Hello friends!

Today I am sharing a video of me reading a picture book with Ray, which essentially advises you on how to cultivate a love for reading with your baby, getting them to learn words, attach meaning to those words and develop the confidence to speak up. Educating kids is a topic close to my heart and in time to come, hopefully, I will be able to share more of my experiences and teaching methods, which I am unabashedly proud of (haha so shoot me), since Ray can speak since waaaaaaaay before hitting 1yo.

He can also switch between Mandarin and English now, although evidently, his primary preference for communication is still in English (Yep, I need to work harder on mandarin!). At 15mo thereabouts, he could count from 1 – 10 (though he used to skip 4 and 7 haha and still skip them sometimes) and at 18mo, can recite the alphabets from A to Z with a little nudging from mama every now and then. Gosh, kids’ memories are stellar! Youth is wonderful!

Before I sidetrack though, I would like to highlight an important point – Contrary to popular belief, reading with babies is not so much about teaching them to read (they memorise the words, they do not read at such young ages), but helping them to cultivate a love for reading. This means that they will associate reading with discovery, with learning, with joy, and ideally, will choose reading over watching TV or playing with the phone or Ipad for example. It is about setting the right foundations for learning, and cultivating good habits for life.

In reading with your baby, you can help your baby to understand more about the world, especially when they connect an item they see in the book (e.g. Flower) and you point out to them flowers as you walk past them in real life. This brings the 2D images alive, and encourages them to try out words.

In this video example, see how we cultivate a love for reading with Ray. As briefly mentioned, Ray is a very early speaker and at 18mo now, he can string together phrases of 5 words or more (Mummy, take choo choo train give Ray Ray), and we at Jashuat, believe it is due to cultivating a love for reading. Hopefully our tips will help your kids to love reading too! Share this post with your partners and friends, so they understand the importance and simplicity of reading! Hopefully, your kids will love reading as much as Ray, and grow to be a lifelong learner!

Join my Photo/video Contest and win great prizes! And share this article with your hubby/wife/friends – sharing is caring 🙂

Meanwhile, I am also running a little photo/video contest (supported by the Government) to celebrate Singapore’s 50^th birthday. Please support me by signing up for this contest, and stand to win fab prizes worth up to $3k! Link can be found here à www.facebook.com/jashuatbaby (top post).

if you like this article and would like to be kept updated on my other posts, as well as other interesting and useful parenting articles and information to engage your babies, do follow/like me at www.facebook.com/jashuatbaby or click on the Facebook icon on this website!

By admin

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