7 Tips to Boost your Young Child's Interest in Books and Reading

Tips to Boost your Young Child's Interest in Books and Reading

As a Head Start teacher working with a class of three and four year old students, I have found that reading books can often become a very tedious task. Under our curriculum I am expected to read my students three books  at different times throughout the day, every day. When I first began I thought this was great! As a bookworm myself I knew that story time would be my favorite part of the day, but I learned very quickly that a majority of my students did not share my enthusiasm. Some days my students would be fairly engaged in the book and I could finish the reading before they lost complete interest. Other days I couldn't even finish telling my students the title of the book before they completely lost interest and began creating complete chaos! 

The time of day that I so looked forward was a complete disaster! I honestly was a little heart broken. My students did not enjoy their reading time and I was at a loss. What was I doing wrong? I like to think of myself as a pretty good book reader. I loved getting to read to other classes when I was observing in other class rooms and the students seemed so engaged then. What was different with my class? I would try to read through our book quickly before they could completely lose their interest and reading became impossible, but my book loving heart just could not take it. I needed to find a way to get my students to love books and reading. 

So I began testing out different ways to get my students engaged with books. I will point out that I was hired in for this position in February so my students had all adjusted to the routine of our class before I became their teacher. I learned very quickly that my class of students was not used to reading. Before I came they often did not read their books for the day, and the books that they did read were the same books they had been reading all year! No wonder they were so disinterested. I would often reread books myself but reading the same 25-30 books for 5-6 months in a row would get boring even to me! 

The first thing I did was switch out the books that were available in our class library for other books that had been in storage. This immediately made a difference. Students began to show more interest in our books and even began to use their free time to explore the books available. After switching out our class books I tried out many different strategies over several weeks and was finally able to get my class to a point that they enjoyed our reading time and often would demand that I read a book again and again! Even our class library which was basically for decoration before began to get used on a daily basis during their free time. Inspiring a love for books at this young age has really continued to inspire me to find new and creative ways to get children inspired to read! 

Here are some helpful tips that I that will get your child interested in books and reading at home:

• Read Often! 

• Implement reading as part of your daily routine at home. Find times that work best for you and your family depending on the age and schedules of your children. This might mean reading as part of an after bath and before bed routine or maybe a calming moment before an afternoon nap. 

• Read books that interest your child

•  Children will be more inclined to listen to/read a book that they find interesting. You wouldn't want to read a book about a topic that is of no interest to you. Neither do your children. Find books that will peek their interest. 

• Give your child a choice

•  Ask which book would they like to read today? Take your child to your local library and let them decide which books they would like to check out. Giving children a choice in the books that they read will make them more inclined to engage with the book. 

• Consider readabilitly

• Unless you are a doctor or an medical student you likely would not be reading a medical text book, and if you did you would probably have a lot difficulty reading the text because you would find a lot of words and phrases that you are not familiar with. Likewise as an adult you likely don't want to read a kindergarten level book unless reading to children. So consider the level that your child is at when selecting books for them. You don't want to select books that are too hard for them to understand just like you don't want to select books that are overly simple and uninteresting. 

•  Don't overly pressure your child

• You don't want reading to become a chore. You want reading to be a fun and engaging activity. If need be introduce reading at different times in different ways until you find what engages your child. Also know that it is ok to not finish a book. I have started reading many books that I never finished because I lost interest. Don't feel like you have to make your child finish a book. If they aren't engaged stop reading and do something else. 

• Make reading FUN!!

• Get your child engaged in reading. Ask them questions as you read, use different voices for different characters, act out parts of the story. Have fun! If you are having fun as you read your child is more likely to enjoy it too!