If you ask me a question about: ‘what is the ONE quality that I would want my child to possess?’ my answer will be: that she should be a great reader and I believe rest of the qualities will follow by itself. Like: being creative, aware, confident, leadership, orator, exposed, connected, good communication, witty and the list is unending.
We are living in the time of the world where children are exposed to so many things that books get a very less share of their time. These things as we very well know are television, mobile phones, various applications, gaming consoles etc. Now imagine a child’s day with an hour of all these things (3) now add a minimum of three hours of school (3), then an hour of park time (1), an hour of eating time (1) (I am also collaborating eating time with one of these unwanted things time) and another one hour of homework (1). Total we get 9 hours. It is a very rough estimate, plus minus here and there is expected. So now imagine how much time will your child be able to give to books?
In our time I remember books used to be our best friends, it was actually a mean to meet new people and go visit new places. But compared to today’s world our children are already there.
So I believe that if we want our children to have some time that they willingly involve books in their daily life we need to make some efforts. We need to make books as interesting as the other things and I am confident that once children have got into the habit or should I say tasted the blood of reading books there is no looking back. I also believe in doing this as soon as possible. That is why I started working towards making reading fun for my child at a toddler age.
This is the reason I am posting this video for all those who believe in what I have mentioned above and hope it will help.
So, how I made reading fun for my toddler? It was a difficult task to do as initially books were just for eating, tearing and chewing purpose. I could not make her sit at one place to read a book.
She was only curious about things that were new, full of adventure, something to touch and feel to. So I thought of adding these elements of novelty, curiosity, hands of learning and adventure to book reading. As her brain at this age or for that matter any toddler’s brain gets attracted to these elements and anything that have these, becomes desirable and fun. Once the brain started connecting these elements to book reading; it too became fun and desirable.
I just had to put in some initial efforts and now I have a toddler who loves her books. Now I do not have to add these elements mentioned above as once the connection of FUN between brain with books are made the element of Imagination is born which now empowers all of them and takes care of the process.
So what did I do and how did I do this:
One: I scattered books everywhere in the house wherever she could reach
Two: I tried variety of books like sound books, touch and feel, flip flap, follow the trail, bath books, rattle books etc
Three: A thing that did not work for my child was the educational books like: these are fruits, or vegetables, or farm animals etc. So story books became a great part of our journey.
Four: THE MOST IMPORTANT PART. I did a lot of fun and play activities with my child based on books that I read to her. So initially what used to happen was: for example if I plan to read a book to her and she being a toddler did not sit at one place so I will quickly show her a page of that book read it aloud and then introduce a game/activity related to that page which will interest her. Once she was done with that activity, I would wrap it up and show her the next page, read to her quickly and then introduce another activity related to the next page. So this is how I read books to her initially by doing various activities.
Slowly gradually the activity level came down and book reading became fun as she started enjoying imagining the story.
Now are the days where she is two years three months old and she herself goes to her library, get a book and ask me to read to her.
This video is my first and small effort of showcasing how I made reading fun to my child and I hope this will help more parents to interest their children in reading.
Hope you all will enjoy and benefit from this video. Do let me know if you have any queries regarding making reading fun to your child and I will be happy to help.
Do try and follow this method and in case you get stuck in thinking of activities related to any book, do feel free to comment below and I will try and help you out with it.
HAPPY READING TO YOUR CHILD!
Информация по комментариям в разработке