Finding time to bond with your child can be difficult with our busy schedules. Reading is the perfect opportunity to achieve this. Here are three ways you can use reading time to bond with your child:
Mix Up the (Reading) Routine
Try and not only read before bedtime. Try another transition times like when your child comes home from school, homework time, or dinner begins. Before you know it, you’ll have carved out a new window for slowing down and engaging in conversation. Remember, the more time you set aside for reading, the more likely your child is to fall in love with it.
Get Into Character
One of the easiest ways to make reading time with your child fun and enjoyable is to really immerse yourselves in the story. Use silly voices, act out different characters, and feel free to exaggerate some of the emotions with big belly laughs or sniffling ‘boo-hoo’s.
Model Behaviour to Foster Love for Reading
Choose different books on various topics and even transition to books that your child cannot read independently can foster enjoyment, bonding time and advance their reading level with new words and sentence structures. By sharing your love of reading and modeling engaged reading – you will model behaviour that will benefit them at school.
Reading can be an enjoyable time with your children especially if you provide them with your full attention when doing so. Put down your phones and let’s start engaged reading with your children.