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You Could Read This Blog Entry to Your Kids!

May 21, 2020

Well, maybe not, unless your kids like facts about comprehension, psychology, and cognitive development. Otherwise, pick something else they might like—because the benefits of reading aloud to or with kids are plentiful, powerful, and long-lasting. Check them out below!

While your child may not remember you reading to them between birth and the time they turn three years old, the effects could be felt forever. As much as 80 percent of the juvenile brain develops during that period, and all the work it does trying to comprehend communication read to them can make the brain more efficient and speed up their language development by three to six months.

While books are a form of written communication, having books read aloud to your kid is a form of oral communication. Hearing books help develop certain skills in their spongey little brains, particularly listening and language skills.

Travel on a magical adventure with a little dog in The Noon Balloon, from best-selling children's book author, Margaret Wise Brown. Beautifully illustrated, this lyrical text is the perfect read-aloud and is sure to become a bedtime favorite.

Reading to kids while they’re young leads to reading habits later in life. They’re more likely to read for pleasure later in life, and have better reading comprehension skills. (It also creates a better understanding of narrative and how stories work, and that events have a beginning, middle, and end. If reading is normalized from a young age, they accept it as a normal, everyday human behavior.

Exposure to more books mean exposure to more words. That means one of the language skills kids who read with their parents develop a larger vocabulary, and faster than peers who don’t get books read aloud to them regularly. Part of why this works is that the language used in books and stories is more descriptive and much more detailed than that used in day-to-day conversations.

Hearing words helps kids understand the written form of words by connecting their different forms. Reading to kids helps increase their awareness of and ability to understand phonics.

Exposure to the creativity found in books makes readers more creative. Reading to your kids can help them unlock and expand their imagination.

Reading leads to better concentration. Since kids have to focus on listening to the story to know what happens, they more naturally develop that skill, which can be applied to all levels of society.

Now that you've learned all about the benefits of reading aloud with your child, doesn't that make you want to pick up a book? See some suggestions below!
Happy reading!