Help Your Kids Keep Track of the Books They've Read

Giving your kids a way to record, and even just visually see, all the books they've read can help them discover their reading likes and interests. And discovering that they have likes and interests when it comes to books can help them begin to really identify themselves as readers. They might realize they have a favorite author. Who knew! Or they might discover that they seem to have a thing for historical fiction or can lead them to discover what historical fiction is (or other genres for that matter)!

I have made a bookshelf for my little guy, and he has sat in on a discussion I had with my older kids that covered the various literary genres. (I thought it would be way over his head, but he's interested, and he's getting it!) For each book they read, they get to put a paper book on their bookshelf in the appropriate color for the genre it was from.

Figuring out the genre of the books they read has been kind of fun for them. It's been like a little puzzle they get to figure out.

(I'm missing "Nonfiction" on our chart still!)

My Little Reader loves his little paper bookshelf that I hung on the wall in our bonus room. He helped me put a couple books on it that he's read. One of the books is The Mouse and The Motorcycle, which we all just finished reading aloud together (now we're reading The Secret of Platform 13).

Since his brother and sister are reading chapter books, I'm trying to keep devise a way to kind of keep things level with filling their paper bookshelves (I have competitive kids). I decided he has to read 4 books per day with me (in addition to his bedtime stories) and if he meets his reading requirement all week, then he can choose his favorite book from the week to add to his shelf. Last week he added Color Chaos.

We also have Goodreads accounts that we like to track our reading on. My boys know that I try to record most of the books we read on Goodreads, and have gotten into the habit of giving each book we read together a star rating. "Mom, give this one four stars," one will say. "No way, two stars!" the other will counter with. It has sparked some heated debates at bedtime, let me tell ya!

There are countless ways you can record and display your child's reading progress. You could make a goal chart and color it in little by little as they inch toward their reading goal for the month or the year. You could make a paper chain, and they could add a new link for each book they read. Pinterest can help you with more ideas than you ever wanted probably!

Keep the reading excitement up and celebrate those milestones as they hit them!

Do you keep track of the books your child reads? How do you do it?

Maximizing Library Trips with Your Kids

Successful library trips seem like they are always just beyond my reach. I have felt this way since I just had one little baby toting along to the library with me. Now I have a 12, 9, and 5 year-old

in tow each visit. We're now homeschooling, and we're now consistently visiting the library once a week.

One of my main goals for the year is to teach my children how to use the library effectively: how to find what they are interested in, use the computer catalog, utilize services, be excited about their book choices, and just appreciate the library.

We are tackling this goal in small chunks. Each week we do a little library mission together before heading our separate ways to find our personal books and play on the computer. Well actually, we have only just begun working on this goal, so we've only done one little mission to date (finding books on the human body), but the plan is for this to happen every week.

I also want my kids to be more invested in their library book choices. I often feel like they are just choosing things off the shelf willy-nilly so I will let them go play on the computers (mostly my boys). I have struggled with how to get them to care more about the books they are choosing, and with how to teach them that there are better ways to find a book you really like.

So we are doing a couple other new things in addition to our weekly library missions. I have filled up the home computer bookmark bar with Goodreads, Amazon, our library computer catalog, Bookseer, etc. I am trying to arm them with some easy-to-access tools for finding stuff they want to read. I am also showing them book trailers every week. These are totally new to them, and they can't get enough. After each trailer they all exclaim, "Let's read THAT book!" Every one. Well done, Book Trailer Producers!

And we are doing Library Show and Tell when we get home from every visit. Everybody gathers together with their library bags in hand and we show each other a couple books we picked out and tell why we chose them. I also plan to have us gather before our next visit to the library and give an update on our book choices  (Did we finish the books we chose, why or why not? Would you recommend it to  friends? etc.)

I'll keep you posted with how this goes. And in the meantime, let me know in the comments how you manage library trips with your kiddos. Let's share our tips and tricks!

