We all know that reading to your child benifits him/her but did you know that even new born babies benefit from being read to because:

• It stimualates your baby's brain, helping strengthen the connections that make learning possible.
• It helps your baby learn to talk just from listening to your voice.
• Communicating, talking and interaction help develop social skils and good relationships.
• This will show you love and respect your child, enhancing self esteem.
• It helps form a close bond with yourself and your child.

To help you reading at home we have listed some key Ingredients for successful reading:

  * Find something interesting to read.

  * Change your tone of voice, use low and high pitch, use squeaking sounds, whistles and other mouth noises.

  * Involve your child in the reading.

  * Discuss with your child the people in the story and what happened.

  * Play with the ending, e.g. What happened to …? What if…?

  * Most important -- laugh and have fun with your child.

When the child follows the story line, letter recognition develops. Try adding an extra word in the story -- your child will tell you know that he's heard the difference. You'll also be enhancing your child's love of words. A child that is read to will grow up to be a reader. Reading is one of life's essential skills. Could you go a day without reading? Later on in your reading sessions, your child will associate the picture with the word and those pre-reading skills are golden.