Why Read?

I've made it a personal goal to read a book a day to Zane. I want to get Mitch in on reading books to him as well after taking my literacy classes in school and reading this article. It is so important to read to your children!

Reading to your children when they are young helps them in many different ways. I am a certified literacy instructor in the State of Idaho and I personally struggle when I hear that over half of the children entering kindergarten this year will not be prepared. One way we can combat this lack of preparedness is to one look up what skills your children need before going into Kindergarten. Another way to help them is to READ to them! By reading to them, you teach them several very important concepts:

• You teach them about print awareness. Reading to them helps them understand that text is read top to bottom, left to right. They begin to recognize what the meaning of the words "author" and "illustrator" are. They can identify the cover of the book, they realize that books contain meaning and that the pictures are in addition to the words. 
• By learning about print awareness, your child will be able to recognize that there is literature everywhere in their lives! They will be able to recognize that there is writing on signs, in pictures, on labels, everywhere! This is so important for them to gain awareness of their surroundings and to help them navigate and learn. One way to help them develop this skill is to tell them what iconic signs say, such as Stop Signs, the Street Signs in your neighborhood, and the signs labeling the grocery store you visit. Ask them if they saw a billboard you passed and if they saw what it said. Show them the sign at the park you go and visit and read it to them. 
• You teach them about letters and letter-sound relationships. Reading to children, especially when they are sitting on your lap and you are pointing to the words as you read them aloud, helps children gain a one to one ratio of the words you say and the words that are on the page. They begin to see words and make correlations to what you are saying and what is written. The more exposure they have to words and letters, the more likely they are to pick up on different letters, spelling patterns, and sight words from a young age. Reading alphabet books is especially helpful in developing these skills. Teach them the name of objects and point to those objects in the book and the text that says their name. Don't limit yourself to only teaching them animal names. The more words they can understand, the easier your life will be later on when you are asking them to go get their shoes, to find their bottle, etc. when they are very young. 
• You help them begin to develop an understanding of rhyming. Reading rhyming books to your children and accentuating the rhymes helps children recognize that pattern of speech. They will gain a sense of rhyming and will be able to use the phonetic skills they have acquired through reading to come up with rhymes themselves. Help them develop this skill by asking them questions such as "What sounds like the word mat? M-mm-mat...?"
• They develop listening comprehension. Believe it or not, once your child enters school, they will be tested on listening and reading comprehension. They are two different things! Listening comprehension is your child's ability to understand what they hear, analyze what they have heard, and then form an evaluation or opinion on what they have heard. This skill can be developed as simply as closing the book after you are done reading a page and asking them either literal questions (questions whose answers are found directly in the text: "What color was red riding hood's hood?") or asking them inferential questions (questions whose answers can be inferred through the reading of the text: "Why do you think she did not listen to her mother?"). This ability will be so important in life, from school to their future careers. Heck, even marriage requires listening comprehension - even if my husband claims he doesn't hear what I say (;

• Your child will develop a stamina for reading. Yes, believe it or not, you have to build up your endurance when it comes to reading. Have you ever sat down with a child who could not make it through the first page of a book? It could be any number of factors, but I'm betting the most common one is that they are bored of the book. They need to practice reading stamina just like they need to practice throwing a ball or skipping. Reading stamina translates into so many other parts of life as well. By having a high endurance for reading, they will be better equipped for school where they are expected to participate in reading activities for at least 90 minutes a day, if not more. Further down the road when they are in college and have 16 credits worth of reading to do, they will be much better equipped. In their careers, they will be able to handle large reading work loads. 
• Children will be better able to guess or anticipate what is happening next. By reading books, you can help your child develop the skill of prediction by asking them what they think is going to happen when the story gets interesting. Before reading, read the title of the book to your child and show them the cover. Ask them what they think the book is going to be about based off of those two things. Then ask them to support why they think that. This activity will help them to develop their predicting skills (useful for math and science later in life) and it will help them to expand their creativity and imagination by seeing that there are so many possibilities. If your child has an interesting prediction, help them write down their version of the story before you read the actual story and see if the two matched up. This skill helps them with comprehension (going back to their story after reading the book and seeing if they can tell you what the differences were) and with their ability to determine "facts" from "fiction" ("In your story, you said the little girl would fall off the bike? Did that actually happen?")
• You help your child develop language skills from reading to them aloud that they wouldn't develop as early otherwise. For example, children are little imitators. Have you ever seen a child that tries to copy the facial expressions you make? Have you ever heard a child say exactly what you have said, but in a different setting? Reading aloud to children not only models what good reading looks like, but it teaches them important language patterns and skills necessary for further development. This is one reason experts are finding children born into poverty have lower vocabularies than their middle-class counterparts because they are read to less and do not have rich text environments.