest in literature.
Grade School
Children are learning more about reading in school at this age but parents should still encourage them to read at home and out loud to you. When children learn to read out loud on their own, this helps them to develop empathy for different characters in their storybooks and helps them use their imaginations. Children learn that all people in the world are not from the same culture or ethnic groups and this is a new awareness that helps them learn to accept people from all backgrounds.
Eventually, children in grade school are past basic reading and learning to read books that are more geared to their age group. They learn vocabulary and also the structure of a sentence and this helps them to write stories by themselves and share them with their families or their class.
Book language is different from everyday conversations and grade-schoolers that are older begin to realize the difference between the two. This is when the imagination comes in because most of the upper-level grade school books start limiting pictures so children automatically start using their minds and create their own pictures that they hear from reading a book.
13-18 Years
Just because your kids become teenagers doesn’t mean you have to stop reading out loud to them. Parents probably were not overly thrilled about English Lit in high school because the story was something that didn’t interest them at the time. High schoolers become disenchanted and lose interest if the books aren’t interesting enough and this might of happened to you as well. Literature is important in high school because this is what helps a student to become a good writer from doing a report on the book they were assigned.
Some of the stories are great classics that some kids don’t appreciate. Parents can use a different tactic and find books that interest their teens by checking out their hobbies and plans for the future and finding good books on their favorite subjects, whether it be fiction, biographies, history, non-fiction, etc. Short stories are also an easy read that you and your teen can enjoy reading out loud together.
If you want your teen to grow into an adult that will enjoy books forever, keep reading to your teens because this shows them that you are setting a good and strong example for them to carry on into their own adult lives and with their children. Use enthusiasm in your voice when you read to teens because this is what gets them motivated to keep reading. Reading continually to your teen also teaches them that you have great respect for literature and you can tell them that this is a good hobby to help you unwind and get lost in a good book.