Improve Reading Skills for Children - Simple Methods and Tips
By Andrew Loh
Nothing is more critical and important to your children's success than being a very good reader, who can understand the hidden knowledge and skills. You know your children best and you are the mentor who can hone their reading skills. It is easy to provide them one-to-one time and dedicated attention to make them enabled with the fine reading skills. Here are some tips and suggestion to help your children learn and master how to read.
Reading is a skill obtained by practice. The art of reading become a habit when you engage your children by developing the urge to read. Reading could be boring to some children as well. However, reading is a mandatory activity for every human who wants to succeed in life. Teaching your children how to read starts at your home, when your children are young and within the age bracket of two years. Reading stories aloud to young toddlers is a very precious moment. Your baby will simply love to listen to stories, read aloud by you. It is a moment that hones your baby's primary skills. As you read stories to your small children, they will also be looking at the images and pictures printed in the storybook. This could be a great introduction to the world of reading.
To make your children better readers, you may wish to follow these guidelines:
Devote some time for reading stories: Setting aside time to read stories to your children can significantly enhance your children's comprehension, vocabulary and decoding of words and syllables. Make sure that you are reserving some time for reading, especially in the morning and during bedtime. Regular habit of reading will make your children develop the desire to read independently.
Provide enough reading materials to your children: Children who expose their time with lots of reading materials can perform very well in their classrooms. They can also score very high in their tests. Induce your children to read independently by providing them with plenty of books. Ensure that you are giving them age appropriate reading materials. Also, make sure that, reading materials are in all corners of home where children play and enjoy. Colorful books and magazine can cajole children to look at them. Immersing your children with reading materials is a natural way to make them develop the habit of reading.
Create a family reading time: Establish a daily ritual of reading together. Involve every member of your family to read together without making any noise or sound. When your small children see others reading, they may get an instant urge to start scouring through the pages of books and magazines. Devote at least 15 minutes of joint reading to induce children to look at the reading materials.
Diversify reading activities: Reading should be an integral part of your family. Take your children to a local library and show them different books, periodicals and magazines stacked in the racks. Show them how people read books and how they handle them. Reading should be age appropriate and you may wish to provide reading materials based on their interest level. Some children love to look at books containing colorful words, while older children like to read stories designed for children of their age. Make sure that you are providing them books based on their ability understand the story line and text.
Develop library habit: Children who visit local libraries are very smart ad intelligent. They are also very quick and informed when compared to others, who do not know how to read. Library is an excellent place that also teaches the value of silence. A place enables your children to dive into the world of precious knowledge! Devote some time (30 minutes) to visit the library. Ask your children to search for books and magazines. Show them how librarians arrange books in the shelves and how they retrieve them, when someone asks for them.
Use reading tools: You can use a number of reading tools to educate your children. You can use tools like audio recorders, Dictaphones, audio book readers, spellers, storytellers to introduce your children to reading. The best tool could be those that provide both audio and video messages; a kid's computer is very effective in teaching your children learn how to read words and numbers. Baby supply stores stack these tools in large quantities and you can pick some of them to start teaching the art of reading. Some examples are LeapPad Learning System, Leap Frog Imagination Desk, Neurosmith: Phonics Tiles and Alphabet Blocks, Magnetic Letters, Lauri Letter Puzzles.
Early pre-reading skills are the most important skills that your children need to master before they can actually learn to read. Most of these skills are basic and you may wish to teach the advanced techniques of reading, by using one or more of the above methods. By engaging your children with the habit of reading, you can help them develop a number of skills needed for achieving success in life.
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