5 Simple Ways to Enhance Language Development while Reading to your Child

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You may have heard that reading to your child is one of the best activities you can do as a parent. That’s exactly true! Reading to your child helps to not only build language and vocabulary development but also helps develop attention, pre-literacy skills, imagination, and so many other important skills!

You also may be wondering if you’re already reading to your child why you’d want to or need to any “extras” to boost language skills? Isn’t the reading enough? Yes and no.

Reading to your child is fantastic! However, you can also take an activity like reading TO your child and make it into reading WITH your child. Allowing your child to be an active participate in the reading process can really help to boost both receptive language (understanding) and expressive language (what they can tell you).

Here’s 5 simple ways to turn your reading time into a language boosting activity!

1) Talk about the pictures- This is a super simple way to read books together without actually reading the words. Pictures tell stories and are loaded with opportunities for vocabulary and sentence building! If you’re short on time or have a little one who doesn’t care to listen to stories this is a great idea to use instead! Look at the pictures together and talk about what you see (targeting nouns, adjectives) and what is happening (verbs, prepositions). Feel free to even make up your own story!

2) Read repetitive books- Some of the best books for littles are books that are repetitive. These are great because the child hears the same words over and over again and before long they’re able to recite parts of the book right along with you! If you are in a repetitive book stage take advantage of it and let your child help to fill in the words. When you come to a phrase in the book you think they know just pause and allow them to fill in the word. If they’re not there yet then just keep giving them the opportunity and help them if needed.

Fun Fact- Did you know that children need to hear words used in context at least 12-20 times in order to learn them? Building language development through reading repetitive books is such a great way to get all those repetitions in!

3) Ask comprehension questions as you’re reading- This will be for children 3+ but you can certainly start it earlier (just be prepared to also give them the answer—in fact, asking a question and then modeling the answer is a perfect language building activity for littles!) Every so often ask a little question about what you just read. Start out with very simple questions and then gradually work up to more in-depth questions.

4) Rephrase, Simplify, Relate- Sometimes as we’re reading books to our kids we come across words or phrases that are new to them and they might not quite understand. When this happens read the word or phrase but then rephrase it, simplify it, or relate it to something they are familiar with. A prime example is the story of Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. Whenever we read that story and we talk about eating porridge I explain “porridge is kind of like oatmeal” because that is something my kids can relate to. It’s always good to expose children to new vocabulary and phrases but it’s equally important to ensure they will understand it and be able to relate to it. That helps their developing brains learn and process new information.

5) Make up stories- This one you don’t even need a book for! Make up your own stories about your family or familiar characters. Story telling is a great and creative way to help build language skills and you can make it fit your child’s interests and development. My boys love hearing stories about their favorite movie and tv characters or whatever it is their interested in at the moment (dinosaurs, trains, etc), I’ll admit my husband is more creative in the story telling process than I am but it’s a skill I’m improving on!

Finding simple ways to enhance reading time with your child turns the activity from a passive one to an active one. Don’t feel obligated to do all of these each time you read but as you add one or two into your reading routine you’ll see just how naturally it comes and how much impact it can have on your child’s language development.