Okay, so your child loves to watch television, play video games, surf on the Internet, and listen to music. And there’s nothing wrong with those activities, as long as they’re used in moderation. Most parents would also love to see their kids participate in more constructive activities — like reading children’s books — but the trick is to get your little ones to actually sit down and crack open a book a few times per week.

One way to start is by sitting down and reading aloud to your children. By reading aloud to your kids, you’re showing them how to enjoy children’s books, the English language, the wonders of a good story, and hopefully, you’re instilling a love of reading and learning. Many kids associate books with the drudgeries of school and homework, but you want to show them how a well written children’s book can be an exciting adventure, a real pleasure, as their imagination takes them to places they’ve never been to visit with people and characters they’ve never met.

Reading to children is shown to have a positive effect on children’s literacy outcomes, the government report concludes. Through experience with books, children gain important exposure to written language. They begin making connections between the spoken word and the printed word. Policymakers contend that it is important to read to your child.

So getting your children — especially males — to read, and enjoy reading, is a real challenge these days. And again, one way to tackle that challenge is to read to your children aloud. One technique is to make reading a children’s book a game, an interactive adventure that you can both enjoy. After all, this is another way to spend some quality time with your kids, which is what they want anyway.

The goal is to get your child to open a book for fun, on their own, without prodding from you or their teachers in school.

By: Hilda M. Lazarte | Teacher III | F.C. del Rosario Elementary School | Samal, Bataan