Inspiring you pre schooler to love books

Here are some tips whilst reading a book together.

As you sit together, try following the words with your finger, helping your child to link the sounds and the words that they hear with the written shapes of letters on the page.

Take time as you read to explore the pictures, to ask questions and to talk about the hidden messages within some stories.

Illustrations play an important role in learning to read, firstly they help to grab and maintain children’s attention. They may provoke curiousity and give clues about the story or characters, and what might happen next.

Once upon a time… understanding how a story is structured will be key for future reading and writing so what better way to learn this than through books?

At the end of the book, recap the whole story together and ask your child which part was their favourite and why.

Children’s books are ideal for building vocabulary and naming objects and animals – and will be perfect for playing a form of “I spy." “I spy with my little eye….. something red, an animal, something that hops, something hiding behind a tree”.

Older children might enjoy guessing how the story might end, or making up an alternative ending!

Encourage your child to re-tell favourite stories in their own words, using their knowledge of a well-loved book, or the illustrations to narrate their own story.

So hopefully your local library will open soon. The beginning of a journey The journey to reading is one of the most joyous rides — from listener, to participant to storyteller — it lets the imagination grow wild! A child who wants to be read to, who then wants to journey through a book will soon want to be reading for themselves — a skill they will then be keen to learn. And then a whole new world opens for them. So one of the most important things that you can teach your child about reading is to love books, any book, new or old, charity shop buys, favourite books again and again, old classics, new classics, comics, magazines or instructions manuals – anything that will build and continue a love of reading right through childhood into adulthood.