Reading books with your children is one of the best ways to help them develop their languages. In fact, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) mentions books as the first resource under “Ways To Help Your Child Become Bilingual“.
Why are books helpful to develop language skills?
- Books help to expose children to many different words and topics. For example, you may not necessarily talk about knights, mermaids, astronauts, and dinosaurs on a regular day if it wasn’t for books. Books allow us to dive into different worlds; and so they help us to expose our children to a variety of different words, different sentence structures, and styles of language use.
- Books offer a way to have a real conversation with your child. For example, you can talk about the story, about characters, and what you see on the pages. In other words, books allow you to interact with her about a range of topics, using the minority language.
How can you make books more accessible in your home?
So give your children access to books as much as possible. A way to go about it is to place books at strategic spots throughout the house. For example, we have books by the dining room table, in the bathroom, in my daughter’s play area in the living room, and by her bed. Books are everywhere in our house and having them handy has considerably increased the amount of reading we do in our bilingual home!
You think your house may get too cluttered? Here are some ideas how to keep the books from randomly piling up everywhere:
Bedside organizer
Play area in living room
