5 tips to develop your child’s love for reading this school holidays!

The school holidays are coming soon, and if you have a preschooler at home, the looming notion to keep him/her occupied on weekdays starts to rear its head

Should you send him/her to a holiday camp? Arrange extra enrichment classes? Holiday camps will typically set you back a couple hundred bucks, and last for only a couple days, enrichment classes are not cheap either!

At the end of the day, after planning all the programmes and activities for your children, make sure you set aside some down-time when they can be at home with no pressing agenda or schedule, when your child is calm, relaxed and maybe a little bored, that provides an optimum state of mind for reading.

The library is your best friend

If there is one habit we want our children to develop when they are young, it is the love for reading. Make a point to visit the library a couple of times this school holidays and take full advantage of the increased borrowing limits. On top of that, the borrowing function on the NLB app works like a dream, allowing you to borrow books without having to queue.

Bring durable tote bags for all the books you will be carrying!

Choosing a good book

Select topics that children are relatively familiar with, such as animals, dinosaurs, fairy tales etc. Go broad with the range of topics as this is what reading is all about: Learning!

Don’t take my words too literally though, topics like ‘C++ programming’ or ‘Making millions through options trading’ are probably bad ideas.

For preschoolers, go for books with bright, colourful illustrations and relatively large fonts, this makes is less of a turn-off to young children, do not worry about the book being too easy for your children, our job here is to develop their love for reading, once that is achieved, they will soar on their own.

Read slowly

Some parents tend to read a tad too quickly as adults do read at a faster speed, we should constantly remind ourselves that we are reading to our kids. So as much as we can, read at a moderate pace, and pay attention to enunciating the words. After each page, we pause and start a short discussion with our child about what we’ve just read.

Parent reading to child
A parent reading with a child

Take your time when reading to your child

Make reading easy

One thing we refrain from doing is to hand our children a book and ask them to read it. Reading should be a joyful experience, what we do instead is to ensure that the books are all easily accessible, we have some near the sofa, some near the TV console, some by the bed, some near the dining table. Wherever the children are, they have a book within reach. In time, reaching out for a book to read will become second nature.

Make reading fun

When selecting a book to read to your child, consider preparing some accompanying activities, such as paper and crayon for some story related craft activities, or a sensory bin for your child to play with and imagine the scenes from the story as you read. You will realise that getting them to sit through the reading sessions isn’t as hard as some made out to be!

Till next time,

Jeff

Three Little Pigs
3 little pigs

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