Every parent wants the best for their child. One of the best things you can do for your child is to encourage and provide many opportunities to read outside of school. 

Here are a dozen tips for nurturing your growing readers:

1. Read with your children at least once every day.
   
   
2. Make sure they have plenty to read. Take them to the library regularly, and keep books and other reading materials in their reach.
   
   
3. Notice what interests your child, then help find books about those things. 
   
   
4. Respect your child's choices. There's nothing wrong with series fiction if that's what keeps a young reader turning the pages.
   
   
5. Praise your children's efforts and newly acquired skills.
   
   
6. Help your child build a personal library. Children's books, new or used, make great gifts and appropriate rewards for reading. Designate a bookcase, shelf or box where your children can keep their books.
   
   
7. Check up on your children's progress. Listen to them read aloud, read what they write and ask teachers how they're doing in school.
   
   
8. Go places and do things with your children to build their background knowledge and vocabulary, and to give them a basis for understanding what they read.
   
   
9. Tell stories. It's a fun way to teach values, pass on family history and build your children's listening and thinking skills. This also helps you child learn and understand story structure.
   
   
10. Be a reading role model. Let your children see you read, and share some interesting things with them that you have read about in books, newspapers or magazines.
    
    
11. Continue reading aloud to older children even after they have learned to read by  themselves.
    
    
12. Encourage writing along with reading. Ask children to sign their artwork, add to your shopping list, take messages and make their own books and cards as gifts. Have them write about their favorite character, create a new ending or respond in writing to a question you have posed about something from the story (see the Websites for Parents page for more suggestions).

   Source: Helping Your Children Become Better Readers Brochure from RIF/VISA  Additional ideas have been added to some suggestions.

 Please give your child the gift of time to read. It is a gift that lasts a lifetime.