Preschoolers are known to be the most active and enthusiastic part of a child’s development. It is in this part of their age when they learn a lot of new things, begin to understand how things work, build friendships and relationships and start to develop a relationship with learning. Introducing learning for this age group can be quite taxing. Teaching them how to read or even encouraging them to read books, demands a lot of effort from the parents or teachers.
Through reading, one can learn many things in this world. For children, learning to read is like opening a gateway to the vastness of knowledge this world has. Here are some tips to encourage your preschoolers into reading books.
- Teach them how to read. The sense of knowing how to read should open up the curiosity of children. Since it is natural for them to be eager in all things, reading can be enjoying for them.
- Form group reading session with peers. Children form bonds sometimes with their siblings or their classmates. Since children in the same age group with them tend to work and play together, reading with them in groups will also do. Interactive reading with classmates also brings up the competition among them.
- Read for them. Although it is not always good to spoon feed the children into reading, helping or guiding them to read will also do the trick. Preschooler’s vocabulary is still very limited so it is important to accompany them while they are on the deed.
- Make a schedule for reading. It is in the child’s mind that learning is in school while playing is at home. For them not to be confused by the way things are, make a scheduled place and time for reading. At home, you can make use of their spare time before sleeping to read. Also, don’t force them to read during their playtime, it may bring about stress for them.
- Use storybooks with a lot of pictures. For starters, books with colored images intrigue the mind of the young. With the use of their imagination, those images will help them focus their mind in the story. It will help them picture out the scenario in the story since they don’t know some of the words they read.
- Read with them short stories for kids. As young as they are, their short attention span would not be able to pick up long stories. Use books with designs that have a fast pace on the story. Although dictionaries and thesaurus can be real education, it wouldn’t be of much use for preschoolers since they can comprehend complex words yet.
- Allow them to choose the book or expose them to a different genre. We can force children to read books they don’t like. If we did, it won’t bring any good to them. Children will learn to love different kinds of books as they mature, so show to them a variety of books to read on.