Six Ways to Incorporate Reading Into Your Child's Day

According to Pheonix Academy a child who reads for 20 minutes per day is exposed to 1.8 million words per year. Reading exercises your mind, stimulates your imagination and helps you focus. How and when you read is not as important, as the fact that you read. Spending a 20 minute span of time reading is great. Breaking reading up into smaller chunks is also great and helps make reading a part of your lifestyle, gives you more time to digest the text, and makes it an easier task to complete. Here is a list of ways I have incorporated reading into me (and my children's) lives.

Read a Mindful Message Before Each Meal

Or perhaps your child is better suited to read a joke? Wether you read a passage from their favorite book, a passage from the bible, a joke from a joke book, or an article from the newspaper doesn't really matter, what matters is that you are feeding their minds along with feeding their bodies. What you want to feed them with, is highly personal for every family.

Wake Up Story

Get to them while they are still groggy and sleepy, warm and comfortable. What a treat to get woken up to cuddles and hugs and a good morning story. This works better for the little ones who don't yet go to school and can spend morning hours in their pajamas. You can start by reading them in a soft whisper, and then move on to an adventure filled story that helps them GET UP!

Read in the Car

Sometimes me and my kids have to wait in the car. Maybe the parking lot is full after we get out of the movie and its best to sit tight, maybe someone is running into the grocery store and its necessary to wait, or maybe we are picking somebody up and need to wait around. Sometimes we wait in the car. Sometimes momma has a book with her and reads a story while we wait.

Audio books can also be listened to while driving, but exposing the child to the words (and pictures) in the book while reading makes the reading have a different kind of depth.

Read While Your Kids Are in the Bath (Or Using the Potty)

Even children who are not paying 100% attention while reading are soaking up the benefits. Reading to a little boy while he is jumping on the couch is still reading to a little boy, you'd be surprised how much of the story he remembers and takes in. Reading in the bathtub while your child plays with bubbles, and bath toys is still reading. They are listening.

Read During Snack Time

My kids love gathering cheesesticks, crackers, and apples, setting them up in the living room like a little picnic and listening to momma read. Eating is safer when they sit down to eat, getting them to sit is easier if they are reading and eating. This "pic nic" takes about 10 minutes from set-up to clean up, but the 5 minutes of reading is not lost.

Give Then a Book to Keep Them Busy, When You Are Busy

Do your little helpers wander into the kitchen at times, demanding attention? Hand them a recipe book and have them find something they want to cook (next week). Are you blogging when they want them attention? Hand them a coding book and have them giggle at all the symbols. Whatever your hobby is that keeps you busy when they want attention, give them a book and have them flip through it. Reading is not just reading words, reading is also flipping pages, deciphering meaning, enjoying pictures, understanding color, learning about graphics and formulating paragraph structures.

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I was very surprised when I learned that to a baby "reading" could be as simple on letting them drool on a (baby safe) book. I was more surprised when I learned that my son was paying attention to me reading even though he was using my couch as a slide.

Reading when it works for you and your family is the best type of reading.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article. Do you have any other ways that you "sneak" reading into your child's life? Please share them in the comments.