07 Oct What Parents Can do to reinforce their child’s reading skills?

With mobile phones, laptops and kindles taking over, books have now become old school but in spite of this there is no substitute to what reading can help your kid develop. Reading is important for emotional as well as intellectual development of your kid. Enlisted below are all the advantages that reading has to offer to your kid-

• It helps your child learn new vocabulary as well as lays the foundation for language learning.
• Reading helps your kid gain knowledge about anything and everything.
• It has been proved that kids who read since a very young age tend to be good at logic, reasoning and have better focus and longer attention span.

Having understood the benefits of reading let us now have a look at all the effective ways in which you can reinforce your child’s reading skills:

• Read to them:

The first, foremost and the most impactful way to inculcate the habit of reading in your kid is to read to them yourselves. You can begin by reading to them bedtime stories and then gradually progress to magazines, sign boards, weather reports, recipes or just some thing on the television as you huddle together to watch it. Reading to your kids is the most basic way of teaching them how to read because this is how they will learn to listen to sounds, how expressions are made and how words are pronounced. Over a period of time, you can encourage your kid to read to you and switch roles to make them learn to read and comprehend the literature by themselves.

• Make readable stuff available everywhere:

The next time you wish to check the recipe of that yummy Mexican dish, ask your kid to read it out to you from the cook book. This is how you can involve them in day-to-day reading. Encourage them to read snippets of newspapers like comics or kids’ section which might interest them. Keep books and comics handy all around your home and encourage them to read. You can also enroll your child in a library and take them for a visit there every once in a while. This will expose them to various book genres and help them decide their favorite.

• Dedicate a time of the day to reading:

As parents we often get so busy with our routine that we don’t have time to read ourselves. Thus, we only end up badgering our kids to read. This is when the child begins ignoring your advice. Instead take out a dedicated hour or half for reading. This should be the time when all of the family comes together with their favorite books and reads in silence. You can also host a discussion session wherein you discuss what you read with each other and other quirky aspects about the book.

• Keep yourselves involved in the process:

The process of learning to read for every child can take different amount of time. While some may pick it up at the drop of the hat, other kids might take longer. Do not compare the pace of your child with those of others and stay involved. Keep reading to them, keep listening to them read, correcting them at appropriate times, ask them questions to understand how and what they are comprehending and keep in touch with their teachers on their reading progress and develop strategies effective and exclusive for your child. All in all, never give up on your child.

At Mighty Minds, we provide kids with a safe, healthy, loving and caring environment for them to grow and learn. We understand how as a day care center we play an important role in the upbringing of your child. Hence, we pay a lot of attention to LISTEN to the children and what they have to say about the world around them. We encourage them to learn, play and grow experientially. Reading is an important activity of our program and we encourage all our students to read and experience at the same time. This helps a child nurture and develop a positive attitude and set them up for a bright future. If you wish to learn more about our day care programs, visit our website or get in touch with our expert.