Why is Reading Important for Children: 10 Benefits of Reading for Kids
Albert Einstein was once asked the question how to make a child smarter. His answer was very short and incredibly wise. “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales,” he answered. “If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” He understood the value of reading and storytelling for kids. Let's take a closer look at the benefits of reading to children.
1. Reading expands the child's worldview and offers him or her new models of behavior
Children have a rather narrow understanding of the world around them. This is because of the limited amount of life experience they have. Their subjective perception is limited by the events they encounter in everyday life, based on the circumstances in which they grew up and mature. Reading books will help children expand their worldview, as well as try on other roles and models of behavior; simulate situations in which they would hardly ever find themselves. Such knowledge will help the child evaluate correctly similar difficult situations in the future, and will also provide an opportunity to develop into a more socially adaptive personality.
2. Reading helps the child to gain additional narrowly focused knowledge
Books are written on a variety of subject matters and topics, which are considered for different age groups of children. Reading a book on any of the topics, the child gets acquainted directly with a wide range of relevant issues, events, problems, ideas, and also learns specific vocabulary. After reading a couple of good books on some topic, children will be happy to dive into the study of this particular topic, the books that interested them most of all.
A small tip! Let your child choose the subject of the books. The main trick is that the child is so carried away by the content of the book that he or she does not even realize that one is gaining additional knowledge on a particular topic in the process of reading.
3. Reading accelerates the development of the child's brain
Reading has been proven to require more mental capacity and effort than playing computer games or watching cartoons. Many parents underestimate the importance of books for children. The fact is that when children read books, they use the part of their brain that is associated with multisensory integrations. In the process of reading, the child's brain transforms alphabetic characters to associate specific words with the visual picture they generate to get the comprehension. In this way, children train their brains using visual thinking and gathering contextual clues of the narrative to help themselves understand words or phrases that they are not already familiar with yet.
4. Reading strengthens the family bond between parents and their child
It is important to read with children every day. From infancy, reading aloud forms the child's first strong social bonds with his or her parents, along with breastfeeding. For example, reading the book Happy Potty online will not only help to teach your baby to use a potty in a playful way, but will also allow you to spend hours of fun forming a bond with your toddler. As your child grows older, you can continue to read aloud to him or her and discuss what one liked the most about the book.
A small tip! Use reading as an opportunity to engage and communicate with your child. After reading, ask your kid about new thoughts and topics covered in the book, suggest connecting the story you read to your daily life.
5. Reading is the best intellectual form of entertainment for children of all ages
Although global computing has become a natural phenomenon in the 21st century, while gadgets have become an integral part of our lives, as before, books remain the most effective and useful way of entertainment. Instead of playing computer or mobile games, encourage your children to read. Motivate them with colorful children's books, personalized editions etc. For example, the book Daniel and His Crew Fix Problems is not only an interesting tale about friendship and mutual assistance, but also an exciting interactive game for the children that strengthen their acquired skills.
6. Reading improves concentration and instills diligence in children
Reading books helps children learn to calm their mind and body so that they can focus on a particular assignment within a certain period of time. The child learns to eliminate distractions, abstract from noise on one's own in order to immerse oneself in reading and reading comprehension completely. Over time, the child's attention and ability to concentrate improves significantly, which will also have a positive effect on one's ability to cope with school tasks. Improving school performance is one of the benefits of reading for kids.
7. Reading improves communication skill of the child
While reading, children explore more new topics with pleasure. Gradual expansion of vocabulary will allow the child to express one's thoughts more easily and freely and communicate with peers. The child's interesting comments on the adventures one read will attract other children to your kid miraculously. In the future, the growing talent of storytelling will allow your child to make new friends and adapt in the society easily.
8. Reading improves writing, speech, and trains children's memory
In the process of reading a book, the child automatically memorizes the meaning of words, grammatical rules, sentence constructions, thereby forming the skills of writing and speaking. In addition, regular reading trains children's memory. The more complex and serious books a child reads, the more his or her vocabulary is replenished and one's memory improves.
9. Reading trains the logical thinking and imagination of the child
Reading also develops the child's ability to build causal relationships and fantasize. The development of logical thinking is especially facilitated by fairy tales and didactic literature, which make the child think about the reasons for good and bad actions. And fantastic stories in which the kid needs to imagine non-existent animals or fantasy characters will help develop children's imagination.
10. Reading instills a love of books and shapes the child's future literary taste
While this may not seem like an important benefit to a small child, it is recommended to start teaching good books from childhood to stimulate good literary taste in adults. Thus, a useful hobby, a personal worldview, and a child's attitude to moral values are formed. The love of reading is not only a respect for books, but also an understanding of the titanic work that the author puts into each of them. The child who loves to read will never show disrespect, he or she will take good care not only of books, but also of school supplies.