Parents and caregivers, 20 minutes of reading to or with your child are the most important minutes of each day. Reading with a child every day nurtures vocabulary, language, and early literacy skills. It also builds the child's confidence to work through challenges and persistence in difficult tasks, and develops social and emotional skills, which are just as essential to school success.

Research shows that reading aloud to your child is the single most important thing you can do to prepare your child for reading and learning. Reading to your child:

• Nurtures a love of reading of good quality literature
• Strengthens bonds with your child
• Develops oral language through discussion
• Builds background knowledge and understanding through factual texts
• Expands their vocabulary
• Helps them learn more about interests and hobbies

Reading aloud is practically free, you can do it anywhere, and children often beg for “just one more” story. Even adults who are not fluent readers can provide a good experience for children by telling stories from their lives, from their imaginations, or from pictures in wordless books.

This is a great article from Reading Rockets about Reading to your child and why reading aloud to children from an early age is so important, and how to make it a motivating and meaningful experience.