Why is reading aloud to children so important?
We know that there is a tremendous amount of growth in a young child’s brain. Over 700 neural connections are made in a young child’s brain per second- which is simply staggering to think about. Those essential connections represent the cognitive, language, and social-emotional framework through which a child develops. Positive, supportive relationships with young children in which caring adults take the time to communicate are critical to build all three areas. While talking, singing, playing, spending time together are very powerful, reading to children is perhaps the most powerful way to support cognitive and language development. The vocabulary, semantics and syntax in books are generally much more complex than that which is used in every day conversation. So, by reading to children, they’re exposed to far more vocabulary words and much more complex syntactical and semantic structures than they would in general conversation. All of which continues to build neural connections—which