Tips for Managing Screen Time

Sitting mindlessly in front of the TV or video games for endless amounts of time has been a problem we have been battling in our house for a few years now. Some of my kids would literally sit in front of a screen all day of you let them. Yes. They really would.

We have employed various strategies to help put limits of the screen time. And might I just comment on how the term "screen time" keeps growing to include more and more devices and avenues for our kids to participate. In our house we have an array of devices the kids like to use. Most of them are "family devices," but our oldest has an iPod that she bought with her own money. It's a lot to try to monitor and limit.

But limiting screen time is something I'm willing to battle over in our family. Did you know that studies show that after 10 hours of screen time per week, children's grades begin to decline? It's not so much about the screens themselves being bad for our kids, it's the things they're not doing while they're spending all that time in front of the screens that becomes a problem. They're not playing, imagining, creating, building friendships, reading, helping out around the house, discovering hobbies... (The Read Aloud Handbook)

Here's what we have found that is working for us:

For summer or weekends:

1 TV show or thirty minutes of screen time in the morning.

1 hour of screen time after lunch (while I take a nap).

1 show or thirty minutes of screen time in the evening.

School days:


1 hour of screen time after lunch (while I take a nap).

1 show or thirty minutes of screen time in the evening.

I let my kids carry unused screen time over to the next day if they want. But their max is 2 hours in front of a screen at one sitting, and they can only carry over hours from ONE day. 

We have only been using this system for a few weeks now, and it was a bumpy start. I was getting a lot of comments from the kids like, "OH, I thought I turned on the TV at 12:30, not 12:00. Oops!" or "I thought you were going to tell me when my time was up." There was a refusal to take any responsibility for keeping track of their time. I was so frustrated about it all that I was looking into devices that attach to your TV or video game systems and keep track of viewing time for you.  But they were expensive and each device could only attach to one unit, it didn't seem like a viable option for our situation.

Then I saw these little timers (pictured at top pf this post) on Amazon. They seemed like they might do the trick. They sit on a base, and you set the timers on the base, not on the timer themselves. Then the timer can be put on your wrist (there's a strap), or clipped on your pants and taken wherever. The timer buzzes on both the timer itself as well as the base. So my kids don't have to watch the clock and keep track of their minutes, but they are getting a sense of how much time they are actually sitting in front of the TV. And I don't have to nag. They can ask for a timer when they want to use their screen time, and they know it's time to turn it off when the buzzer buzzes. 

The other day one of my kids said that the new time limits were helping them not want to watch so much TV anymore. And it seems to me this is indeed true. I gave them one free day this week before school starts, and told them they didn't need to use the timers or anything; a couple of them turned the TV off themselves after a bit and went outside. This isn't to say there wasn't complaining at the beginning. I was told it wasn't fair and wasn't enough "tiiiiimmmme" multiple times. 

I'm sure this is no fool proof system. And the timers we bought got mixed reviews, sounds like they sometimes stop working after only a short bit. Of course, other kinds of timers could work as well, I just like that I can keep track of the kids' time at the same time as them, and they can't screw up much of anything on the timers while using them.

I have no affiliation with the maker of these timers featured, and I'm not being paid to write this post.

Snapshots of Summer Reading

This summer has been going by so fast. It's been pretty crazy, and feels a bit like a blur. We've been visiting our library in the midst of the chaos though and continuing to read. Here are a few snapshots I captured in some of those quiet, still moments.

O.K. this moment wasn't so quiet, but it was at least pretty still. We had some of our cousins staying with us and did Madlibs as bedtime stories. My kids love Madlibs and are really good at telling you what a noun, or verb, or adjective is.

This one's not necessarily a reading moment, but I wanted to share my cute little bulletin board I posted at my schools for our summer reading!

Did you know some LEGO sets come with little comic books? So fun!

The kids wanted to share some of their photo books they made with their aunt and cousin that were visiting. They felt so proud as she sat with them and each of their books aloud. 

We got the kids' cousin hooked on reading in bed with a night light while she was here visiting. So fun!

