What does reading aloud promote in children?
Regular reading aloud makes an important contribution to your child's language development. When listening it expands their vocabulary, learns grammatical structures of the language becomes familiar with and internalizes, how stories are structured.
Reading aloud stimulates imagination: Reading aloud creates adventure worlds – while listening, children experience the story vividly and shape their own inner world. This fosters their creativity and develops their abstract thinking.
Reading aloud strengthens empathy: Many children's books and stories address everyday conflicts and fears in an understandable way. While listening, your child engages with them and learns important principles for daily interaction. Stories often convey basic patterns of behavior that children unconsciously adopt and try out.
Reading aloud is "low-stimulus": Unlike television or computer games, when reading aloud you can respond to the child's needs, take small pauses, repeat a sentence, or answer questions about a picture or a situation. Talking about the story, in particular, stimulates your children's creativity.
Stories encourage conversation: Pick up interesting points and talk with your little listeners about the characters, how they act, what they think, or about the pictures in the books. How would your children behave in that situation? Have they ever experienced something similar? The list of possible conversation prompts is long!
Reading aloud is important for spending time together: Cuddling on the sofa together and reading a book is wonderfully cozy – a reading-aloud session can be a break from everyday life for parents and children. Take this time consciously and try to make half an hour for reading aloud as regularly as possible.
When is the best time to read aloud?
Basically, the ideal time to read aloud is whenever,you have time and the necessary peace and quiet. But you can also deliberately use a reading session tobring some calm into everyday life – for example after lunch or when you pick up your child from daycare. Theclassic reading time is of course in the evening before falling asleep. This ritual is very important to many families – and when you read a longer book that is continued evening after evening, the anticipation is even greater.
Which read-aloud books are suitable for which age?
Reading to babies
Since babies pay particular attention to your voice, your speech rhythm, and your modulation, you can also read to them from your favorite book or the current crime novel. If your baby sits fairly securely on your lap, suitable are simple picture books with frequent repetitions or rhymes, which your baby will quickly recognize.
Reading aloud for toddlers
From one year of age, children are ready for their first board books. Good choices are simple rhyming stories, books with simple pictures and first words and clearly illustrated picture books.
From age 2 children enjoy short stories, first simple non-fiction books, preferably about everyday things or things they can observe themselves: vehicles, life on the farm or animals in the forest.
Children up to three years love picture books with short texts. At this age, pictures are important to understand the story. From this age onwards, it makes sense to read dialogically, that means, to loosen up the text with questions or prompts about the illustrations. This easily creates opportunities for follow-up questions or short comments on the text just heard. You can draw the children's attention to details of the story, which are also shown in the picture. Do not read too quickly; little ones need enough time to follow the plot and imagine the pictures in their minds. If there is too much text and too few pictures in the book, they can quickly lose patience. Most children at this age do no large selection of books. They often want to hear the same book every day. Still offer a different book now and then – perhaps you'll find a new favorite!
From age 4 the range of topics becomes increasingly broader. Just try out what your children like: Classics by well-known children's book authors, picture books with longer texts per page or books with several chapters. Fairy-tale or realistic, dragons or superheroes, fairies or princesses … The possibilities are varied. And don't be afraid to read aloud on topics that at first glance do not seem to match your children's interests, because that also broadens their horizons!
Reading aloud for kindergarten and primary school children
From about five years, children are interested in serial stories. They are now able to recall what they heard the day before and connect it with the next chapter of a story. When reading aloud there are now fewer pauses, because fewer pictures need to be discussed or explained. Read-aloud tip: Dive with your kids into our Kullerbü- or Little Friends stories in. The story „Witch Holterpolter and the Exploded Cough Syrup“ is perfect for a cozy read-aloud evening and is guaranteed to be a lot of fun for young and old.
How to make reading aloud fun
Sit cozily together – and take plenty of time for a shared book. With these reading tips for parents make reading aloud really enjoyable:
There is no wrong way to read aloud. It always depends on the personality of the reader, the children's age and their capacity to take in information. In classic reading aloud, the selected text is read straight through. Depending on the talent of the person reading aloud, individual characters get different voices – but that doesn't have to be the case! Especially when you read a story several times, you automatically convey moods, depending on whether the described situation is funny, exciting, or serious and how the characters act. With these reading tips for parents you'll be well prepared:
Focus on the book: Try to read with variety and excitement; that makes listening even more fun.
Be a role model: Regularly pick up a book or a newspaper yourselves – that makes reading a matter of course for your child.
Don't wait for your child to come to you with a book – regularly offer new books or make the shared reading time a fixed ritual.
Read a bedtime story: Ten minutes in the evening are enough to relax and read a lovely story together.
Let your child choose the book: Even if it's the same book for the 50th time or you'd rather read something pedagogically valuable than the pink princess story – the important thing is that your child enjoys reading aloud!
More articles about leisure & creativity
Image credits:
Mother reads a story to a child and kisses the child on the head © Elena Kratovich - stock.adobe.com
Mother reads a girl a bedtime story in bed © JenkoAtaman - stock.adobe.com
Father and daughter lie on the bed and read a book © Juliaap - stock.adobe.com
Mother reads from a book, daughter sleeps © JenkoAtaman - stock.adobe.com