Reading Helps the Parent/Child Connection

Welcome to my all-new, We-Read Wednesday's!  I have decided to dedicate all Wednesday posts to reading, reading with your kids, literacy, reading ideas, etc.  I hope you find them informative, fun and inspiring!  Reading with your children is so important for obvious reasons like literacy and speech development, but today I would like to spend time on this aspect of reading....spending quality time connecting with your child. 

There's a special correlation between spending time connecting with your child and their cooperation with you throughout the rest of the day.  Did you know that increasing your quality time with your child by a mere 5 minutes will increase their willingness to cooperate?  Wow!  With all of the fabulous learning benefits of reading, why not use this tool to spend that special face time with your child?

Here are a few bullet point ideas to increase snugglies and smarties in your reading time:

• Ask lots of questions like, "Can you find the duck hiding on this page?"  Or, "Does the boy's face look happy or sad?"

• Make silly jokes to keep your kids on their toys like, "Oh look at the cow!!"  When there is no cow on the page (ok, your child has to be old enough to know what a cow is for this to be funny).

• Ask your child their favorite picture, or what they like best about each page.

• Repeat phrases, sounds or names in the book and have your child repeat you.  ex. "The duck, duck, duck goes quack, quack, quack!  Can you say that?" 

These fun and simple ideas will add a significant richness to the time you spend with your children.  We have such a short period of time with them- let's make these moments count!

sources and further reading:
conscious discipline by Dr. Becky Bailey- http://www.consciousdiscipline.com/
ABC Music and Me- http://blog.abcmusicandme.com/