My daughter is a certified bookworm. I had intended for her to get hooked on books ever since she was still in my belly. As she is growing up, I knew I wanted her to love reading because it also follows that she will love learning if she does. I can see how those efforts that I did on her early years is paying off now. When we went to the Big Bad Wolf at Parqal mall, I saw how her eyes lit up when she saw the many many books that were on display. "I never wanna leave, Nanay!" Oh, but we do, because the longer we stay there, the more we spend. LOL.
She was not a book lover overnight though. there were lots of things I intentionally did so that she will be exposed to as much reading as we can.
Surround your kid with books
This is the first thing that I did. Even before I found out I was pregnant with her, I have already been buying books. It did not make sense at the time for me to buy kiddie books since I didn't have a kid yet but it turns out, it was one of my cravings. When she finally came out, I bought even more books. When other parents were spending money on colorful and musical toys, I was spending them on board books, cloth books, storybooks, even coloring books. She was but a few months old back then. She made her first reading when she was around 7 months old.
Ditch CocoMelon, watch Alpha Blocks
I'm not saying don't let your kids watch those nursery rhyme videos. You may still do so. Although, they really could do without those videos. I personally know families who intentionally did not buy a television set in their homes. If you do need to have your toddlers watch videos, make sure there is a huge chunk of educational videos appropriate for their age, and a few that is a little advance for them. My kid is a Dave and Ava fan when she was in her toddler years. Blippi was one of her favorites too. But I highly recommend Alphablocks during toddler years if you want your kid to learn how to read in the most relaxing way. My kid watched this when she was 2-3 years old. She started paying attention to it when she was mid-3 years old.
Karaoke
I watched a mom hack a long time ago that when her kids are watching, she would turn on the caption and then lower the volume really really low so that they would be forced to read while watching. I thought that's a neat trick. I tried that too. It works. But we did something even more fun.
We introduced Karaoke to our 4-year old daughter. LOL. At this age, she has already learned how to read but she still hasn't mastered the skill yet. Since she also loves singing, why not combine the two, right? Apart from our regular reading time, we set a videoke time every Saturday so that she could practice not only her voice, but also her reading. All while having fun.
Read Aloud
This I learned when she was already 5 years old when we found our homeschooling provider. Although my daughter did not really exhibit any monotonic way of reading, I figured out why other kids do when I attended one of the webinars that our homeschooling provider had. Kids learn to read better when they hear the words spoken to them by people who are already good at reading. They learn the pronunciation, the intonation, pauses, etc. when the story is read aloud to them. It's even more effective when you are showing them the book while reading it and pointing at the words while you do.
Now, my daughter knows that commas have short pauses, a period needs a bit longer pause when reading. She knows how to express the difference between exclamation points and question marks. I plan on reading aloud to her for as long as she wants. Every night, the Fairy book series to her before we sleep.
Don't associate reading with punishment
This was one thing I was extra careful of. I often hear parents say "You're not going to use your phone. Go, read your books." whenever their kid misbehaves or acts up and they punish the kid through this. I made sure that my kid does not think of reading as a punishment. It's a bonus that we don't really use reward and punishment in our parenting style, this was easy for me. I noticed that there are kids that see reading as a burden or a chore that they must do.
I wanted my daughter to find delight in diving into the worlds that books could offer. I wanted her to feel the joy and excitement whenever she opens a book. She never feels like she is being punished whenever we read a story to her or whenever she holds a book.
Choose interesting books
My daughter learned to properly read independently at 4. Her practice book was Dr. Seuss. We trained her how to do narration using A Lolong Time Ago which is a Philippine history book but she found it very interesting. It's not easy looking for interesting books. But one thing I know is that you could never go wrong with the classics like Black Beauty, Dr. Do Little, The Little Princess, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and so much more.
When it comes to educational books, living books is the way to go. We are reading Grammarland right now for our English lessons. It's a book about the different parts of speech which I thought would be a daunting topic to teach to a child. Right now, she has full understanding of 3 parts of speech, and she has just started learning about them 2 weeks ago.
In Conclusion
My daughter has become a bookworm. She has also mastered speed reading. I always remind her that she does not have to hurry because she might miss some important details in the book. I tested if she understood what she read by having her do a character study. I can say that there is nothing I need to worry about because comprehension-wise, she's good to go. The only thing I need to worry about now is the books I'll need to get so that I could feed the book-sniffing, book-hungry little bookworm I just created.
