Celebrating reading success

Children find more pleasure from reading as their skills develop. You can help children find pleasure from reading by celebrating their reading success. Making progress visible, such as displaying a chart with stars is one way to improve ability, perseverance, and curiosity. 

Simply acknowledging your child’s success at reading may be enough.

Share the pleasure of their accomplishment with your child. Joy is a powerful emotion and is a pathway to building a joy in reading. Talk about their success at the dinner table or encourage them to share their success with grandma on their next phone call.

Reading skill levels depend on the age of the child and ability differs between children of the same age. A child who enjoys and celebrates books and reading is more likely to learn the habit of lifelong love of books and reading.

Here are some ideas about reading milestones to celebrate with your little ones. Praise your reader when they:

• Choose their own book/s
• Recognise the front of the book and hold the book the right way up!
• Read or share a book with a pet/friend or sibling
• Learn a new word or sound from a book
• Recognise a word that starts with the same letter as their name
• Point to a picture in a book when they hear the word
• Turn the pages
• Remember and talk about some of the story at the end of the book

Celebrating personal milestones not only helps children acknowledge their successes, it also provides opportunities to strengthen bonds with family and friends. Positive memories of past accomplishments can help motivate children to persevere at their goals.

So, don’t hesitate to praise your little one for their reading accomplishments.  You’re helping them build a positive attitude to reading and a lifelong love of books.