There are a dozen reasons you should read to your children. Bookstore owner Kerry-Leigh Snel, who regularly holds storybook readings at her bookstore, The Book Boutique, lists them:
1. When you read to your baby you ensure he or she becomes a reader for life and develops higher level listening, language and cognisant skills. Reading has been proven to help in better language development and reading skills.
2. Watching TV together is not the same as reading together. Even if you’re a working parent, aim to set aside at least 10 or 15 minutes before bedtime to read your child to sleep. These few minutes will be the most valuable in your whole day.
3. Remember to point to pictures that relate to the words so the child identifies the words with the pictures.
4. Ask your child questions about the page you have just read. For example, “can you see the hummingbird?” It will keep them interested and develop recognition and association skills.
5. Use different voices when reading to make the experience imaginative and comical. This will also make your child listen more carefully and pick up phonemic awareness (identifying different sounds to the spelling of words).
6. Teach your child the correct way to handle books. If they do not interact with books from a young age, the motor skills for reading will be dominantly influenced by ipad/computer technology. We take the familiarity with books for granted.
7. Try to give your child books to read or do activities from as often as possible, rather than taking the “easy” way out and just handing them an ipad with games.
8. Take your child to the public library and teach them how to browse the shelves and look carefully at the books. Then take them to a bookstore and let them practise looking at the books carefully. You will teach them respect and a bit of culture too.
9. When listening to your child read, don’t rush to correct their mistakes but be ready to prompt or guide if he/she is struggling. Parents anxious for a child to progress can mistakenly give a child a book that is too difficult. This can have the opposite effect to the one you want. Remember “Nothing succeeds like success”. Until your child has built up his or her confidence, it is better to keep to easier books.
Struggling with a book with many unknown words is pointless. Flow is lost, text cannot be understood and children can easily become reluctant readers.
10. When children are old enough to read on their own ask them questions about the books they have been reading so they recognise you also enjoy stories and you are proud of their reading level.
11. Give books rather than toys to children as gifts.
12. Make reading an essential part of your children’s lives. Let them read menus, movie names, roadside signs, game guides, weather reports, and other practical everyday information.
Reading for pleasure is one of the best ways for a child to improve his performance at school, but teaching a child to love reading involves a lot more than simply handing him a book.
Letting children have choices in their reading material goes a long way in raising life-long readers. Children who choose what they read, regardless of whether it’s a novel, a comic book, or a magazine, are more engaged with what they are reading and more likely to retain the information.
To find out more about phonics visit: www.usborne.com/veryfirst reading. Usborne books has a wide range of phonics and early reader books.
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Bookstore continues age-old tradition
One can’t help but think of the romantic-comedy You’ve Got Mail, which starred Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, when one first walks into The Book Boutique in Amanzimtoti on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast.
It is as quaint as The Shop Around the Corner – incidentally the title of the 1940s film starring Judy Garland was yet another adaptation of the 1937 play Parfumerie by Miklos Laszlo.
The Book Boutique, opened by Kerry-Leigh Snel and her parents in 2009, has the same nostalgic air of the independent bookstore, owned by Ryan’s character Kathleen Kelly, in the popular movie.
Five years ago Snel initiated story book readings for children – an age-old bookstore tradition that we see so little of today – and which is surely a cornerstone of inculcating a love of books and its wonder in children.
The Saturday 10am sessions, most appropriate for children aged 3 to 7, are a treat.
A story is read to the children and is followed by an activity relating to the story.
There is no cost involved and no booking required. Visit the Book Boutique website to sign up for story time mailers and newsletters at www.thebookboutique.co.za
Coming up is The Wish Cat by Ragnhild Scamell on September 5 and It’s Sports Day by Ellen Crimi-Trent on September 12.
You can find the store at 26 Rockview Road, eManzimtoti or call them at 031 903 6692.