Five Great Reading Activities for Children

Summer is a great time to cultivate the reading habit. Most of what children learn at school is forgotten by the time the next year begins. Reading is a good way to keep in touch with academics. Here are some interesting activities that will make a good start to creating a lifetime reader.

Bit by Bit

Read a portion of the story to your child each day. This develops an anticipation that sometimes may lead children to try and read the rest of the story by themselves. It helps sustain an interest in the activity. An interesting way to do this would be to make it a game of musical chairs where every time the music stops, the participants read a portion of story or book kept on the chairs. This usually works because it is difficult to finish reading a story during the game. Children who liked the story may just go ahead and borrow or buy the book. Get back together after week.

Parent Reading Sessions

Have reading sessions at your local clubs, schools, or at home. Gather a few friends and their children and start a reading club. Take turns to read popular stories. Soon these could be something the children look forward to. Some children may like to listen rather than read a story. This makes a very good beginning. For the very active children, reward sitting at such a session with an evening out or at the park. I had a very interesting session of reading the Jurassic Park out to my summer class. I would stop at a very interesting point that had children come back for more!

Watch a Movie

Children love watching films. Most popular animation films have books based on their stories. An interesting film could be motivation enough to read the book. In fact most Hollywood movies too are based on best selling novels. The Harry Potter Series is one of the best examples. Have a reading party where children dress up as their favorite characters or follow up a movie with a book.

TV vs. Reading Time

Here lies a big challenge. With an increasing number of entertaining shows on television, it seems the easiest thing to do. It takes no great effort and makes for easy monitoring. Regulate times for watching television and reading. Reading a story or a chapter from a book everyday can be rewarded with an extra half hour of TV every week. Include it in their routine say half an hour of reading everyday for a week and then they get to select a TV show to watch together with the family.

Reading Contest

Try a reading contest with a difference. Encourage children to read different kinds of work. Keep magazines, newspapers, brochures, encyclopedias and activity books apart from picture books and novels. Any exposure is a learning experience. Take notice and show your appreciation if you catch them reading a brochure or a newspaper. You can even go through them together. Creating a scrapbook or a trip to a place they have read about adds on to the excitement.

The ideas are very easy to implement. Support them with art activities or library visits and you can improvise or build on them. The trick is to get children into it without making it a chore.