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Becoming a successful reader is not something your child will accomplish overnight. Understanding written material and vocabulary takes time, dedication, and plenty of learning opportunities. There are several steps parents can take in order to help their child develop necessary skills for success in the classroom and beyond. These are skills that must be developed at a young age in order for them to be the most effective, so starting as early as possible never hurts.
Starting At A Young Age
The earlier you introduce your child to the wonders of reading, the sooner he can develop the necessary skills for being successful in reading and language arts. It is never too early to start reading stories to your child. Some parents even start doing so from birth and onwards. Hearing a variety of words and phrases helps the brain develop and encourages mental stimulation.
If you don’t want to start as young as birth, ages 2-3 are excellent places to start reading to your young one. Choose simple stories that are easy for a young child to follow. Allow them to ask questions so you can provide answers. This helps with reading comprehension development, a necessary skill required to master language.
Reading suggestions:
- Short poems.
- Short stories.
- Reading labels on food or drinks.
- Reading road signs.
Remember that as you read together, you should encourage your child to repeat what you said. This will help them increase their vocabulary and the ability to pronounce challenging words. Repetition and memorization aid in reading development, and can make a huge impact on their reading success.
Advancing To More Challenging Steps
After you start a habit of reading to your child regularly, you should incorporate more advanced steps. This can be moving up from “See Spot Run” books to something more involved. Even if your child is still 4 years old, choose books more advanced. This is how young children push beyond their limits to expand their reading capacity. If you were to continue reading small easy books, then their ability to learn more would slow down.
A good step to follow is encouraging interaction with the books. If a story is about a pig, ask your child to act out certain parts of the story. Read with an interesting voice as well, so your child can tell the difference between characters, tone, and underlying emotion. While it seems like a simple enough step, this type of strategy is crucial for developing an interest in reading as well as comprehension.
Encouraging Healthy Reading Development
It is crucial for parents to encourage reading development from a young age, and minimize television use. Many parents use a TV set as a babysitter, and this is simply not good for brain development in young children. It cannot be emphasized enough, that reading more often and turning off the TV is the best way to teach your child.
Instead of television parents can use fun flash card games. These are great for children 3 to 4 years old. There are plenty of options available for vocabulary that includes picture and word association. Teach children to enjoy things not involved with TV and they will be much more likely to grow into successful readers.
Parents can also encourage reading success by utilizing educational video games. These are best for children that are over 4 years old and already know basic reading skills. There are countless games out there that provide educational engagement, while kids still have fun. This is a great compromise between TV use and education. Allow your kids to play these types of games only when they have behaved well. This will get them excited about participating in reading.
Ideas For Reading Games:
- Flash card type games with vocabulary and sentences.
- Read aloud tools that teach children the sound of animals or different people.
- Activity games that incorporate reading comprehension.
- Complete the sentence games that relate back to a story or poem.
Keeping Reading Material Available
Keep reading material in the home at all times. Read magazines, encyclopedias, almanacs, books, newspapers, and other types of reading materials often. When your child sees you doing this, he will be more likely to want to follow your steps. Make it seem like a fun activity, and share cool facts from encyclopedias.
This type of engagement is healthy and fulfilling. Children that read more types of materials aside from fiction stories are more likely to do extremely well on reading tests during their school years. This development starts at such a young age that it is important to continue the trend throughout their child hood.
You can also take your child to libraries. This is another important thing that is dying out rapidly amongst school aged children. More kids spend time at home playing video games or watching TV. They don’t spend enough time in a library or bookstore, learning to appreciate the beauty of reading and language arts. Take your child as often as possible to participate in story time with other kids, and check out interesting books to take home with you.
Advancement in reading will only occur if you spend time with your child. Being in preschool or daycare or even kindergarten cannot make up for the skills only you can help develop. If you want your child to be a successful reader, then take the time to help them along. Read together often, even before they know how to walk. Act out scenes and speak in voices that are interesting and fun to listen to. Teach your child that reading is important and can take them anywhere they want to go. A love for books is something valuable and rare with children these days, but should not be tossed aside. When your child is a successful reader they can perform highly in school, make better grades, and make reading a lifelong habit.
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