But wait! How in the world is it possible over summer? The schedule is completely different, we have things to do, vacations to go on, it's hard to be a part-time teacher too! ---If this is your thought process, you might want to keep reading.
Here are my tips to ensuring your kiddo gets the literacy time they need:
1. Be a role model. Kids often will try to mimick your priorities. If you don't care about reading, chances are that they won't either. So pick up a book, a magazine, or read a blog ; ) and show your kids that reading can be fun!
2. Participate. So many organizations out there have kids reading programs that you can join in on. The best place to look is always your local library, then make sure you check out any independent book stores! If all else fails, look into a larger book store chain like Barnes and Noble. Even some Pizza Hut franchises have a reading program! Most of these place make reading programs fun and offer incentives for your kids so they can look forward to a new book or prize or even a pizza! It can be so much fun for kids to set goals and watch them achieve them!
3. Have plenty of reading material. This one sounds obvious, but it took me a while to realize that J got bored of reading when his reading level was low. At that level, you could only find so many books that were "just right" for him and they all had the same formatting, same characters, and same basic story line with no details. I started going to independent book stores, shipping books in, and getting several books a month and J completely changed! He was so excited to see what new and unique books he got to read. I just made sure to keep them coming and to make sure they were all different!
4. Read to them. When kids are small, it doesn't matter how many unique books you buy, the fact of the matter is, that until they are reading at a 2nd/3rd grade level AT LEAST, books are vague. The have very few details in order to keep the vocabulary at an achievable level, so honestly, they can be pretty boring. Go pick up your favorite elementary chapter book and read them a chapter a night. You'd be amazed at how much ambition they gain when they become fascinated by a story line. (I'll post later about some of our favorites)
5. Visit. Spend a Saturday at a bookstore or at your local library! Chances are you could even catch a storytime or fun activity! At my local library, there is an entire wing dedicated to kids that's decorated fun, has engineering toys, puppet shows, music, kids magazines, computers set up with literacy games and awesome reading spaces. Let your kiddo explore and find new books and it might lead to new interests! That single trip could feed your child's passion for reading!
6. Change the rules. During the school year, kids are told what to read, when to read and how long to read. It's not bad, that's just how it is. Especially with sports, you have to have routine. During the summer though, we let J loose! We make sure to set aside time everyday for him to read, but everything else is up to him. He chooses the medium (computer article, magazine, book, ect..), he chooses what he wants to read, and chooses how long he wants to read. We've found that by giving him the freedom, he actually becomes more engaged and reads way longer then he would otherwise. The goal is to try to eliminate summer learning loss so it doesn't really matter how we achieve it, just that we do!
As always, please comment/share! I'm happy to help you find other solutions if you have a tricky kiddo!
Happy reading!
~C
No comments:
Post a Comment