The first thing you can do to help foster a love of reading is give your child access to books around the home. The second thing you can do is allow them to pick the books they read throughout the day. This allows them to feel a sense of choice and empowers them to read about what interests them.

Then the key thing is that we do not always need to read the words:

• Follow your child’s lead when reading and talk about what they are interested in within the book
• Pause to build excitement, anticipation and suspense
• Look at the pictures and talk about what they are pointing at
• Make the story exciting by changing your voice for different characters
• Use props or act out the story as you read
• Let them read, depending on the age of your child this could be them pointing to the pictures and telling you the story. Or for younger children it could be filling in a word from a repetitive phrase.

If we encourage children to explore the word of books in their own way and in their own time, we can foster a love of reading and the worlds books allow us to explore.

Did you know… reading one book with your child every day from the age of 2 has the potential to teach them over a thousand new words by the time they enter school!