This is magic ⬇️

YES it's lovely to have kids snuggled beside us or on our knee during reading time, but there's a BETTER WAY when it comes to supporting our children's language development.

🧒📖🧒Sitting face to face and at eye level during reading time is a game changer, and here's why:

1. You can see what your child is looking at and model language accordingly. Kids learn language best about things theyre interested in. You might be ploughing through the story but actually - they're interested in the tiny bugs in the picture. When you can see your child's eyes, you're more likely to talk about the bugs

2. Your child can see your mouth. Speech sounds are complex and sometimes kids need to look at us to work out how to say something. You can exaggerate tricky words for them to see.

3. Your child can see your facial expressions. Words are just one small part of language. Your tone, facial expressions and gestures are incredibly important parts of language, 2 of which your child cant gauge if you're not face to face. Being able to see you can help kids understand the complexities of how characters feel.

4. Your child can develop their joint attention. Joint attention is where children check in with us to see if we're seeing what they're seeing. Its a form of sharing and turn taking, and its a really important part of social language development.

Do you sit face to face during reading? Would you try this? Let me know in the comments.

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