7 tips for encouraging reading in young children

Guidelines and recommendations to encourage young children to read as a habit.

Reading skills are a fundamental key in the psychological development of young children. For this reason, it is important to incorporate elements that reinforce children's willingness to read in their education and upbringing strategies.. Let's see some advice in this sense.

How to encourage reading in young children?

These tips can serve to reinforce the bond of the smallest with the habit of reading.

1. Create a stimulating reading space

Creating an environment where books are accessible is essential for young children to access them.. If, from an early age, the young child can play with rubber books, or books with thick pages and bright colors and textures that generate a pleasurable sensory experience, he will choose these materials to always have fun.

2. Approach books through sensations.

It is good that he can explore and find books of different materials, and that the adult is close by to tell him about them. the adult is close by to tell him the stories and encourage his incursion into literature through language. through language.

They will learn the stories and enjoy our company as they look at each page. They will take the book in their hands and share this unique moment with us.

3. Be interested in what interests them

In addition, we must gradually get to know the child in order to evaluate their interests. Sometimes they have to do with age, other times with characteristics of their own routine. Let's go with them to bookstores and let them explore. Many of them have a section for small children with carpets, cushions and toys where we can find books of different types. Some have puppets or other recreational materials that create a more friendly situation.

Book fairs are also opportunities to find unknown publishers or novelties.

Receiving books as gifts is a great joy, but it is also important for the child to be the one to it is important that the child is the one who approaches the variety and the experience of choosing.. In this way they will feel it as their own and will have vivid memories about that book that will generate a bond with literature over time, being a faithful companion for every moment of their life.

4. Reading together

At home, we must also take care of this literary environment. leaving the books on the most accessible shelves for children according to their age and preferences, and rotating them so that they can vary without getting bored.

Those books that are more delicate will be the ones that we adults will have within our reach to read to them at other times; they will be able to see and touch them and learn about their care. They will be special for reading together, to relax before bedtime or to spend some time together as a family.

Choosing to give books as gifts is also a nice option. We can go with our children to buy books for other children on special dates. We know that the word convinces, but the example drags, so the more reading habits we generate the more reading habits we generate, the greater the effect of contagion in their circle and will feed back into the environment.

5. Crafts and creative products

We can also create books with cardboard, textures and a lot of creativity through the story of everyday life situations, which we can make fiction together with them, demonstrating that our life is a great adventure worthy of being lived and told as such.. These books will be remembered forever.

In addition, we can set up shelves in their rooms near the bed, placing a lamp and generating the complicity of those spaces that accompany us in our living savoring incredible stories.

6. Generating a routine

Who hasn't ever changed a word in the story we read before going to bed and our children are the ones who correct us indicating the correct one? That signal means we are on the right track. They know and recognize the story and it is already part of our routine..

Let's not forget that reading should be present in our lives too, so that they can observe us reading and not just reading.e have a confirmation of this habit, generating a bond rooted in family life.generating a bond rooted in family life.

When we go to the supermarket, let's see the gondola of books; and in the pharmacy, and in places where books are usual for us in general, reinforcing this behavior in a positive way.

7. The importance of a successful initiation

Let's not let the first experiences be when we are sick, for a school duty or on vacation without computers. Let's make it routine.

For older children there are also apps for reading, but I recommend that the first link should be the computer. I recommend that the first link is paper to invoke the experience of touching it, smelling it, feeling the sound of the pages, holding it in our hands and discovering it as a treasure that opens before our senses.

In conclusion...

Stories, besides favoring imagination, memory, language and access to wonderful worlds, allow us to connect with what is happening to others, what they feel, what they think, what they are experiencing. We generate empathy through stories.. We question what is happening, why, how else we would have solved it, how would we live that event today at home or a time ago or in a future time. What do these characters teach us. What can we teach them.

In short, reading this kind of texts allows us to interact with the story and generate a new story. To think of possible endings. To live a new challenge in each reading.

Let's not let this great adventure pass us by as a family.

Don't let others tell it to you!

Reading is living unimaginable worlds and making them our own story.