love2read’s top ten

1. Model a love of reading for your child. Seeing adults enjoying reading from books, newspapers, magazines, recipes or menus will make children want to read for themselves.

2. Share books and read aloud. Make stories come alive by reading to your child. Take books wherever you go, trips to the shops and on journeys and have a few minutes of special quiet reading each day.

3. Look for words all around you. Point out labels on cereal packets and fruit juice cartons, notices in the supermarket, road and shop signs.

4. Join your local library. No child is too young to join the library, it is free and there are hundreds of brightly coloured books to choose from.

5. Play with rhymes. Children love rhymes and they help your child to notice sounds in words which will help with reading later on. Sing nursery rhymes. Make silly rhymes with your child’s name, ‘Wham, Bam, your name’s Sam!’

6. Letter and sound games. Play ‘I spy’, it’s a great way of showing that every word begins with a letter. You can play odd one out games, for example, which word is the odd one in a list like cat, sat, dog and mat?

7. Labels. Write titles under pictures, photos or on objects to show them that words belong to things. Start with simple words, for example, fridge, door, bedroom.

8. Use your finger. Show your child that words go from left to right by underlining them with fingers yours first, then theirs. They will begin to understand that those black squiggly things are important because they are telling the story.

9. Ask questions. Talk to your child about what is going on in a book. Ask open questions like ‘why is the bear crying?’ Look at the pictures for clues to the story. This will help with reading later.

10. Repetition is important. Let your child listen to their favourite stories again and again. They will start to notice more about the words, patterns and stories on the page. They might even start to read it for themselves!