Why We Read to Children
Teachers tell you consistently and insistently to read to your children everyday, but why? Why is it so important to read to your children?
Books can teach concepts such as colors, shapes, letters, numbers, and even counting. Informational books teach us about science, history, and social studies, but that is only a small piece of a much grander puzzle.
From a very young age children are trying to decipher what is important in life and what is not, and they are taking cues from the adults in their life. If you make reading to your child a priority, they will pick up on the importance of reading. Children's books aren't long. They take what, five or ten minutes? I know that everyone of us could shave five to ten minutes out of our schedule to read to a child. Your child is more precious than five to ten extra minutes of sleep will ever be, so take the time to read to them a minimum of once a day.
I always tell my class when we start learning letters how important they are. If you don't learn letters and letter sounds, you'll never learn to read, because they are the first step to learning to read. That's not entirely true. The first step in learning to read is being read to. This is when children learn how to hold the book, which way to turn the pages, and what words are used for. If that sounds silly to you, tell me this. Are babies born with this knowledge? I hope you came to the answer that babies obviously are not born with this knowledge, so ask yourself how they will ever learn if they never see it.
This is what I tell my students: Learning letters and letter sounds is the first step to learning to read. If you don't learn them, you don't learn to read. If you don't learn to read, you won't get good grades in school. You won't be able to read the driver's test or the road signs, so driving a car is out. You won't be able to read an application form, so getting a job is out. You wouldn't have been able to drive to work anyway, but without a job, you don't have any money. Now, as adults we know this means you won't have necessities like food and shelter, but preschoolers don't understand that. I tell them that without money, you can't buy any more toys. No more toys! You should see the look of fear that transforms their faces. Talk about a motivator!
On the other hand, a child who learns a love of reading as a young child, has endless potential. The possibilities are endless, so make a pact today to read to your child a bare minimum of once a day.
