Expand your children's world- help them become a reader even if you have extremely busy schedules! You don't have to be a good reader to help your child. You don't have to enjoy reading to help your child.

It is parental time and interest that helps children to read better not money. You don't need to go to university classes to teach children how to be better readers. You don't need expensive books. You don't need to read long books.

I'm going to tell you what you can do to help your child read better. I'm going to give you some very simple, practical ideas. Ask your child's teacher you how you can help your child to read better. Most schools have a reading volunteer program - offer to help.

You can lay the foundations that will help your child become a lifelong reader. Their world will be expanded and enriched by reading experiences that you can provide with only a short, consistent time commitment each day. The benefits are immeasurable.

The first thing to do is to stimulate your child's interest in reading. There are many ways to do this, the most obvious being to read a book to them. Choose a book that is suitable for their age and interests.

Children love to see beautifully illustrated books so choose a book that is visually attractive. One author that you should check out is Graeme Base who has beautiful books. Talking about the illustrations is an interesting way of beginning to get your child excited about the theme or story in the book. Printed words have meaning and children need to learn this. They need to associate the spoken word with the printed word. Use your finger to track underneath the words.

Model good reading behavior. Any form of reading material is valuable to capture your child's attention. When having breakfast, read the words on the cereal box. Clap out the number of syllables in the word.

Reading is a very complex process and you need to learn something about it. For example, besides word recognition, there is rhyming, sounds that start and end the word, syllables in a word and so on. Use any opportunity when you are all together to pick out words and read as much as they can.

Parents should read to their children even when the children have become independent readers. Everyone, even adults, enjoy listening to stories read to them. Listening to a poem, book or short text read stimulates imagination and builds vocabulary as well as expanding understanding of our world.

Read to your children all the time. Read fiction and non-fiction; read poems and short stories. Read about real things- animals in Africa, Space travel - whatever interests you and your child. The advantage of reading to your child is that you can read books about things that interest them and stories that are beyond their reading level. This will motivate them to increase their reading skills so that they can read more complex text.

If you really believe in the importance of helping a child to read well, you will take every advantage you can to build up their language and reading skills. You might have a video player in your car and this can occupy a long journey but think also of using a story CD for your children when traveling. At home, turn the television off and share some family reading time together.

Vary the content of what you read to children. Read them a cleverly crafted poem and talk about the 'mental pictures' the poem creates. Select some of the most exciting words from the poem - the fun words or the mysterious words. Encourage your children to enjoy the intricacies and beauty of your language. Select from magazines, books, letters, emails, catalogs, mail from the mail box - anything. Words are magical. Reading is fun. If you believe this and if you spend lots of time helping your child read, your child will do brilliantly at school and love language and reading.