Library

Lucie Hill

Library Technician

Hello everyone,

In this newsletter, I would like to share a few ways reading helps a child’s emotional development.

Reading is one of the easiest ways to encourage a healthy growth pattern with children. As your child reads more books, or is read to, their whole world changes. They start to develop a stronger and more stable intellectual, emotional and social being. 

Reading Can Teach About Life Experiences

Children will grow to be different emotionally throughout their entire childhood. One child may start off fairly shy while the other is more outgoing and then as they reach adolescence it flips. Reading allows a child to learn about various life experiences. As your child continues to read a variety of books, they learn about what other people may experience in life, and they start to think about these life experiences and what they feel about those situations. Books can help your child with understanding a variety of life circumstances and experiences.

Reading Develops Empathy and Imagination

Reading aloud with your child is such a wonderful bonding time. Your child will enjoy hearing stories read by you and seeing the world open up through books you share. Books help children to feel and think.

Many books offer a variety of situations, problems, and solutions. As your child reads a book and they encounter a problem that the character must work to resolve, your child is naturally working on emotional development. As the book continues, the child reads on and starts to feel a variety of emotions. Depending on the book, reading is something that helps a child think about how they feel for the character, about the situation and how they would respond if ever in this type of scenario.

Safe for Emotional Expression

Reading is a safe way for children to learn how to express and think about their emotions. It also opens the doors to new ways to cope with emotional responses to change. There are books about new siblings, bullying, and other experiences that your child may be experiencing and reading will help your child to express their emotions. They’ll develop a higher self-confidence in sharing feelings and emotions.

Reading can spark your child’s imagination and stimulate their curiosity. While books also help your child’s brain, social skills and communication skills develop throughout their life.

Last week Kingswood Primary School participated in the annual National Simultaneous Storytime event. At the same time, on the same day, we were able to watch NASA Astronaut, Shannon Walker, read the book Give Me Some Space, live from the Space Shuttle in the Australian Space Station. Seeing her let go of the book as it drifted away without gravity, then seeing Shannon float up inside the spacecraft was fun to see. 

The book is a wonderful portrayal of how life in space does indeed exist. It is “us” here on earth. 

Happy Reading