The Simplest and Most Effective Tips to Raise a Reader

Different teachers use different methods to boost reading skills in children. But it’s totally alright for parents to feel anxious about their children’s growth. In fact, it is important for parents to start building reading habits in kids at an early stage to create an interest and make them confident readers naturally.

To help you get started, here are some tips on how to raise a reader:

1. Read to Your Children –Toddlers start to understand words way before they can start to read. And children can understand books that are above their reading level. So, start reading to your child every day at an early stage and continue it even if they now know how to read. This will expand their vocabulary and also stir their imagination.

Read a few pages every day. If your child is easily distracted, let them do their activity, for example – playing with toys or eating, while you can read to them. This will help in developing reading skills naturally like walking and talking.

2. Keep Books Beside Their Bed –The most important step in raising a reader is making books a part of their daily life, even before they can start reading. They can see pictures and make a story out of them. Moreover, you can get one of those interactive books and incorporate book reading in their playtime. Most importantly, make sure that the books are visible all the time and easily accessible to them. And what can be a better place than beside their bed?

3. Take Them on Library Outings –No amount of external push can help in raising a reader if your child is not interested in learning to read books. So, make reading fun and fascinating. Take them to the library as often as you can and let them pick their own book. You will be able to know what kind of books they like. Moreover, giving them choices can increase the chance of kids reading books because it would be an activity that they chose, not something that was imposed on them. 

4. Inculcate Reading and Writing in Everyday Activities – Use every opportunity to show your child how important reading and writing are in everyday life. Involve them in activities that include making notes or lists, for example going grocery shopping, cooking from a recipe book, writing notes and letters to people, etc. Making reading a part of their daily life can work wonders in developing reading skills in children.

5. Emphasize the Positive –Reading shouldn’t be a short-term habit. So, to keep your child motivated to read books, praise them every time they finish a book, fix a spelling error, read a difficult word, or interpret a story from pictures. If they finish a book without any assistance, reward them with something like homemade freezer pops or candies.

Look for stories or genres that your kid may be more interested in.

Organise a dedicated reading space for children.

Visit the library and expose kids to the magical world of books.

Encourage your child to discuss what they read.

Talk to your child about their favourite books and characters.

Offer choices to read.

Read to kids and with them every day.

Expand your library with magazines and non-fiction books.

Ask questions to make sure kids understand what they read.

Decide to raise a confident reader today!

An additional tip for developing reading skills in kids – let your child see you reading. Children do what they observe. So, set aside some time every day to read and encourage them to read one of their books while you read yours.

I hope this was helpful!

Author Bio: Samidha Raj works as part of the content marketing team at Planet Spark, a platform that provides online classes to K8 learners on "New Age Skills" like, English Communication, Public Speaking, Grammar, Creative Writing, Debating, etc. She is passionate about empowering the youth by educating parents about the importance of 21st-century skills. In her free time, you can find her watching documentaries or animated movies and organizing game nights (board games are her thing)!

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Now more than ever, the myriad of benefits presented by the use of herbs as opposed to conventional medicine is mainly being experienced. Healthy living has transitioned from the usual form of diet and exercise to the use of plant supplements to give support to health-promoting functions and other body activities. However, the health benefits provided by herbs and their constituents date back to over 60,000 years ago before the introduction of modern medicine.

How Do You Make the Herbal Extract?

Making extracts is not easy, however with necessary inventions, you can make a simple extract from herbs from the comfort of your home. A rosin press is an excellent example of machinery that you can use to extract your sap. Combining both heat and pressure, among other mechanics, makes your healthy living life much easier.

How Do You Take Herbal Extract?

A preferred and commonly used method is adding a few drops of the extract to the water, tea, or juice. Quotes are always bitter to the taste. If you don't mind the sting of the bitter taste, you can take the extract straight from the dropper like a dosage.

If you can't stand the bitter taste, pouring boiling water over it will make the extract's alcohol component evaporate. You can add either honey or sugar for flavor enhancement.

Why Do You Need Herbal Extracts?

Potency

When you compare a liquid herbal extract to plants in their raw life form, extracts tend to contain a higher supplemental level of antioxidants beneficial to your health.

Potency refers to the degree of concentration of a substance. In this case, herbal extracts are highly concentrated and provide a healthier way to supplement your routine diet and exercise.

Easy to Ingest

For quite a long time, extraction from herbs has been a widespread method to obtain nutritional benefits from plants. You might have witnessed or taken part in herbal extraction by using hot water to make a nutritious tea. You can add the extract to your beverage which could either be juice, water or tea.

Versatile

Maintaining a healthy kind of living may not be easy through diet, and frequent exercise, neither is the possibility of combining and incorporating the vital nutrients in a diet. Herbal extracts can do just that by ensuring that you can obtain essential compounds through your everyday diet.

Longer Shelf Life

Owing to their natural component and ingredient, herbal extracts do not have a dispensable shelf life making them a cost-saving and healthier option. Modern supplements and medicine are well known to contain constituents that cause an adverse effect on human health. Herbal extracts are less vulnerable to degradation, therefore, providing a longer shelf life to the active ingredient.

Aside from plants being beneficial in helping attain a sustainable living, small portions extracted from these living resources translate to more significant benefits. If you are unable to prepare the extract yourself, always be sure to read the extracts' label and components before purchase or consumption. This is for the purpose of identifying any component contained in the extracts that your body may be allergic to.

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Everyone deserves to feel empowered and as if they have a voice. Without it, we only hear from a select few ‘approved’ individuals, and that often leads to creative decay, stagnant thinking, and worse, the ability to silence others. If you feel that you’re struggling to speak up, it can pay to become more assertive. Sometimes, this can be the crack in the office environment that you need in order to get your point across, or to begin bringing your excellent ideas to the table, or in simply showing those around you that you won’t be quiet simply because it’s easy to do so.

But being assertive is hard. It requires conflict management and the willingness to apply it carefully, without being overly brittle or aggressive for aggressive’s sake. The first thing we need to recognise is that we can’t all be 100% responsible for how someone perceives us, and so worrying about that endlessly is useless. As long as we’re polite, we have measured ourselves.

But how can you readily assert yourself at work with confidence? Let’s consider some worthwhile tips:

Do The Work

Of course, it’s important to do the work to make sure you have something to say beforehand. Many people think that being assertive means being heard in all situations, but that’s not true. Being truly assertive means having something to assert. This can help you defend your ideas, and take less silliness from people who are unable to provide that kind of value themselves. This way, you not only assert yourself because you deserve to, but because you’re meant to. Of course, in social situations, you can assert yourself whenever you deem that necessary. But for official meetings and contributive environments, earning your own desire to assertiveness can help you get most of the way there, and speak with authority.

Take It Slowly

It’s not easy to assert yourself if you haven’t done so for a while. Perhaps starting slowly can help. It might be that you decide to raise your hand in meetings more, or that you decide to practice asking your boss for a raise with your friend, or bringing up to the manager that 24 hour AC repair is needed to fix the terrible ventilation in the office. This way, you can become more comfortable with the idea of speaking about serious topics, without having to struggle in that light.

Stick To Your Principles

Not everyone will take your assertiveness seriously if you just do it to be fractious or domineering. For this reason, having principles that you can assert yourself from will help you feel much more confident and justified in doing so. It might be, for instance, that you are being spoken over quite rudely in a meeting. One of your principles may be that you won’t let anyone lord it over you unless correcting you, and that they certainly won’t disrespect you in a public forum. This can help you avoid sitting down and ‘taking it,’ because you know in your heart you don’t deserve that treatment, and besides, you have a code to address those situations head on anyway. Even if the outcome isn’t as helpful as you had hoped, you have lived by your principles, and that means you can feel less unsure about your actions.

With this advice, we hope you can more readily be as assertive as you wish to be.