Twenty Minutes a Day

  
     
 

By Richard Peck

Read to your children twenty minutes a day;
You have the time, And so do they.
Read while the laundry is in the machine;
Read while the dinner cooks;
Tuck a child in the crook of your arm
And reach for the library books.
Hide the remote,
Let the computer games cool,
For one day your children will be off to school.
You have the choice;
Let them hear the first tales
In the sound of your voice.
Read in the morning; Read over noon;
Read by the light of Goodnight Moon.
Turn the pages together,
Sitting close as you'll fit,
        Till a small voice beside you says, “Hey, don't quit!                   

Read to me riddles and read to me rhymes,
Read to me stories of magical times.
Read to me tales about castles and kings,
Read to me stories of fabulous things.
Read to me pirates and read to me knights,
And read to me dragons and dragon-back flights.
Read to me spaceships and cowboys and then
When you are finished, please read them again!

                

  
     
  Something to think about . . .
Taken from the US Department of Education Website:
What difference can reading aloud to a child for 30 minutes per day make?
If daily reading begins in infancy, by the time the child is 5 years old, he
or she has been fed roughly 900 hours of brain food!
Reduce that experience to just 30 minutes a week and the child’s hungry mind
loses 770 hours of nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and stories.
A kindergarten student who has not been read to could enter school with less
than 60 hours of literacy nutrition. No teacher, no matter how talented, can
make up for those lost hours of mental nourishment.
Hours of reading books by age 5
If you read 30 minutes daily……………..the child has 900 Hours by age 5
If you read 30 minutes weekly……………the child has 130 Hours by age 5
If you read less than 30 minutes weekly….the child has 60 Hours by age 5		  
     
 

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