"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales.
If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales."
Albert Einstein

Reading with children and allowing time for reading is one of the greatest joys you can experience as a parent or carer. The connection and enjoyment you can create when reading together is something that should be trasured and is essential to improve not only your child's enjoyment of reading, but also your connection and bond with your child and their learning.

We know that reading has major benefits for children including:

1. Improved concentration
2. Improved memory 
3. Discovery of the world around them 
4. Provides the brain with opportunity to exercise neural connections
5. Boosts critical thinking skills especially if you ask questions while you read together
6. Develops empathy when you read stories of empathy and ask your child how they feel and what the characters are doing
7. Develops and expands language skills when children hear multiple words and are able to say them out loud, their verbal language skills as well as spelling skills improve
8. Enhances imagination when they are opened to a world that may be different to their own and provides them with permission to use their imagination to explore new ideas and thoughts
9. Helps improve performance in school. The more children read, the more topics they are able to write about or talk about and expand their knowledge and imagination to be able to express their comprehension of stories.
10. Provides a source of entertainment. Once upon a time when we didn't have screens we read books more and were able to build our capacity to communicate. Providing reading time as well as screen time will provide a good balance.
11. Develops a good self image when reading and learning about others.

(Source: Edarabia.com)