Booking a friend for life!

When my child was born I promised myself that I would consider myself a good parent only if I am able to gift my child a love for books. At a time when console video games, television and school homework claim all of a child’s time, making sure the child makes time for a good read can be challenging. Considering the kind of advantages reading has on kids, this is definitely not an activity that kids do away with.

Here are a few fun (read workable) tips on how you can make your child snuggle down with a good book

Read out to an infant too
Starting early definitely has its own advantages. Just as we do not wait for the child to understand to speak to him/her, we ideally should not wait for the child to go to school to read out to him/her. Exposing and letting the child play with picture books is a good way to start. Slowly you can with the help of flash cards introduce the baby to so many beautiful things like flowers, trees, birds, clouds etc. and from then on you can graduate to narrating stories about these beautiful things to the child.

Reading as a family
This is one formula that never fails. Create an atmosphere for a child to read. And that can be done by reading in front of the child. And to make this activity even more fun you could maybe fix a reading hour on a Sunday and ensure that all of you read together as a family. You could either read out to your child or maybe encourage him/her to cut out interesting articles from the paper and make him/her read them aloud. This way you will get a fair idea of where your child’s interests lie.

Offer books as rewards
Once a certain amount of interest is developed in reading as a family activity, you could introduce different genre of books to the child by buying the child books as a token of appreciation. So if your child does well in a class test or a quiz competition, it makes sense to pick up a book for him/her instead of a fancy dress.

Take for book readings or movies based on books
Now this can prove to be helpful if your child gets bored easily. Book stores often arrange these book readings or weekend activities for book promotions that are open to all. You could take your child along for such meets or take them to watch movies based on good books. Then you can maybe buy books (with illustrations preferably) to give them that extra push. And if this too doesn’t work then you could read out a few sections of the book aloud and ask him/her to take it from there when the curiosity rises in the storyline.  

Encourage kids to retell stories           
Once the child has read a book you could ask him/her to either write or narrate a review about what he has liked or disliked. Also, which character they liked and what they hated the most. Let the child criticize openly. This will help him/her critically appreciate literature and also help him/her form an opinion about things. And what’s more, this could also be an eye opener for you.

Hope these tips would be beneficial in helping your child befriend books for life!