Summer Reading and Pre-Readers

Summer Reading Challenge is on and it’s for all ages! Kids, teens, and adults can find adventure in a book and earn fun prizes along the way. But if your kids are too young to be reading yet, why should you sign them up for a reading challenge?

Any kind of reading counts for the Summer Reading Challenge – even audiobooks or listening to someone read. So if you read to your young child, that time counts! (And here’s a secret: it counts for your reading time, too! It’s 2-for-1 reading time!) Reading aloud to children doesn’t just earn them Summer Reading prizes, either. ParentTV, our online parenting resource, has this to say about the benefits:

A study conducted by Ohio State University found that young children whose parents read five books a day to them had heard about 1.4 million more words by the time they entered kindergarten than their counterparts who weren’t read to regularly. Even when kids had only one book a day read to them, they’d still heard about 290,000 more words than those who weren’t read to at all. Exposure to vocabulary is a key foundation for early literacy, language and comprehension skills, but the benefits of reading aloud don’t end there. This Australian study found that children who are read to frequently have better cognitive skills in general…

Reading aloud to children gives them access to other worlds. It gives them the opportunity to explore complex ideas, situations and context and exposes them to a greater breadth of language than we use in everyday speech. When you read a book to them, children understand how wonderful reading is, and they’re more likely to want to learn how to read. It’s a pretty special bonding time, too.

Bonding time with your young children, a big boost to early literacy, and some fun prizes, too! The Summer Reading Challenge offers all of this – another benefit of your library card! Visit our SRC page to learn more about the challenge, prizes, special summer events and ways to earn bonus points, and more. Or stop in at your library! The Summer Reading Challenge ends August 1.