Creating a Personal Library for Children

Video Transcript

" Hi, I am Debbie with ExpertVillage.com and we are talking about reading with young children today. One of the ways that you can help cultivate your child’s love of learning is to start building their own personal library with books that are all theirs and nobody else’s. One of the great ways to do that is to go to garage sales, you can find any kind of book known to man and usually they are in good condition for pennies at a garage sale. Another good way is going to your local library, some days they have swap days, they clean house in the library, and you can swap books. Another excellent way is there are a lot of inexpensive paperback books, your child’s teacher if they are in school will send home book orders, take advantage of those. Those book orders are the best titles in children’s literature and those are ways to start building your child’s library. Another way of showing the importance of books is every holiday and every birthday; make one of their gifts be a book. At our house on Christmas Eve, we got to open one gift and that was a book that we read before we went to bed. That was a tradition that we carried on until our kids were too old to be doing it. Another great tradition is a special book on a birthday, sign it, write in it and those books will be the books that your kids cherish forever. When your child starts developing their own library, provide a place in their room for their books, a bookshelf, a basket, a box of some sort, a special place where the books are going to be well cared for, a place where little sisters and brothers cannot get to them because often that could be problem. A place where they can get to them easily, when they are in bed at night they might want to read a book, when they are in their room for nap time, when they are just relaxing or whatever. Wherever you keep the books be sure that there are a lot of them, they are of high interest level for your child, and there is an assortment of books that are on their reading level and maybe some that are a little more advanced. Some that are science books of interest, lots of books in your child’s hands at all times and that is the key. Creating your child’s personal library is one of the best ways to make sure that they love to read. "