Bringing up Readers for Life

 Hey Mommies! Welcome back to The Mommy At Home.

It's that time of the year when I try to refresh my daughter's book collection depending upon her current reading level. Between last summer and this one, she has grown to enjoy reading and looks forward to our family reading time. It has almost become like a ritual for all of us sit together for about half an hour with our respective books and read. Apart from the evening ritual, my daughter also likes to pick up a book when she's done studying for the day. I feel that is a much better thing to do than to bounce straight towards the television.

Being an English educator, the one question that is posed by parents is how to get children excited about reading or how to develop the love for reading in children. The answer to that - get reading yourselves. Kids are our little monkeys. They'll copy whatever you do! It's that simple. I am an ardent reader anyway so it came about very naturally in my household. But, even if you do not enjoy reading that much, but want your child to be a reader; then you must do some kind of reading with the child. Start off by reading the children's books aloud to them. Once they become independent readers, you can still fix a time in the day when you can pick up, maybe, a magazine or a newspaper or even a kindle device to browse. The idea is to let the child form a daily reading habit. Plus, some cozy family time never hurt anyone, right!  

Secondly, stick to a schedule. Sit for that half an hour anytime of the day that is suitable, but do it daily - NO SUNDAYS OFF! Children don't understand breaks in schedules, as I said, for them it is all about forming a habit. Once they get into the habit, you can move away slightly. You cannot and should not expect your little one to read while you are watching TV or listening to blaring music. 

Next, create an ambience of reading at home. Keep books accessible and visible to kids at all times. If you keep them high up on a shelf to decorate your beautiful bookcase, the child will loose interest.  Keep them within reach of your kids. Yes, they will pick all of them up and spread them all over the house; but that is just what enables them to make a relationship with their books. 

Lastly, a time tested way. Read to them at bedtime. It only takes ten minutes. Whatever we want our children to imbibe, we must first do it ourselves - model it out to them. They will surely get it.

In my next post, I'll be talking about how to reuse story books for arts and literacy concepts; and how to make simple DIY workbooks for scaffolding those concepts. 

Let me know in the comments section if there is anything specific you would like me to explore and write about. Let us mommies come together and share our wisdom for a better future of our children. 

Until then...

Happy Reading!