5 inspiring ways to nurture a love of reading in your child

With children heading to school and National Poetry Day (6 October) just around the corner, you might be looking for ways to encourage your child or grandchild to read more.

As well as increasing self-esteem and confidence, reading can reassure a child, help them to relax, and feed their fertile imaginations. It can also help to build their vocabulary and empathy, and create strong family ties through shared reading and stories.

If you are struggling to develop a love of reading in your child, read these five simple tips now.

1. Start with a reading challenge

You might start by turning reading into a challenge. Each completed book could be worth a gold star, with five or ten gold stars leading to a reward.

It’s important to remember that you’re trying to build a love of reading, so choose your rewards carefully. You might opt for pocket money to buy a new book of your child’s choosing. Or maybe a day trip to see a building, landmark, or object featured prominently in the book you’ve just read.

When a new film is released, adapted from a book you’ve recently read, a cinema trip might be the reward. Just be wary of building a love of the cinema, rather than of reading!

2. Build understanding as you read

Comprehension is a crucial part of reading. You want your child to be able to identify the individual words, but a love of reading will only come when they comprehend the story and the worlds those words build.

If your child is stuck, or if the vocabulary is new to them, don’t be afraid to break off the story to explain the word. Contextualise the new word by placing it within the story, using characters and events from the book to help your child make sense of it. This should help to ensure the break doesn’t interrupt the story’s flow.

This will help to improve your child’s vocabulary and comprehension, but explaining why a word means what it does, or is written the way it is, will also help to improve their reading and writing skills. 

You don’t need to be Susie Dent. Simply introducing your child to different tenses of the same root word or picking out anomalies of the language when you naturally come across them could make all the difference.

3. Pick the books your child wants to read

Whether your child loves dinosaurs, space, or sports, picking a book that matches their interests gives you a much higher chance of them reading it. 

Don’t be afraid to resort to comics. These could be just the gateway you need to get your child into reading. There might be fewer words, but the artwork will contextualise those that are used and could be an aid to comprehension. 

Maybe your child struggles to engage with fiction. Children’s newspapers might be the right choice. They can explain current affairs in a child-friendly way or focus on specific areas like the natural world or history. Consider First News, The Week Junior, or the monthly magazine Aquila. 

Your child might have books provided by the school that are required reading. These might not always be your child’s first choice, but building a love of reading first, through topics they enjoy, could mean their school books are no longer such a chore.

4. Play games based on books

A trip to the cinema to see a film adaptation of a beloved book could help to bring the characters to life. But feeding your child’s imagination can begin at home. 

Whether you’re re-enacting favourite scenes, building props from playdough, or recreating iconic buildings from Lego, allow the characters and adventures to burst off the page. 

This helps to make them real in your child’s imagination and means that they’ll be keen to dive back in.

5. Encourage your child to read aloud

Reading aloud is a great way to build confidence. Even if your child is shy at first, encourage them to speak the words they read. This might mean reading stories to toys, pets, or a baby brother or sister. 

You might even improve the reading skills of older siblings by having them read to their younger brother or sister, thereby setting an example a younger child can aspire to. 

Hearing their voice out loud will help your child to correctly form the words they read, point out any tricky pronunciations, and add to the culture of reading as a shared experience within your household.

With this in mind, be sure your child is surrounded by good reading role models. If you don’t have the time to read a book, be seen reading the news (preferably in a newspaper rather than on a screen). 

If your child’s grandparents are big readers, take a book along on a visit and they can read together. This bonding experience with an older role model could be all your child needs to cement their love of reading.