admin
When parents or care givers read to children, the children begin to understand the world around them and make new connections.
The interaction with words and pictures strengthens children’s cognitive, emotional, language, motor, sensory, and social skills development.
Making reading time an integral part of a family’s value system fosters children’s long-term love of reading, and, perhaps more importantly, reinforces the importance of life-time learning.
Various barriers can make the daily habit of reading to children challenging. Paper books are scarce in economically under-resourced regions, especially with libraries and schools closed as a result of the Covid-19. When parents do have access to paper books, it remains difficult to find the diverse number of age-appropriate, locally relevant books needed to create a consistent reading routine, improve literacy, or spark children’s interest and imagination.
Technology is levelling the field. Mobile devices — feature phones, smart phones, tablets and similar devices — that people carry in their pockets or purses in every corner of the world have the power to turn even the youngest children into life-time readers.
With over 5.2 billion unique mobile subscribers across the globe, approximately 68 percent of the world population, parents and care givers can proactively use their mobile devices to provide a safe, effective and engaging digital reading environment with their mobile phones.
Parents and care givers play a vital role. When used effectively, digital books can help establish the crucial bond needed between adults and children, and serve as a starting point in creating a safe and fun-reading environment.
In a 2019 report, Kucirkova, a professor of early childhood education and development at the University of Stavanger, Norway, writes: “Often with digital media, adults assume that because there is some embedded feedback and support within the digital device or within the digital book, that the child doesn’t need us.
“But actually, we do know from many studies with digital books and also with television, video learning and other digital media, that the adult’s presence is crucial for the child’s learning and long-term enjoyment.”
Parents’ or care givers’ active participation is a vital part of children’s success as readers, students, and later, as productive members of society.
Many parents and care givers, however, do not know where or how to begin with digital reading. The current recommendation is: Start with what most people have in their hands already — their mobile phone.
Online Reporter