- Image by alex.ragone via Flickr
Some of you have already sent your kids back to school! In Michigan, it’s the law that school can’t start until after Labor Day, so mine still have three more weeks of summer. Did you know that kids can lose as much as two months of learning over the summer, according to a 2002 report from National Summer Learning Association? Did your kids read over the summer? Mine did, my 13 year old son willingly, my 11 year old son less willingly.
“Motivating children to read throughout the summer is essential to building lifelong readers,” says Carol H. Rasco, president and CEO of Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the nation’s largest children’s literacy nonprofit. “And reading is the doorway to all other learning.” With that in mind, how do you convince your kids to build reading time into their summer plans? Fortunately, RIF has come up with a number of ideas to help you make this summer a season of reading. Just because summer is ending doesn’t mean your kids should stop reading! And not just required school reading, either. I mean reading just for fun!
The following tips are aimed at summer reading, but I think they are useful all year round. For example, kids don’t just play sports in the summer! See if any of these tips might help your kids develop a habit of reading.
- Combine activities with books. Going to a baseball game? Head to the library and check out a biography about your child’s favorite player. Is summer camp on the agenda? See if the camp has a blog you can follow.
- Lead by example. Show kids that you love to read by picking up the newspaper each morning or sharing about something you’ve read, and they’ll understand that reading is important to everyone.
- Relax the rules. Summer is a time when children can read what, when, and how they please. Don’t set any requirements, and don’t force kids to read something they’re not interested in.
- Visit the library. It’s got thousands of books and audiobooks to borrow, computers to use, and magazines to leaf through. Make the library your “go-to” destination for the summer (or on a weekend!)
- Think outside the book. Recognize that reading can happen in many formats, from eBooks to magazines to online read-along stories. Check out www.rif.org/kids for great read-alongs and other fun games and activities designed to keep kids reading.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to this: read. Read together, read separately, read anywhere, read everywhere. It’s the surest way to make certain that your kids will start the school year off right.
Rebecca Burton is a writer/editor at Reading Is Fundamental and has been working in the children’s literacy field for the past twelve years. She loves to read, travel, and hang out on the back porch with her husband and their two-year-old daughter.
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so true about losing the education during the summer months. My dad used to leave algebra problems on the kitchen table for my brother and I to solve before he got home. He made it fun by promising us a reward at the end and each day we got a clue about the reward. It ended up being a trip to an amusement park so I considered it worth it. I even remember enjoying solving the problems and it was a cool thing that we did together.
thank you. Its wonderful article… Im looking forward…
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Thank you for this very informative post. I believe that instilling the love of reading in a child’s life is one of the most important and positive things we can do for them as a parent. Watching what our child reads, and allowing them to grow into the books you choose together, is one way to help ensure that the values you have worked so hard to teach your children are reinforced by something that they love to do.
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Reading is so important, I’m always thankful that my dad encouraged me to read whenever he possibly could. My first book was ‘Usborne’s Guide to the Universe’, and I read a lot of science books when I was little. Then when I started reading for my own enjoyment (as opposed to things I had to read) at around the age of 11 I ended up getting drip fed great books from my dad. Many of them turned out to be Science Fiction books. Soon my appetite for books led to me to read books on as many topics as I could get my hands on. That shaped my development considerably, since now I am a writer and I get to write about so many varied topics. I love learning.
Great post, I totally agree that reading a great thing to try and encourage children to take an interest in!
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Great sharing! definately a good info for parents-to-be. Am going to share this reading to my colleague.
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Like lead by example best. What you do is more important than what you say. Being able to read and write is more important than ever, even in the age of texting.
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Very informative article for parents….I have to bribe my son with computer games, to make him read
No chance!!! my daughter refuses to touch a book during holidays
My advice to all kids in the world that reading should be to you like the food intake everyday cos if you read today you lead tomorrow.
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Based on experience, I found reading by example the best motivator for your kids to read too. And usually when we go camping during the summer, I see to it that we have some reading time and they are really in the mood to read when we are out there with nature.
You can buy them books but you cannot force them to read, specially older kids. You have to cultivate habit of reading in kids from early stages.
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