Great Reasons to Read Aloud to Kids

I don’t think I could overestimate the importance of reading aloud to children – even after they have learned to read. Sure, we all read to our babies and toddlers, although some of us may not do it as often as we should. But many parents who did a good job of reading to their toddler or preschooler drop reading out loud once children learn to read themselves. This is a mistake, and I’ll explain why.

Once a child reaches first or second grade, they can begin to understand books that are up to five grades above their own grade level. By picking challenging books, you can be exposing them to vocabulary and ideas that they themselves could not yet read on their own. This is a neat concept that can be very beneficial to families with children of different ages.

Let’s say you have an eight year old, a six year old, and a four year old. By picking a book that is fun and engaging for more than one age group (e.g., Charlotte’s Web), you can read to all the kids together. I’m not saying that the four year old will understand everything or get the same things out of it as the six and eight year old, but kids usually surprise you with the way they can follow a story.

Some of my favorite memories as a child are of my dad reading out loud to me and my sisters—books that we wouldn’t have chosen to read on our own, like the Pilgrim’s Progress, but how we loved to listen to him read out loud. Plus we were getting huge doses of the one thing every child wants more than anything else: their parents’ attention.

Reading aloud does many awesome things, and I’m just going to list just a few:

1. Stimulates imagination
2. Expands vocabulary
3. Develops analytical and logical thinking
4. Strengthens the bond between parent and child
5. Gives children a love of books
6. Prepares kids for learning to read on their own
7. Increases attention span*

Study after study shows that children in classrooms where the teacher reads aloud each day do better in school and on tests than in classrooms that don’t. Also, giving kids time to read silently to themselves is very important and always improves academic performance.

Here’s something I do with my son even now: parallel reading. He and I read together but silently: he may be reading a Magic School Bus book, and I may be reading Dickens, but the idea is that we’re reading together. Make sure you pick something that you really enjoy reading. Not only is it fun (and gives me a chance to read something I’m interested in) but I’m setting a great example to him of how much reading means to me. And we all know that children copy what we do, not what we say.

A principle to keep in mind is that what you help a child love and desire is more important than what you help them learn. A sure sign of a reader is a young child who snuggles up with a book, although it might be upside down and the words on the page are still meaningless to her. She is showing evidence that she wants to read. That is the kind of love and joy that you want to nurture.

I highly recommend The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. It's a great book on how and why to read to children. It’s in its fifth or sixth printing so try to get the most recent version if you can. It’s full of great info about reading aloud, as well as lots of recommendations for great “read aloud” books.

*adapted from the Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease.