I know, I know... it is weird. I mean, how often do you hear parents saying they read news articles instead of storybooks for their kiddos' bedtime stories right? So let me be the weird one to tell you that. Yes, I read news articles to our kiddos before their bedtime.
I can't even remember how we get to this point. I think probably one of those nights when the kiddos refused to sleep (btw, we all co-sleep on 2 huge mattresses) and I was so tired that I just turned on my iPhone and started browsing through my usual newsfeed channels searching for interesting stuff to read. And then our oldest kiddo asked me what was I reading and I explained and told him about the news I was reading. One thing lead to another, I started reading news article for their bedtime stories. I like that I don't need to turn on the room's light and hold up a book to read to all 3 kiddos LOL
So much that every night the standard statement from our 6 year old boy was 'Mummy, after this we brush teeth then get ready for sleep but before that you read news okay?' Okayyyyy...
Of course, I filter the heavy more serious type of news (politics for example), so those that I normally share with our kiddos are news like below:
I also shared the same articles on my FB page as well from time to time. I believe that knowledge is key and never harm anyone if we read up more and know more. And since I am reading out loud to our kiddos, I hope they can learn to listen the proper pronounciation apart from learning about things around them.
I was happy when I came across this article on what reading aloud to your children does to their brain. Excerpt from article below:
"When parents read to their children the difference shows in children's behavior and academic performance. And according to a new study, the difference also shows in their brain activity.
Researchers looked at children ages 3 to 5 who underwent brain scans called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to a pre-recorded story. The parents answered questions about how much they read to, and communicated with, their children.
The researchers saw that, when the young children were being told a story, a number of regions in the left part of the brain became active. These are the areas involved in understanding the meaning of words and concepts and also in memory. These same brain regions have been found to be active when older children listen to stories or read.
The brain develops rapidly from zero to six years of age, and the more exposure, the more you enrich and nurture these brain networks that are related to social and academic ability, the more the kid will gain the future."
There are benefits of parents reading to their children beyond the child's performance, too. "It's one of the most pleasurable activities that you do with your child -- there's physical closeness but it's probably the most unhurried time that children have with their parent and it is focused on them."
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