Reading is a fundamental skill that kids tend to develop as they grow and start going to school. From alphabets, to words, to sentences, paragraphs and further on, reading becomes a natural skill, but is this enough to develop a reading habit for everyday learning and growing? 

Before understanding the ways to develop the habit of reading in young kids and teens, let’s try to understand the long-term benefits of building a reading habit. Some of these merits of reading go with them a long way as they turn into more informed adults and tend to build innate leadership qualities.

The invaluable benefits of reading include: 

• • Mental, Emotional, and Intellectual Stimulation:
    Reading aids in keeping children’s brain active and engaged in the early growing years, which can naturally improve their memory, increase concentration power, and enhance overall cognitive function.

• • Expanded Vocabulary:
    Communication is a core skill and nothing can build a better vocabulary than reading regularly. Research found that an average 11-year-old  reading for only 20 minutes per day was exposed to up to 405,431 words per quarter.

    

    That is just enough words for them to capture a new vocabulary every quarter, and hence be a good reader, writer and do BETTER at verbal communication.

• • Improved Focus, Concentration and Understanding:
    Reading requires focus, concentration, and understanding, which can enhance your child’s capacity to stay focused on tasks and be more of an active learner in everyday routine. 

• • Increased Empathy:
    What is a better way to ‘be in someone else’s shoes’ than donning the personality of a protagonist or main character while reading a story or a novel? Give your child the wings of imagination and let them build an enhanced understanding of others’ perspectives and develop empathy by allowing them to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

• • Personal Growth and Increasing Knowledge-base:
    Reading can definitely help kids learn more about themselves, unique and new things and so much about the world around you, leading to a more informed approach at LIFE overall.

There are numerous benefits of reading that can make one better everyday. But do your little ones also refuse or hate-it every time you ask them to read? Do you think that your asking them to ‘read’ is taken as your asking them to ‘study’ yet again after a long school day?

Here are some research-based simple ways through which The School Social helps you build a habit of reading by choice, and definitely not by force. Some quick ways you can try at home everyday to make your little toddler, curious 4-7 year old, pre-teen or even a daunting adolescent develop a habit of reading, lovingly, are: 

• • Serve their Interest Areas: Give them short articles, stories, fun facts or informational content that is customized to their interest-areas. How?
    The School Social Daily Magazine is a resourceful repository of high-interest articles and content that grabs children’s attention quickly and holds them to read for a longer period of time. From Science and Technology, to Sports, Food, Fashion, DIY crafts, Travel and Books, the interest areas are varied and kids of all ages find the content as per their liking. They naturally begin to read when it’s about what they like.

• • Make their Screen-time Meaningful: Take it as a harsh truth, but you cannot keep your child away from the new technologies and isolate them in old ways of learning. So, why not use it as an opportunity and actually use their fancy for a digital screen to build a good reading habit? 
    The School Social is an online magazine that gives them a time-capped online positive engagement, which not only builds a reading habit, but also becomes their everyday source to get smarter and know what’s going on in the world around them. 

• • Nurture their Curiosity, safely: Kids are naturally curious, and definitely you would have asked them to ‘google’ or did it yourself, every time they ask you an out-of-the-box question. But better be SAFE! Google is full of open-source information, which might not only be wrong or baseless, but also expose them to the digital web of advertisements and tracking cookies. So, where to go? 
    The School Social is a safe digital platform, with highly regulated-content, giving young ones a safe space for their curious wanderings. It is the only daily-magazine in the digital format that is delivered exclusively to the Subscribers and does not run any ads alongside content for kids or tracking cookies or codes. 

• • Attach Reading to another Routine Habit: Do you remember the days of Newspaper and a cup of tea? So why not give your child his favorite Magazine on the Tab / Ipad / or any favorite screen right after they have had their glass of milk? Make it feel like a reward and see two good-habits go hand-in-hand. 
    The School Social Daily Magazine comes everyday as a power-packed learning tool that does not seem like learning at all. With a focus on building the habit of reading, your little one looks forward to knowing new facts that s/he can talk about in school or with friends. This daily cycle builds up a feeling of reward for the young curious mind and secretly, under the disguise of having fun online, a reading habit is naturally developed! 

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