Teaching Children to Take Care of Books

Video Transcript

"We are talking about reading to your child, reading often and making it a fun and important time. Right now, we are going to talk about teaching your child how to take care of books. They just need to learn to respect books, how to take care of them that does not just happen by accident, it has to be taught, and it is a skill. Some things that you can do, first of all just talk to them about books are our friends, they are important, you need to take super good care of them, and you keep them in a safe place. Do not leave them out for little sisters and brothers to rip up because they are not grown up enough to handle a book. Talk about those things constantly, have special spots in their room for their books. Be sure that they understand that they have to take care of a book if they are going to have books in their house and one of the ways that you can do that is when you are opening a book talk to your child. You know when you open a book, you do not open here, you do not turn a page here because you might rip it, you need to go to the corner and open slowly. Teach them when they are holding a book or it is probably better to lay it down while they are reading, turn the page with the corner very gently like this. Many children will want to turn right here and that just rips the heck out of those pages. So teach about taking care of our pages. Having clean hands when you are reading is really important, being sure that you do not have markers, crayons, and pens out while you are reading is really important and that you never draw on a book. All of those things are super important that you model everyday and you talk about everyday and believe me your children are going to learn how to take care of a book. Those books are going to be valuable, they are going to be well cared for and they are going to be in your family for a long time. Maybe your grandchildren will get to enjoy those books because your child learned how to take care of a book."