I talked last week in The Confident Mom Insider Connection newsletter about the importance of reading and tips on how to encourage your kids to read. I wanted to share with you another way you can encourage your kids to love reading.
Would you like to:
- Help your kids improve their reading skills?
- Grow their vocabulary?
- Help them sit quietly (willingly!)? and
- Entertain them too?
How can you accomplish those? Easy…play audio books!
Listening to books on tape provide all these benefits and more. You can just listen or find a book on tape that has the accompanying book to read along with the audio.
Did you know that for a significant part of their childhood, your kids’ intellectual capacity will be greater than their reading ability? That means that they can understand material when it is read aloud to them that they would not be able to read. Interesting isn’t it?
My kids love audio books and I love that they love them. As a work-at-home mom of four kids, I am busy! I know reading is important and key to learning, but it is nice that an audio book gives my voice a break and gives me space to multitask.
You can play books on tape when you’re in the car running errands. Naptime and bedtime are also favorite times to listen to a story. I also used audio books when we would travel by plane—a player and headphones were lifesavers!
Listening to audio books strengthens your child’s ability to listen, a skill very crucial for their academic achievement.
Audio books also let your child hear fluent reading with a bit of flair; a lot of them are read by the author or professional actors. This was incredibly helpful when our one son was having trouble with fluency and articulation.
If your child is struggling with reading, audio books associate reading with pleasure…so important if your child is to develop a lifelong love of reading!
Audio books help your child learn to visualize a story by using their imagination instead of the pictures (in contrast, watching television trains the brain to be lazy and rely on images).
Why not get your child on the fast track to reading success with the push of the play button too? To get you started, here are some of my kids’ favorite titles; grab them online or see if your local library has a copy. Our local library actually has the ability to download audio books right onto our MP player with out leaving home!
- Charlotte’s Web (read by the Author, E.B. White)
- The Jamie Lee Curtis collection (and I dare you to get through “Tell me about the night I was born” without crying!)
- The Maurice Sendak collection
- If You Give a Mouse a Cookie audio collection
Have fun listening together!
What favorite audio book has your family discovered?
Audio books should NEVER replace personal reading with your child; it is meant as an addition.
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