A question I get asked frequently by parents is how to encourage their children to read more.
Reading a wide range of books is a great way for kids to pick up new words and learn how English works, but it can be easy to forget that they can learn just as much from listening to stories read by you. I’m a very enthusiastic reader now and one reason for this, I believe, is that my mum regularly read to me as a child, giving me a love of stories.
The advantage of you reading to your child, particularly when they are first learning to read, is that it gives them access to stories that are too difficult for them to read by themselves. Some of my favourite memories as a child is curling up with my mum in a comfy chair and her reading me stories such as The Never Ending Story, The Hobbit and Winnie the Pooh stories until I was old enough to read them for myself.