7 Benefits Of Reading To Our Children.

We all know the benefits of physical exercise, but did you know that reading to our children has so many benefits including, helping to encourage active participation.

So with that said reading is not only good for the mind and imagination but helps children form a positive approach in actively participating.

Live Storytelling

Before we look at 7 of the benefits of reading, we would like to share one of our live storytelling videos. The story being read is from a Winnie the Pooh collection. You can view the video here.

7 Benefits of Reading

Below is a list of 7 benefits of reading, although not every benefit is included, and the list is extensive, these are 7 of what we feel are the most significant.

Concentration

• Reading improves concentration – It helps us build our capacity to focus on a single thing for a long period of time. Reading is a good hobby to engage in for all age groups. It helps slow down the cognitive decline in old people.Reading is useful for a child as it helps him or her learn, build their vocabulary, connect and relate, develop new language and communicate better. It is beneficial for adults to engage in reading as it relieves stress and improves one’s memory.

Communication

• Faster Development of Communication Skills – The best children’s books a child remembers are the narratives they relate to in some way. As most children’s stories aim to explore multiple environments such as home life, school, day to day experiences or fantastical worlds, children are exposed to various characters. Helping your child find similarities or explaining differences to them while reading helps them relate to others in a healthy way. By exploring different cultures and nationalities through a range of stories gives your child a better understanding to communicate with their surroundings.

Speech

• Aids in Development of Basic Speech Slills – Have you ever heard that children learn languages easier during infancy? This is because children retain the ability to distinguish the foreign sounds as their speech is forming during their most apt learning age where 85% of a child’s brain evolves fastest up to the age 5 than any other period in their life. It’s even more likely for a child to learn a second language if it’s spoken and used by their parents. Phonetics teach the sounds of the basic alphabet and every time you read to your child or ask your child to read, you are reinforcing that bond between sounds that form basic language.

Cognitive Development

• Helps Support Cognitive Development – Reading to young children is proven to improve cognitive skills and help along the process of cognitive development. Cognitive development is the emergence of the ability to think and understand; it’s the construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision-making, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. Reading helps how a person perceives and thinks about his or her world through areas such as information processing, intelligence, reasoning, language development, attention span, and memory.

Knowledge

• Helps Increase Knowledge – children learn about colours, shapes, numbers, and letters, while your older child discovers an expanding chain of knowledge.  His interest in cars, for example, will expand to his interest in trucks, and other transportation like planes and rockets, and soon he will be reading about outer space, science and technology, and so forth.

Brain

• Increases Brain Function – According to a study published in Pediatrics, children who had been exposed to home reading showed significantly greater activation of a brain area that is “all about multi sensory integration, integrating sound and then visual stimulation,” according to Dr. John S. Hutton, the lead author and a clinical research fellow at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Reading to your child builds brain networks that will serve them long-term when they transition from verbal to reading.

Relaxation

• A Great Relaxation and Calming Exercise – This is an important point because these days we seem to have forgotten how to relax and especially how to be silent. The constant movement, flashing lights and noise which bombard our senses when we’re watching TV, looking at a computer or playing an electronic game are actually quite stressful for our brains. When we read, we read in silence and the black print on a white page is much less stressful for our eyes and brains.

 

What Difference Can We Make As Parents?

You can make a huge difference! Parents are the most important educators in a child’s life – even more important than their teachers – and it’s never too early to start reading together.

Even before they’re born, babies learn to recognize their parents’ voices. Reading to your baby from birth, even for just a few minutes a day, gives them the comfort of hearing your voice and increases their exposure to language.

Reading Is Important

Evidence suggests that children who read for enjoyment every day not only perform better in reading tests than those who don’t, but also develop a broader vocabulary, increased general knowledge and a better understanding of other cultures.

In fact, reading for pleasure is more likely to determine whether a child does well at school than their social or economic background.

What Is Your Favourite Book

We would love to know yours and your child’s favourite book?

Whose your favourite author?

Leave us a comment below and share your favourites.