Making Bedtime Reading Even Better
A favorite pastime for parents and children is bedtime reading. It's a true win-win situation. Not only is it enjoyable to sit back and experience a good tale, but it can be a major help in expanding a child's language and reading.
In my experience, most children and parents select stories as the books of choice. By that I mean, fiction as opposed to fact. There are many benefits to this type of reading and it, in no way, should be discouraged. At the same time, there is no reason to restrict the choices to these types of books. There are tremendous benefits to be had by expanding the selection.
There is, of course, the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Since bedtime reading seems so great, you might be wondering why the suggestion for any modifications at all?
The answer rests with something parents and children are very concerned about--namely, school achievement.
School success is very tied up with reading success. And as many parents have found (much to their consternation), as children advance in the grades, reading becomes more and more difficult and less and less appealing.
While it doesn't receive nearly the attention it deserves, a key source for the growing resistance rests with an area termed "knowledge base." That refers to the fact that for higher level reading to be meaningful, the reader has to possess a fair amount of information before doing the reading. This includes almost any topic you might envision such as "the early explorers of the New World," "the debate about planetary movements" and "Mayan civilization."
One of the easiest and nicest ways to help your child build the necessary knowledge base is to expand your bedtime reading to include some non-fiction books. There is no need for the topics to be dry and boring (which is the way children often respond to them in school.) With bedtime reading, you can choose books written by the best authors in the world. And the topics can be anything your child loves--science, biographies, wars, adventures--take your pick. You can find loads of choices by asking your local librarian or searching on the internet for books in the categories that your child finds appealing.
One of the huge advantages of reading this material to your child is that you can offer fascinating, high level material well before he or she could read it independently. You can do this as early as five or six years of age since children at that age are particularly excited by new ideas. So while keeping all the pleasures of nighttime reading, you can also help your child gain the foundation for academic success.
