Raising A Reader: Simple Suggestions to Foster Language and Social-Emotional Skills
Reading is one of the easiest ways to encourage speech and language development. Interactive book reading with your child can support a wide range of early language skills.
Studies show that children who are read to regularly in the early years learn language faster, enter school with a larger vocabulary, and become more successful readers at school.*
Books are like magic for little ones’ development, helping them understand new concepts, say first words, develop their imaginations, curiosity, and social emotional awareness.
For young kids and other children with limited attention spans, it can be hard to engage your child in reading. My top two suggestions are:
Make sure you choose the right books.
Adapt how you read to meet your child at their level.
Birth to Three Years Old
Board books, touch and feel books, and lift-a-flap books are all great for early readers. Choose books with simple pictures that are bright and colorful. When using books with this age, it isn’t as important to read the actual words on the page. Instead use short phrases and make up your own version of the story for each picture.
You can also simply point at the pictures and talk about what you see. I love turning this into a game, by asking questions like, “Where is the mouse?”.
Attention spans at this age are short, and that is okay! To help kids stay engaged, have them also touch the pictures as you talk about them and encourage them to help you turn the pages.
Some favorite book titles for this age include:
Preschool and Kindergarten
Reading books with kids in this age range can be a blast because kids in this stage are developing their own thoughts, ideas and opinions. Using longer story books with pictures is a great way to practice asking questions, listening skills, and predicting outcomes. It’s also good to practice describing what they are seeing on the page. Books are also a great way to talk about feelings and introduce ways to find solutions to problems.
Using books that rhyme is a way to work on early literacy skills. Stories that are repetitive like “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” are also useful in facilitating memory skills. For example, instead of reading “but he was still hungry…” you can pause and see if your child picks up the line and says it for you. Books are also great at this age to help expand vocabulary by introducing new adverbs, adjectives, nouns, and verbs.
Some of my favorite titles include:
School-Age
At this age, books can be a mix of very simple, if they are reading on their own, or more complex, like chapter books. Reading together and also encouraging independent reading time are both important. In speech therapy, I use books to target articulation, answering questions, describing pictures, story retelling (using correct terms like first, then, last), social skills (talking about how a character might be feeling or WHY that character did something), fluency, or just for fun as a way to break the ice.
Some of my favorite books:
Hopefully you are inspired to find a new selection of books at your local library or bookstore AND use the books already in your home in new ways.
Curious whether your child might benefit from working with a Speech Language Pathologist?
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*Noble, Claire. “The Impact of Interactive Shared Book Reading on Children’s Language Skills: A Randomized Controlled Trial" ASHA Wire, 6/22/20.