Benefits of reading!
• It’s rewarding. Reading to your child can be one of the most rewarding activities you share. There’s an emotional closeness and connection that comes from a shared interest. That connection will change through the years, but the times spent together reading will have helped to establish it and ensure that it grows.
• It’s an active mental process. Reading makes you use your brain! While reading, you engage your mind in thinking and reasoning to understand things which are unfamiliar to you. You become smarter! Children’s books often include many pictures which give the child a viewpoint on what is happening in the story. Children enjoy the activity of pointing out the shapes and pictures they recognize. Activities that involve identifying items helps increase a child’s image recognition skills.
• It can help improve your vocabulary. Reading can introduce new words you wouldn’t be exposed to otherwise (especially in challenging books). You also learn to infer the meaning of new words by reading the context of the other words in the sentence. Toddlers who are developing speech patterns and verbal recognition often prefer the same books over and over again. The language and pictures appeal to them and the repetition of the same stories and rhymes can be very beneficial to their acquisition of language.
• It gives you a glimpse into other cultures and places of the world: You can learn about the lives of other people by reading about them. Reading increases awareness and gives you insight into the diversity of people, their customs, and their lifestyles.
• It can help improve concentration and focus. Reading books requires you to focus for longer periods than when you read magazines, Internet posts or e-mails. Those are necessarily smaller chunks of information, but books tell the whole story. Since you must concentrate to read, with practice, your ability to concentrate will get better.
• It helps build self-esteem: The more you read, the more knowledgeable you become. With more knowledge comes more confidence. More confidence builds self-esteem. Five year olds who are starting to read often want to read the same stories over and over because they recognize the words and this creates a level of comfort. When children practice on new books and new words, they build their confidence.
• It can help improve memory: Many studies show if you don’t use your memory, you lose it. Reading helps you stretch your memory “muscles” by requiring you to remember details of facts and figures and, in literature, plot lines, themes and characters.
• It can help improve your discipline. Making time to read is something we all know we should do. Add book reading to your daily schedule and stick to it.
• It can help improve creativity. Reading on a variety of subjects exposes you to new ideas and more information. It helps develop the creative side of your brain and adds to your thinking process. Reading with children fosters an appreciation for the entertainment and educational values of books. Books can fire the imagination by introducing new concepts and experiences. Most children enjoy playing make believe and pretending. Reading with them provides new ideas for their pretend play.
