Story Time: Reading With And To Children

Some of our earliest memories hopefully are of hearing a book read to us likely long before we could read or understood letters.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the same book read over and over again or different books.  The skills gained from this activity are priceless.

Reading daily to young children, starting in infancy, can help with language acquisition and literacy skills. This is because reading to your children in the earliest months stimulates the part of the brain that allows them to understand the meaning of language and helps build key language, literacy and social skills.

In addition it helps a child in developing relationship building skills.  They learn about listening, eye contact, sharing and turn taking.  You can read the same book in different ways and point different things out on each page and it’ll still help in all these ways.

I can remember sitting in pre-school and the teacher using some props when she read books, even if you just change the voice or how you read the pages, it’ll be enjoyed.  My own child, then just 3 years old, still remembers when my Father read him a Sesame Street book in the voices of the characters.  It’s a priceless memory especially since just a few years later my Father passed away and to this day, my now 33 year old, still can recall that time.

I feel so strongly about this that I have a story time tab on my site where I read stories for children.  You can use this tool in many ways; you can listen together and spend time talking about the story (can pause reading whenever you want), For quiet time play the story and just let them relax and listen, or perhaps make it a bedtime ritual where they choose the book.

For more information about reading with children:  http://www.getcaughtreading.org/literacy-reading-to-children.php