Reading Magic Project – reading to pre-schoolers is in decline

An intervention carried out by our team at Family Kids & Youth on behalf of Egmont Books was published this week. The research sought to understand how parents could be encouraged to read more to their pre-school children.  Egmont commissioned the project in light of The Nielson Report which found that the number of pre-school children being read to daily has dropped from 69% to 51% since 2013. Egmont Publishing wanted to investigate what could be done to encourage more families to read with their children aged 3-4. Our researchers closely followed 12 families from October to December 2017, to study parents’ attitudes and behaviour towards reading to their 3-4-year-old. The research included in-home ethnography before and after the intervention, as well as focus groups. The families were sent books each week for six weeks, with hints and tips on how to improve engagement when reading with their child. Children and parents were then invited to WHSmith to attend a ‘Storytime’ session every Sunday for a further six weeks, at which our professional storyteller read to the children. The research found that the intervention created positive behaviour change across the families, with parents gaining considerable insight into the way in which children can be engaged with reading at a young age. In some cases, reading books replaced the use of digital devices. The findings of the ‘Reading Magic Project’ can be found here.