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Experts all agree that reading to young children as well as babies is vitally important to their learning and growth.  Knowing how to choose good books can also play a part in their development process as well as helping to keep you awake!   A child development specialist once told me that if you can read a book to your child in less than 3 minutes you wasted your time. What? You mean I can't race through it and get the story over with!

Real quality reading time should include your child asking questions, pointing at pictures and interacting. As all parents grandparent and care-giver's know, our kids tend to pick the same book and want it read over and over and over. Let's face it, reading can get boring for the adults! Here are 8 tips on ways that parents can keep reading interesting and help our children build important developmental skills.

1. USE ANIMATED VOICES
Read the story using a different voice for each character. My father read the JRR Tolkien series to us as children and his Golum and Bilbo Baggins voices were the best!

2. LEAVE OUT WORDS
When reading leave out words or parts of sentences for your child to fill in.

3. READ WITH ACCENTS
If you find yourself getting bored with a book, start reading with an English, French or Spanish accent!

4. SING THE STORY
Make up a tune and start singing. If you aren't good at making tunes up pick a familiar classical or folk song.

5. CHANGE THE WORDS
In reading their most favorite books I keep my attention by changing the main characters name constantly throughout the story. My kids find it a fun game to correct me. For older kids try changing the sentence or word at the end of every page to see if my kids can catch the mistake. Start with outrageous words (Hippopotamus or Pickle work well)that have nothing to do with the story at first but make it harder as they catch on.

6. READ THE BOOK BACKWARDS
This won't work for all books, but it's lots of fun to try!

7. MAKE UP A NEW STORY
A good children's book should tell a story that makes sense without the printed words. Help your child make up a new story that fits the pictures.

8. WORD SEARCH
If the kids know their alphabet, teach them a simple word, then have them find or count how many times the word is used in the story.

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