We visited a used bookstore and my sister grabbed some Shakespeare and challenged Mel to read some of it aloud. Here's him trying. Ha!

Finding Space for Reading

Summer never feels like a time when things slow down and life is a little less crazy. Our summers are busy, for the kids and for me. When I see these book lists on Pinterest titled things like "10 Best Beach Reads," I laugh. What mom is able to actually read at the beach (If you are a mom that does get to read at the beach, please don't tell me, or I might cry)? I'm always busy making sure my kids don't get pulled out to sea by a rip current.

... Or I'm burying kids in the sand!

Not only does extra reading hardly ever seem to happen, but I struggle to maintain the little bits of regular reading time we normally observe. Travel and late bedtimes mean we sometimes miss our bedtime stories.

My Little Reader hasn't done much napping this summer and I only just realized today that no nap means we haven't been reading our normal pre-nap stories.

My kids love to stay up and read with their book lights at night, and even that has been falling by the wayside as they are so often zonking out as soon as they hit the pillow, as of late.

When there are lulls in their days and they get bored, I have seen my kiddos pick up books and read... from time to time.

They begged to do the summer reading program at the library, and have happily been picking out books that interest them on our regular trips.

They are slowly learning to read for the pure pleasure of it. So all is not lost.

But as we creep toward the start of another school year, and I look toward days containing some kind of routine again, I realize that I need to really be intentional with our reading times. I need to guard our established reading routines, perhaps reinstate some that have been lost, and I hope to work more reading time into our routine wherever I can. We will be homeschooling in the fall, so I'm excited about getting creative with how we find time to read, and simply having the control over our routine to give reading the prioritization that I crave.

Finding space for reading turns our to be easier said than done, even for those of us that understand its value and enjoy books. So how to you find space to read in the craziness and busyness of summer?

Our bedroom floors are always covered in books, so we've at least got that going for us!

Turn Your Car Into A Literacy Learning Lab!

How many hours a week do you spend riding around in your car with your kids? Far more than you would like I'm guessing.

What if you could put that wasted time to good use for your kiddos? I like to fill up my car with great books, toys, and various educational-type items that will engage my kids' minds a bit and help keep them all from driving me nuts. If you have a DVD player in your car, there are even some videos that can be awesome for entertaining and teaching while in the car! Really!

Watch the video and I'll share my ideas with you!




Do you keep things like this in your car for your kids. Share your ideas in the comments!

Happy Reading Moments

I wouldn't call my kids avid readers. One or two of them might be heading that direction, but I still have to encourage reading, or bedtime might be the only time it happens. And life has been busy lately, and there have been plenty of days when it only happens at bedtime. Oh, and naptime too!

Yes, my kids like books. But like most kids (and adults), they can often be pulled other directions by life's busyness and distractions. I savor the moments I find my kiddos reading with little to no prompting from me. 

... Like at Chick Fil A. I love when there's a book in the kids meal, and my son begs me to read it to him instead of playing on the playground. This was one from the Franklin series. And he also still pulls his Chick Fil A Cowborg comic books from his bookshelf for me to read to him (his big brother is getting sick of them). 

We visited our local used bookstore and spent a fortune on all the books the kids carefully selected from the shelves. 

I cracked up when I found these books on our used bookstore visit. The top title is my 4 year old's excuse for not doing what I ask, and the bottom title is my 9 year old's excuse.

This is where I can find My Little Reader on the day his Lego Jr. magazine arrives in the mailbox. 

When my 9 year old is bored, he will resort to reading aloud to his little brother. Love catching them in these moments. 

My 4 year old also enjoys his Turtle magazine subscription!

The TV is right there, and yet she's curled up with her Nook! Yay!

She told me this past week that reading has become like watching TV to her. She says she doesn't want to stop reading. Have I mentioned she's gone up almost 2 reading levels since November? Very proud of her. 

Caught him reading a book from his Easter basket behind a chair. 

And just to keep it real, I will add to all this that my kids are total screen enthusiasts as well. We put limits on screen time, but could stay glued to it all day if we let them. There sure is more and more stuff competing with reading time now, isn't there? How do you encourage reading at your house?

Forget the Reading Race

My youngest son, My Little Reader, is now four years old and in preschool. It's becoming difficult not to notice now where other kids are with their literacy and reading skills and compare my little guy to them. I see his peers coming to class with him each week, and I'm in preschools every week working with my own Literacy Launchpad students... There's a pressure isn't there, to feel like your kid has to be right where every other kid is academically, or even ahead? I find myself stressing more and more lately that I'm not spending enough time working on this skill or that skill with my son and that he'll be behind all the other kids his age.BUT then I remember all that I learned in my studies in college, as well as in my years of teaching Literacy Launchpad - that it doesn't matter when a child learns to read, it matters how much they learn to love reading. And often, heavy-handed efforts to get our kids to start reading at an early age can leave them not really wanting to read. 

I was skimming through Jim Trealease's Read Aloud Handbook this week and he quotes an education adage, reminding parents that "'What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we teach then to do.'" He goes on to say that "The fact is that some children learn to read sooner than others, and some better than others. There is a difference."

I felt encouraged as I read through the pages of Trelease's book. I was reminded of the power of simply reading to my kids as much as I can, giving them a rich literacy environment, and keeping away from flash card drilling and phonics worksheets as a means to teach my kids reading. 

Our eduction system seems to push for formal reading instruction at an earlier and earlier age. I've personally experienced parents that push teachers to do reading instruction earlier and earlier. Sometimes I see preschools teaching skills that kids aren't even developmentally ready to handle yet. Often our schools can be very good at teaching our kids how to read, but as Trelease points out, the research shows that they usually aren't very good at teaching them to want to read. 

Did you know Finland has higher reading scores than the US, but doesn't begin to formally teach their children to read till age seven? Our focus here in the states, in getting our kids to read early and to read well misses the point. None of that matters if they don't want to read. We end up with kids who read at school and not any other time. 

Trelease and the experts and researchers he quotes in his book don't think there's anything necessarily bad about early reading necessarily, but they feel a child should arrive at that skill on their own, without a structured time each day when someone is sitting down with them and teaching them letters, sounds, and syllables. 

I'm so glad I took some time to get my head back on straight this week. I'm thrilled that my kiddo enjoys books and gets excited about reading time. I need to forget about the big "reading race" and revel in that. I probably need to make space in our day for even more time to simply read books aloud to my son, and stick some of the phonics instruction books I've been eyeing back up on my shelf. My son might not be diving into the Harry Potter series solo anytime soon, but he sure does love him some books and that's what matters in the long run. 

Do you (or did you) ever worry that your child isn't learning certain skills early enough? Do you find yourself comparing your child to their peers like me? Tell me I'm not alone!

Ideas for a Reading Christmas

I'm always looking for ways to bring some reading fun to the holiday season. Things can get so busy, so working some ideas for encouraging reading into the holiday plan can make sure you don't get too busy for reading.

 Here are some ideas for a holly, jolly, reading Christmas:

 1. Check the events going on at your local library. Weekly story times often take a hiatus this time of year, but instead there's usually lots of holiday programs and activities going on.


 2. While attending a special holiday event at the library, go on a hunt for some great Christmas books. Some libraries will mark the spines of their books to make special titles (like holiday titles) easier to find.

3. Do a reading advent calendar, like this one here. Have you seen this idea? Wrap 25 Christmas picture books (they can be ones you already own), then allow your child to unwrap one each day and read it together as you countdown to Christmas.


4. Make books a part of your gift-giving tradition. Unwrapping a cool new book or two on Christmas morning attaches the right connotation to books - they are something to be enjoyed! Some families make gifting a new pair of pajamas a Christmas Eve tradition; perhaps pairing a new book with their snuggly pajamas could become part of the tradition as well. Think about subjects your child is especially interested in, or books in a series they might be specifically wanting. We might be gifting some fun magazine subscriptions in our house this year!


5. Start a tradition of adding a new Christmas book to your family library every season. Make a special trip to the bookstore together to pick it out. Maybe get some hot cocoa while you're at it, and make a whole date of it!


6. If you do Elf on the Shelf, incorporate some reading fun into your elf's repertoire of tricks. Perhaps he will get caught reading the kids' Christmas books? Or perhaps he will get caught reading to some of your kid's toys, like in this photo?


7. Gift some fun items to your child that help encourage reading. We're giving neat reading lights to our kids to encourage them to stay up late in bed with a book.
 


Another idea is the fun book timers for keeping track of their reading time (they are book marks that can be stored right in the book your child is reading).
 



How about a kit for creating their own books?


Or a fun bag for toting books to and from the library?


8. Give books as gifts to others with your child. How about for their teacher? Friends? Family? Ask for their input and help in selecting the right book for the people on your list this Christmas.

9. Make some festive sugar cookies with alphabet cookie cutters. Spell out festive words like "joy" and "merry" and then box them up and gift them to friends and family.  Isn't this pretty? You could also make fun alphabet ornaments and gift tags using a variety of different supplies and things. Get creative!

How do you encourage reading and literacy during the holidays?

The Pretend Reading Milestone!

There is a lot of value in the pretend reading our little ones do before the real thing starts. It is an important pre-reading milestone! You can get an idea of your child's understanding of how reading works when they are pretend reading. Do they hold the book right? Do they understand where the words are that they "read?" Do they turn the pages the correct direction? Do they understand that it's the same story every time they read it?

These are all important things for pre-readers to grasp in order for real reading to eventually happen. Reading to your child frequently and regularly will teach them these important print concepts and book handling concepts. Letting them "read" to you (or their friends, or toys, or whomever) will help as well.

Use these pretend reading moments to ask questions if you can, gently guide them in how to handle the book... and to just revel in the adorableness of this milestone!

As you can see below, my son has evolved through various stages of pretend reading. You can see his progression in the videos here below.





It started out as with My Little Reader not really understanding much about book handling, or which way the pages turn or the text is read. He just wanted to "read" too!




Then he began to understand that the print told the story of what was happening in the illustrations. But he still didn't have a handle on which direction you read the words, or even turn the pages.






He started to become a little more solid in his book handling. (He's reading to his brother, who is in the shower.)






And then he understood that the story in a book was always the same every time you read it. He could remember and then retell the basic points of a story that he heard read to him once or twice.






Now he can memorize, almost verbatim, most of a story after hearing it once or twice.He understands that it's not just that the story and ideas in the story never change, but that there are specific words in the text that tell the story exactly the same way every time. And he's now beginning to genuinely sound out and read some of the simple words in some books. In this video, he reciting most of the text from memory, but the rhyming words he is sounding out and reading.

Does your little one like to pretend read? I would love to hear about it in the comments!

Stop Just Filling the Pail. Start Lighting the Fire.

This school year I am trying to be intentional about doing some "homeschooling" with my four year old. Last year I felt like the time we had together, just the two of us, slipped away without me even realizing it. I don't want that to happen again this year.

So I went to my local teacher store, picked out a cute little preschool lesson plan book, and eagerly starting jotting things down in it. Pinterest has also been a helpful motivator in my planning.

But what I am daily reminded of as I strive to implement my plans with my son is that his enthusiasm for, and reception to, learning is greater when it is fueled by his own interests. And this is one of the benefits of doing "homeschooling" on any kind of level you might be doing it on, right? Not being slave to a rigid, group lesson plan, but instead being more free to take your child's interests into consideration?

We've all heard it before: teaching your child to enjoy learning new things is the ultimate, most valuable, number one thing you can teach them. So it doesn't matter so much what I teach my kids, as much as it matters how I teach them. By loosening my grip on what I've written in my fancy little lesson plan book, and following where my son's interests lead him, I'm giving him something infinitely more valuable than just the subject knowledge and skill of whatever we might be studying. I'm giving him a thirst for more knowledge and skills. That's a gift that will carry our kids further than we can imagine.

Lighting the fire in your child that fuels a passion for learning is not a lesson you can plan in even the fanciest of lesson planning books, I'm discovering. But here are some things I'm figuring out as I go:

- Having a plan of some kind is a good place to start. When I was completely unintentional last year, we didn't do much of any meaningful learning and exploring. Planning something gets us going in some kind of direction, and gives my son's imagination and curiosity a place to launch from.

- Start with something you know your child is interested in. My son had been asking to watch dinosaur shows on Netflix a lot recently, so that was our first "unit." We checked out tons of dinosaur books from the library, we've been learning all kinds of things about dinosaurs, and we've been creating fun dinosaur projects.

- Be flexible. I had planned some more dinosaur projects for today, to continue with our unit. So we went on a walk to gather sticks for "dinosaur skeletons." My son suggested that we could use the sticks to make letters of the alphabet. "What a great idea!" I told him. When we got home he didn't even care about making dinosaur skeletons anymore, so we just made letters and words with our sticks! Perfect!

- Read, read, read. Reading stimulates curiosity. Take them to the library and ask, "What should we read about this week? What kind of books do you want to get?" If they don't know, offer up some suggestions. "Hey, you've been asking a lot of questions about the solar system, do you want to get some books to read about that?"

- Use current events in the news, or events from your child's own life to spark curiosity. Maybe you want to learn more about Mars, maybe your family just got a new dog and you want to learn more about how to care for it. Draw those important connections between reading and learning and your child's own life!

- Validate your child's ideas and interests. By letting your child direct what you read about and explore together, you are letting them know that those things are worthwhile. You will be building your child's self-esteem and encouraging them to ask more questions, explore more topics, and find new interests. I love to see my son's face light up when he suggests an idea and I get excited about it with him. When we've spent time doing activities that he had the idea for, it makes him beam! And that makes me beam!


What topics has your child been interested in exploring lately?

Ideas for Encouraging Literacy at Home

A short list of ideas for encouraging literacy, from my family to yours. 

1. Give your pre-reader some wordless (or almost wordless) books and ask them if they'll read it to you. Mine can't get enough of this, and thinks it's great fun. He sat down on the couch with a stack of books yesterday while his older siblings were doing homework, and "read them. I asked him to take the recycling out and he told me, "Not yet, Mom, I'm right in the middle of my book!" 

2. Let your big kids read to your little kids. A win-win-win!

3. Keep your writing center stocked and available. You never know when the writing bug will bite! My little guy likes to have his in bedroom. He lovingly refers to it as his "office."

4. Be willing to drop what you're doing and read to your little ones when the urge strikes them. I know it's not always possible, so remember tip #2!

5. Turn regular toys into literacy-learning tools. This week we made alphabet letters out of Legos. It kept my little guy busy for quite a while on and off all week.

Start a Preschool Book Club

What if we could create a book club experience for our little ones similar to the kinds of book clubs that we adults participate in? Yes, there are plenty of library preschool story hours (and I love them), but I'm talking about a small gathering of friends, meeting in a place like someone's house, each family contributing to the planning, reading, and discussing...

This has been a little dream of mine for a while. I honestly don't see it happening anytime soon for me and my son, but the fall would be the perfect time to launch your local preschool book club if you might be so inspired.

Here's what to do:

1. Invite neighbors, friends, your child's classmates, church buddies... you decide what kind of group you want to form. Use Evites, old fashioned paper invitations, email, word of mouth, Facebook (how fun would a little Facebook group for your book club parents be?). Get the word out and make it easy for people to respond and keep in touch with you about details.

2. Decide where you'll meet. It doesn't need to be formal. A home, the park, church space... Maybe you even rotate locations?

