One of the best ways you can help your child develop a love of learning is to help them discover a love of reading. For some children reading is a very difficult task in the beginning. The letters and words just don’t seem to flow together as it does for other children who seem to be natural readers. But with a little help and encouragement, you can let your little ones develop at their own speed.
Here are 10 tips to help with your child’s literary development:
- Read books together as often as possible.
- Let your child choose some of the books you will read together.
- Select stories to read together that build on your child’s interests.
- Ask open-ended questions about a story’s characters, setting, and events in the story.
- Discuss your child’s answers by repeating the answer, clarifying the answer, or asking more questions.
- Encouragement your child to give input into the story.
- When a new vocabulary word is introduced, give the definition and then re-read the page substituting the new vocabulary word with the definition.
- Act out some of the stories for reinforcement and just for fun.
- While reading, point out letters and words on the pages and show the progression of reading from left to right and top to bottom.
- Be an example of how much enjoyment can be received from reading.