In today’s fast-paced digital age, most children grow up in the confines of a virtual world with continuous screen time filled with online games, videos, and songs.
Despite of all this technical advancement accessible to children right from their early years, reading as an essential life skill doesn’t lose its relevance even in 2022.
The good habit of reading books not only enhances a child's vocabulary and language but also expands imagination and helps to build essential life skills. No wonder, reading books and stories to children has long been the most popular way for concerned parents and caregivers to boost their young children's creativity.
Reading as an activity stimulates the right side of the brain. This is that part which is responsible for building one’s creativity and innovation skills.
When a child reads, his or her imagination gets the room to extend to a world full of wonder and excitement. They are no longer confined to the room they are sitting in and are transported to an altogether new world - one that is fueled by their unique imagination and fantasies.
As a result, the activity empowers them to form their ideas, values, and even dreams for the future and encourages them to work and create in their own way.
Reading helps to significantly build and strengthen a child’s real-world problem-solving skills.
By imagining the situations described in the stories, and thinking how they would react if they were in the place of the central character, the reasoning skills of children gets stimulated. This makes them better equipped to deal with life’s daily challenges and problems and empowers them with high emotional resilience.
Reading enhances children’s cognition by exposing them to other environments that differ from the ones they’ve lived in. This significantly expands their horizon at an early age, making them more receptive and respectful to the culture and differences of others.
Stories and dialogue representations used in stories play a significant role in developing a child’s conversation, question, and answer skills. It also reduces the child's exposure to a delay in acquiring language and vocabulary skills.
Children’s books often depict tales that bring together the father, mother, and child and thereby strengthen their emotional bonds. By reading the story, enacting, and discussing it, children tend to feel more secure and also develop healthy attachment patterns towards their parents.
Reading forms one of the best outlets for a child to resort to when he or she feels a sense of stress or anxiety about something. It offers a healthy way to obtain respite and adapt to the difficult circumstances or feelings that one goes through while growing up.
Takeaway:
Albert Einstein says: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited to what we know now and what we understand...while imagination contains the whole world and everything that will be known or understood forever."
Exposing a child to only one type of storybooks limits his or her imagination abilities. On the other hand, allowing exploring different types of stories increases the awareness levels and understanding of life.
Hence, it’s a good idea to offer the child a mix of stories - right from realistic ones that help to understand concepts related to the practical world to fantasy tales that tickle their imagination.
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It's a good idea to expose a child to books that offer different perspectives and unfamiliar patterns. This helps in stimulating the little one’s analytical and critical thinking skills and thereby the ability to form well rounded opinions. It also enhances the child’s self-confidence in terms of the ability to think and understand.
For instance, it could be as simple as referring to books that show different forms of the family to a child. Say, one nuclear family with just parents and children, and another maybe with children and grandparents without the parents. The idea is to expose and then engage in active dialogue about these different circumstances.
This story is related to a ship called the Rosana that was sent from Italy to Beirut during the First World War.
The ship was supposed to carry wheat to solve the famine crisis in the country. However, all hope was lost.
So, what is the story of the Beirut-Aleppine folk song “Al Rozana”?
To read the story on the Nahla and Nahil platform, click here[RT2]
Another good idea is to pick up books that include questions which encourage a child to form different scenarios of possibilities in his or her mind. By thinking about what could happen and discussing the options to deal effectively with each scenario, the child gets empowered to develop flexible thinking abilities along with a solid personality.
The questions could be as simple as – [RT3] What would you do if your friend gets angry with you? What if it rains on your way to school? What if you lose your favorite toy? What if you feel fear, anger, sadness, or joy? How would you express each of them?
The princess of the kingdom of clouds lost her precious crown that was studded with precious stones when she was trying to cross the river and reach the opposite side. The princess happened to slip and her crown fell into the water. This left her sad and she returned to the kingdom without her crown. What happens next?
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Picking up books with illustrations or photographs can also be very useful to help children to recognize objects by sight. These types of books also encourage kids to compare what they see with what they know about the world around them, and draw out quick connections between the two.
Similarly, by choosing books that offer different audio clues, a child can learn how to distinguish between sounds and the meaning of tone of voice. For instance, a child could develop strong auditory skills by imitating the sounds of animals in the story. Similarly, by enacting an angry person and a sad person, one could get a sense of the different tones of voice associated with different emotions and so on.
Realist fiction refers to a style of writing that blends the real world with fantasy elements. This forms a great way to teach children that things are not always what they seem. These books challenge the imagination of children rather than being boring when recounting events and ideas head-on.
Takeaway:
Building the child's identity and his ability to set his future goals begins with the ability to imagine first.
Imagination forms the key to a child's holistic development. Several studies have shown that individuals who can use their imagination to construct new facts are better equipped to adapt to new ideas and circumstances.
The ability to imagine oneself in different scenarios is an important part of shaping one's identity and promoting an integrated, empathetic personality. In fact, imagination is also closely related to a child's creativity, which helps him choose the type of work or job he is happy with.
Looking for interactive books to develop your child's imagination? The Nahla wa Nahil platform offers the widest choice of handpicked children’s books and stories.
For more information click here[RT4]