image credit: reading session, via flickr

One of our first posts on this blog was entitled Reading Aloud to Kids: What’s the Big Deal Anyway, in which we outlined just a few of the many, many reasons why it’s so important for parents to make shared parent-child reading a priority. Today we thought we’d share just a few more ways in which a story time routine can help develop your child’s pre-reading and language skills, just in case you still aren’t convinced. Some of these skills are so obvious that it would be easy to overlook them, but mastering these skills is actually essential for learning to read.

*Books teach fine motor skills. Shared parent-child reading helps children learn the proper way to hold a book and turn the pages. Many children’s books are also specifically designed with flaps and tags to help your child further develop his fine motor skills.

*Reading aloud to children teaches them to read from left to right (or right to left if you’re reading to your child in Arabic or Hebrew) and top to bottom. This seems quite obvious to us experienced readers, but if you had never seen anything like a book before I’m sure you wouldn’t know where to begin either. I recently read a guest post from a reading specialist on a blog called Chronicles of a Babywise Mom about this very subject. Susanne had some great ideas about how to reinforce the fact that we read from one direction to another: “You can create a fun pointer to help make this activity more fun. You could use a magic wand or spoon, or any object your child might find fun. Finger puppets also work great for this activity. Keep it fun. Keep modeling good reading by pointing to the words.”

*Books reinforce the connection between language and written words on a page. Children as young as 8 months old begin making associations between objects and words, so around that age they should also begin to understand that the words you are reading correspond to the words on the pages of their story books. This skill is especially reinforced by reading the same books over and over again, allowing children to make the connection between the words you are saying and the printed words on a page.

*Reading teaches rhythm and rhyme. Many studies have shown that children who are exposed to rhythm and rhyme have an advantage when it comes to learning to read and spell. There’s a reason why Dr. Seuss’ books are such classics. In addition to the fabulous story lines and great illustrations, the rhythm and rhyme of these texts are especially stimulating for young children who are just beginning to develop language skills.

*Books help children discover the world around them. Most of us don’t live in the jungle, so a book about jungle animals is a great way of introducing this new concept to your kids. Fiction books can also be used to help develop a child’s imagination and story telling skills.

Of course these are just a few of the many, many benefits of reading to and with your children on a daily basis. Just 15 to 20 minutes a day of reading time is all it takes to develop these skills and, more importantly, a love of reading that will last a lifetime. Happy reading!

image credit: dog intelligence, via flickr

We’ve all heard the old saying that dogs are man’s best friend. But could our furry pets also be a great reading ally for new bilingual readers? A new early literacy campaign sponsored by Target, Purina and the Animal Rescue Foundation has set out to get pets involved in family reading strategies. All Ears Reading is based on the premise that children who are learning to read need to practice in a judgement free environment, and pets make great non-judmental listeners. According to their website, “this philosophy encourages reading by creating a supportive environment for children that fosters an eagerness to read…Creating a special time to read together will help build the bond between children and their pets while growing personal confidence and skill.”

The All Ears Reading website includes pet inspired games, cartoons and printables for kids. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include any information, games or resources in Spanish at this point, but the idea is fairly basic and could be applied to any language combination. Here’s some advice from the experts on calming down an excited dog if you plan on trying this reading strategy with your kids:

• Ask your dog to lie down on the blanket. Use a treat to guide your dog into a down position by holding it to his nose and lowering it to the ground.
• Reward your dog for lying down and being calm with a treat or a belly rub.
• If your dog enjoys chew toys, such as Kongs or Nylabones, give him a yummy treat to keep him occupied.
• If your dog is still excited, begin with short reading sessions so he can practice listening quietly.
• Give your dog lots of praise after you’re finished reading.

Remember that every effort your family makes to develop early literacy skills will be well worth it, so if you think getting your pets involved will help get your child more interested in reading don’t delay!

image credit: Read OR Listen?, via flickr

A recent ACLU study on the effects of parent-child shared reading discovered that the way we read to small children is just as important as the act of reading itself. According to this study involving 275 families with children aged 0-4, “back-and-forth conversation was strongly associated with future improvements in the child’s language score. Conversely, adult monologuing, such as monologic reading, was more weakly associated with language development.”

