Start of “National Reading Year”  Encouraging Parents to Read to their Children

Today, Wednesday 24th October sees the start of “National Reading Year”  which aims to help more people, especially young people become avid readers.  As part of a series of campaigns that are due to run throughout the next 12 months, parents are being asked to read to their children before bed.

Helping Children with Reading

Many parents try to make time to do this, however, UK Government Ministers urged all parents to make an effort.  To make time for bed-time reading just as they would for time to brush the children’s teeth.  By reading to children in this way, it helps build up an affection for books at early age, hopefully this affection will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

By reading to children, parents can help young people understand more about language and sentence construction.  New words can be explored and explained helping to develop the child’s vocabulary.  The parent also benefits from this exercise, spending such quality time with the children is the perfect way to unwind after a difficult day at work.

The National Reading Year (NRY) will be led by Honor Wilson-Fletcher the Marketing Director at the London Southbank Centre.  The last  NRY was in 1998 and it was criticised for not making a lasting impact on the reading habits of the nation.

Books can help develop children’s imagination and also encourage them to write creatively as well.  It is best to choose a subject that the child is fond of, dinosaur books come in very handy.   There are many story books to choose from and the team at Everything Dinosaur are currently researching more books (approved by our dinosaur experts) to add to our shop.

Everything Dinosaur

A particular favourite is “Triceratops Gets Lost”, this book has been especially designed to help young people learn to read.  The story centres around a young Triceratops that has lost its herd, the book comes with a special cuddly Triceratops soft toy as a “bed-time buddy”.  The book also contains a CD-rom so that the child can have the book read to them and follow the story via a home computer.

Dinosaur themed gifts: Dinosaur Gifts and Prehistoric Animal Toys.

This book is one of a series of two (the other features T. rex looking for dinner), they have been designed for children between 3-6 years and the authors have made sure that the story contains words that can help children expand their word usage and reading skills.