How To Get Your Kids To Embrace Reading During The Summer

 Twittermoms and HarperCollins are getting together and looking for people to write blog posts on how they get their kids to read (click here to learn more). This isn't hard for me because my daughter loves to read. I will admit that we do occasionally have our melt downs where she doesn't want to read or wants to just read a short book, but most of the time it isn't a hard thing to get her to do.

During the summer most kids have a harder time wanting to read because it is either a nice day outside or there is something on TV that they want to see or perhaps there is a video game that they want to play. One thing that you can do or that I do is sign your child up to a summer reading program with the library. Our library holds a summer reading program where children state how many books they think they can complete over the summer. Once they do this, they read their books and bring their tally sheets to have it signed off weekly. Each time they have it signed off, they get to pick out a prize. This creates a great incentive for a child to keep reading. Once they are done reading the amount of books they signed off for, they can pick out a book to take home and keep.

Another thing I do is go to a bookstore and have my daughter pick out a book that she wants to read. When she is done with that particular book, we will go back to the store and pick out another one. A good thing about this is that they can keep the book vs. having to return them when checked out from the library.

One other thing that one can do is have a picnic reading session. This can be really fun. You take a picnic basket with your blanket and sit at a park and read. I find my daughter enjoys reading more when I read with her vs. having her read on her own. And if you have a picnic reading session, you can eat (what kid doesn't like to eat) while your reading.

A finale thing you can do to get your child do read is have them read books over the internet. They have a ton of sites where your child can read a book in his or her age bracket/reading level. What child wouldn't love to pull a book up on the internet and read it? Children now days love computers and seem to be more competent with them then we are, so I can see where this would be fun. I have actually had my daughter do this and she really enjoyed it.

“I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms blogging program to be eligible to get an "I Can Read!" book. For more information on how you can participate, click here.”



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