It’s clear that while all sorts of shared parent-child reading is beneficial for children, interactive reading is the best way to use reading to help your child’s language development along. According to the authors of this study, “each day, children hear an average of some 13,000 words spoken to them by adults and participate in about 400 conversational turns with adults. More conversations mean more opportunities for mistakes and therefore more opportunities for valuable corrections. Furthermore, they also provide an opportunity for children to practice new vocabulary.” We all know that books are a wonderful tool for encouraging dialogue between parents and even the youngest of children. So what steps can we take to make sure that daily reading time with kids is a two-sided conversation rather than a parental monologue?

Best selling author of Raising Bookworms: Getting Kids Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment , Emma Walton Hamilton, recently shared some great tips for turning storytime into an interactive reading experience on Raisingyourkid.com. Here are a few highlights:

*Read with vocal “color.” This is probably the most important tip of all. Keeping the voice alive and interesting can make all the difference in terms of a child’s ability to listen and follow a story. Use emphasis here, enthusiasm there, tenderness another place. Find the cadences and rhythms of the author’s language, and try to convey the mood or the characters’ intentions. There’s no need to be a ham, or yuck it up so much that the listener pays more attention to the vocal acrobatics than the story itself, but it’s important to avoid monotonous reading. Keep it fresh!
*Stop from time to time to ask questions. Check in with young listeners about their thoughts and reactions to the story or pictures – “Why do you think he or she did that?” “What would you do in that situation?” “What do you think is going to happen?” “Do you see what I see?”
*Personalize the story. Look for ways to insert the child’s name into the text, especially if it’s a book that speaks directly to a child and only uses pronouns, or to substitute the name of a character or place with a familiar one. Draw parallels between the events and characters in the story and those of your child’s life.
*Role-play with dialogue. If a child is old enough to read, divide the character roles and alternate reading the dialogue together. This is a great way to draw a child into the story, and to help them learn to read aloud with animation.

Interactive reading is a topic you’ll be hearing a lot about on Bilingual Readers, as we’re always in search of new ideas for enhancing the parent-child shared reading experience. We’d love to hear about any ideas that have worked for your family, so please feel free to share!

image credit: Read Aloud, via Flickr

Most of us know that reading aloud to children is important, but what exactly is it that makes your daily reading routine so essential to your child’s wellbeing? Fear not faithful readers, you’ll be happy to know that your efforts are not in vain. Written language often differs greatly from oral expression, so by reading aloud to your children you are also exposing them to new ways of combining words. Bilingual children whose parents or other caregivers read to them in more than one language have the added benefit of reinforcing phonemes, vocabulary and sentence structure from each individual language. If you still have your doubts, decades of research have shown that shared parent-child reading helps develop skills such as hearing and distinguishing language patterns, rhythm and rhyme, labeling objects, learning the meaning of words, predicting what comes next, following simple instructions…(trust me, this list could go on and on).

So just how soon can your reading routine can have an impact on your child’s language development? Although babies don’t begin to associate sound with objects until around eight months, studies show that parents who begin reading to their children at four months are more likely to continue to read consistently to their children throughout their childhood. Bear in mind that your baby’s brain is still constantly growing and developing during his early childhood years, and reading aloud to your children is the number one tool for helping your child’s language development along.

The most important reason to read to and with your children in the early development years is the impact this will have on your child’s view of reading in the future. It has been shown that kids who enjoy reading with their parents will be more motivated to learn to read in school. Parents who take the time to read with their young children are setting the stage for strong literacy skills in the future. And the better your children read in both their languages, the stronger their mastery of each individual language will be. Your children will not only have a better grasp of the languages they speak and read, but they will also have a greater understanding of the world they live in. All that in one neat little package. Aren’t books cool?