3. Choose a book to begin with and let the group know where they can find it, and when it needs to be read by. This can be any format, genre, or length depending on the ages and interests of the kids in your group. Maybe you want to assign a little activity for parents to do with their child at home, post-story, and then the kids can discuss the book and how the activity went for them. Make sure it's an open-ended activity so there's lots to chat about and there's likely to be variety in how it went for each family.

4. Plan a little discussion. Depending on the ages and attention spans of the kiddos in the group, the amount and type of questions you ask may vary. But just like any good book club, you want to talk about the book! So brainstorm or research some discussion starters.


5. Personalize your book club. What makes a book club different from a library story time is that it's meant to be more intimate and personalized. Choose a theme that interests your kids, let the kids give book talks and bring in some of their favorite reads to share with the group, develop special interests and opinions about various authors and illustrators together, give the kids some ownership and say-so in club plans.

6. Make it fun. Have parents take turns planning an activity and/or game to do with the kids at the club meeting. Scour the internet and Pinterest (and Literacy Launchpad) for ideas; you'll find more than you need! Serve snacks during book club and make them coordinate with your theme or specific book, if possible. Maybe let the kids help make the snack as part of book club. Maybe everybody can bring a snack to share that they feel coordinates with the story for that meeting; this would be a great discussion starter. Plan field trips, bring in special guests, have all kinds of fun!

The possibilities are endless, it makes my head swim. I think this would be something your kids would look forward to every week, or couple weeks, or month... or however often your group decides to meet.

Here are some ideas for a book club meeting for The Very Hungry Caterpillar (just as an example):

Have everyone bring one of the foods the caterpillar ate? (idea and photo from Offbeat Mama) Maybe do a taste testing together and you can make a chart, or discuss which foods are everyone's favorite. 

Get fancy with your storytelling? (idea and photo from A Wednesday Afternoon)

Plan an art project? (idea and photo from SmArt Class)

Learn something? (idea and photo from Busy Bees)

You get the idea, right?

Are you already doing a preschool book club? I would love to hear about it! Have some ideas to add to this list? Put them in the comments!

And here are a few more The Very Hungry Caterpillar ideas from me!

Keep 'Em Reading This Summer

Here's some ideas I've been thinking on for helping my kids continue working on their reading this summer:

- Read O'clock!
       Make reading part of your daily routine and schedule by establishing a time during the day when the whole family drops everything to read. This will be tricky to do in our house, and will require dedication on my part to stay consistent with it. But if I can get it to work, I think it could be marvelous for all of us!

- Enhance your summer outings and vacations by reading up on a topic or location before your trip.
        It can help build up anticipation for the trip, it can make your trip more enjoyable by helping you become more savvy about your destination, and it will make the trip more interesting for your kids.
       We're taking a Disney World trip this summer, and we're all having fun reading Disney books, watching Disney movies, and pouring through Disney travel guides!

- Participate in your library's summer reading program.
        Most libraries have all kinds of special events going on during the summer program. Our library is having a Star Wars party (what my boys are most excited about), puppets, crafts, magicians, reading partners (not exactly sure what this is yet), games, an animal presentation, etc. My kids are already excited about these events. We're going to try to make a weekly library trip part of our summer routine too.

- Learn a new hobby.
      Encourage your kiddos to use their free time this summer to learn a new hobby. Offer to help them, or offer to learn it with them. Then head to the library and get out all the books about that hobby that you can! Having a goal, feeling that thirst for information, can provide the right motivation to keep your kids eagerly hitting the books.

- Subscribe to a magazine
     This could work really well with the last idea mentioned. There's a magazine for everything, so get your child a subscription to a magazine that covers the topic of the hobby they're learning. That will be a fun surprise for them to watch for in the mail.

- PenPals!
     I'm going to see if I can set up a pen pal system between my kids and their cousin. This will be great practice for their reading and writing. And will give them something to look forward to receiving in the mailbox during the summer months. This also gives them a great opportunity to be creative with their writing; they can make cards, little books, lists, poems, charts, all kinds of things to have fun with!

What are you doing with your kiddos to keep them reading this summer? Share your ideas in the comments!