Reading: a gift that keeps on giving
"A book is a gift you can open again and again" - Garrison Keillor.
Reading, and developing a love for reading, begins at home, starting with being read to at an early age. Learning how to read more and read better must first be encouraged by parents, helping to enable their beloved offspring to become confident, fluent readers. A few tips and helpful hints for mother mentors:
_ Encourage continued language development and interest in books by keeping things lively and engaging.
_ Create a special, safe and secure relaxing environment for reading time spent together.
_ Recite rhymes, sing songs, recite silly tongue twisters and act out stories to build enthusiasm for reading.
_ Keep reading short and simple to accommodate antsy-pantsy attention spans.
_ Take time to listen to questions and encourage free expression of opinions about everyday feelings, emotions and experiences.
_ Play with letters, phonics and blending sounds into words.
_ Have fun with language games, helping your child crack the code of reading.
_ Choose which strategies produce the best results and reread favourites over and over.
_ Read about it, think about it, talk about it.
_ Find unique ways to help your child reinforce understanding – the ultimate goal of learning how to read fluently and write right.
Creative reading stretches the imagination and helps children who are struggling to find themselves make sense of their own lives. Make it a habit to read, like brushing your teeth, forming a lifelong learning process while unleashing our creative thinking powers. Books are a free pass to anywhere and everywhere, the windows of the world, the start of a wondrously curious, lifelong adventure seeking pleasure and treasure, while developing a passionate habit of living and loving to read and reread classics.
Today’s young, voracious readers will become tomorrow’s ambitious leaders. In this information technology age, digital reading is a basic need and fundamental survival skill, essential for marketable success, highly valued for progressive social and pragmatic economic advancement.
Charles Frederickson
Bangkok
