Reading to Young Children, Why Is It Important?

The preschool or kindergarten classroom that is print rich and has a daily story-time, not only promotes interests in books, but is a springboard for learning important skills. Reading to young children builds vocabulary, sharpens listening skills, allows them to gain facts and information and fosters a desire to learn to read.

Reading introduces words and begins to build the child's vocabulary. Creativity and logic is an important factor in literacy development. The child learns that the pictures on the pages are visual clues to words, therefore, illustrations are especially important for the child to "read" by memory, then eventually recognize and decode the words.

Listening skills are developed in stories that have rhyming words, alliteration and repetition. These included in stories are not only fun, but are useful to increase the child's memory span. The awareness of sequence, to recognize sight and sound and to follow directions are learned by listening.

Reading nonfiction books enables the children to gain facts and information. This provides a source of information related to a lesson plan theme. Select books that offer simple explanations, such as how does a tree grow, about a visit to the dentist or how to take care of a new puppy. When reading informative books, the children usually want to know why or how. This allows for an opportunity to extend story-time into a center activity.

The desire to learn to read is increased as the children become familiar with a variety of books. Their self confidence grows as they hear favorite stories over and over again. Feeling confident they are able to eventually learn to read the book on their own, motivates them to read. This not only accomplishes an increase in interest, but develops a positive attitude and builds their self esteem.

By selecting quality books, the teacher enables individual children at different levels to learn these basic skills. When books are introduced early in the life of a child, this builds a foundation for the love of books and life long readers.I have found the book, Early Childhood Experiences in Language Arts, by Jeanne M. Machado, to be very informative and helpful as a reference to this article.