"Read to your kids," we hear it from everywhere, and sure we all do it already, right? But do we read enough? Our are kids' learning to love it enough? Research shows that 15-20% of all children will experience difficulty in learning to read! It's never too late to rethink your reading strategies, but it's also best to start when they're young - fresh from the womb, even!
Children's Mercy's pediatric specialists in speech pathology developed a program to help educators, speech-language pathologists and parents teach children early on to reading skills through visual, auditory and kinesthetic-tactile tactics. Rhyming to Reading™ is available to anyone, and has 30% average improvement rate. You can learn more about it here! "Speaking, singing and sharing books with babies are easy ways to cultivate literacy." - Sharon Wilkerson, MD at Children's Mercy
You can see below our favorite ways to encourage reading (and favorite books, too!).
Keeping books all (and I mean ALL) around our house allows for our kids the opportunity to read (on their own or with us) at any point of their day. They each have books in their rooms on their own bookshelves, on a shelf in our living room, in our storage ottoman in our family room and then they also end up in piles every other possible place, too.
And they often are found reading, or flipping through their books (when their not full of energy and running around, of course). Liam doesn't take naps anymore, but he does have "quiet time" in his room during Nora's nap (which is getting shorter by the day) and he'll sit in his little reading nook and read.
For us, there are 3 things that help our kids love to read:
1. Having books everywhere, as mentioned above. Give them the option at any moment to read. But then, switch up and move the books around every few weeks, so they don't get too used to any particular book in any specific area. Keeps in more interesting.
2. Bringing out new books + get books that are about specific interests your child have. We have a ton of books - this is the best thing to get for kid's birthdays and even when I was pregnant at my baby showers. Books are the most important toy! They can also get expensive, so work with your friends to trade books, check out secondhand stores/sales or discount books stores to get them for discounts, and ask for them for gifts.
3. Rotate books in and out of existence. This will keep you, as the parent, from having to read the same book over and over (and over....), and introduce your kids to new pictures, words and themes. We do keep our kids very favorite books around, but like to hide some books to get them to concentrate on other ones at times.
Some of our current and long-lasting favorite books, pictured above:
1.
Dragon Loves Tacos - This books has a great story that the kids think is funny, but also keeps them intrigued and following along.
3. Fairy Tales - a whole book of those old school stories told in a more modern way.
4.
Tickle Monster - This book is on repeat in our house! It funny, involves interaction (tickling!) and puts monsters in a nice light.
5.
Five-Minute Star War Stories - Our kids haven't even seen the movies, but just through osmosis or something, they love Star Wars. This book, full of short stories from all the Star War's movies, is the perfect child-friendly way to illustrate the story.
I'd love for you to share with me your favorite books and/or ways you encourage your littles to love reading in the comments below!
If you're looking to connect with other mama's on reading or a multitude of other topics, check out Children's Mercy Moms page!
This post is in partnership with Children's Mercy Hospital of Kanas City! All opinions are my own! Make sure to follow them on Facebook& Twitter!
