Make your home a place for reading!

It’s widely known that children learn best in their home environment where they feel comfortable. Therefore promoting literacy in the home is an essential part to children’s communication and literacy development. Reading aloud to your child or letting them read to you can not only help with literacy but can be one of the best parenting experiences, creating memories and developing a routine between you and your child.

• Try and read to your child everyday. It makes a good routine in order to help your child to prepare for bedtime.
• Create a reading friendly space in your home if possible. Make sure it’s somewhere comfortable like a chair or have pillows on the floor. Take a look at our ‘making a den’ section for more ideas.
• Try to keep it fun! Pick books that have illustrations and are colourful and stories that your child may be interested in. This way you can talk about the pictures and what you think will happen in the book before you start reading. This not only helps with communication skills but lets your child explore into their imagination.
• When reading to your child always make sure that they can see the book and the pictures inside, let them turn the pages if they can. Be as interactive as possible, stopping to talk about what’s already happened. Let your child point to the pictures and pick out colours and shapes.
• Ask your child to read to you, if they’re a pre-reader they’ll interpret the story in their own way so make sure the book they choose has plenty of colours and illustrations to prompt them.
• Get your children reading in creative ways in and out of the home environment. Reading recipes and making shopping lists for them are all useful ways of developing your child’s literacy skills.

Make sure you have a look at our ‘good books to read with your children’ section for ideas and most of all…enjoy!