Reading aloud to your children is one of the simplest and most important things you can do to help them develop a love of reading – and it has some amazing side benefits, too! Studies have shown that children who are read to regularly tend to be stronger readers and have larger vocabularies than their peers.
Reading helps encourage a bond between you and your little children. As your child gets older, you can continue the bond of reading together by reading aloud to your child.
You see, reading is something that you can start young and continue into their older years as a family bonding activity. Much research has been completed on this topic to determine that reading aloud to kids makes them stronger.
Italian academics found that reading to 6- to 12-year-olds for an hour a day in school boosts their intelligence.
“Does it work? We discovered some compelling evidence that it does, ” says Emanuele Castano, a psychologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Trento.
The study was done in 32 Italian primary schools, where children typically spend around six hours a day studying for eight hours. Castano added that the research took place during an eight-hour school day, which is typical in Italy.
The teacher read age-appropriate fiction aloud to youngsters for an hour a day in the interventional group. The control group continued with its regular regimen of activities. The study included 626 children in all, with both groups made up of children from 12 public schools in the city of Turin, Italy.
After six months, youngsters were tested using two common instruments: the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV) and the Cognitive Assessment System Scale (CAS2).
The WISC-IV assesses kids’ vocabularies, comprehension, similarities, information, and word- reasoning. CAS2 measures “thinking abilities,” such as attention and processing.
According to the study, while the control group improved on both tests, this was expected in typical growth. In comparison, the children who were read to for an hour each day showed a “considerably stronger increase” on measures of intellect, including knowing things and thinking abilities, according to the study.
“The improvement showed up on every single subscale in both tests,” Castano added.
According to the research, the study builds on a decade-long effort by a University of Perugia research group. That study also looked at the effects of reading aloud to elderly people and children up to age 12.
The findings have prompted officials in Tuscany, one of Italy’s 20 administrative regions, to mandate that schools read aloud for an hour each day in public schools, according to the researchers.
Reading aloud to your children provides a number of benefits, including increased intelligence and stronger reading skills. It can also be a bonding activity that you can continue into your children’s older years. As you can see, this activity when done at least one hour per day will help your children be stronger in many areas of life.