Keep em Reading this Summer!

Parents hear it all the time. Children learn to love to read by being read to as babies and toddlers and emulating their parents reading. This is all true. But as times are so busy during the fun summer months, how do you keep your child reading?

Well, here's what I do that you might find a bit different from the normal.

1. Read the newspaper with them. Get them in the habit from a young age for reading the newspaper. Little Buddy loves the comics, especially Garfield. As soon as I get the paper from the drive in the mornings, I pull out the part of the paper with the comics and put beside his seat at the breakfast table. As we eat our breakfast, we each read our sections of the paper and then we "switch". Little Buddy thinks it's hilarious and learns alot about current events this way, too.

2. Pick from guidelines at the library. Make it a family tradition to frequent your local library. I found that at first, we both wanted every book that we thought looked like a good book. Finally, we setup guidelines to keep the ones that we checked out to a readable level. At least twice a month, I take Little Buddy to the local library to pick out books. We only have a couple of guidelines. Little Buddy can choose a total of 3 books, one from each of the following groups:

• "How to" type book (age appropriate)
• classic literature
• just for fun

3. Make it a game. Make up a fun game to play that encourages reading as well. We have a special game called, "Who Read it First?" This is a great game when driving down the road and boredom has surely set in. Once I announce we are about to play our game, he's all over it. (Mr. Competitive) The first to read the words on the billboards, signs, writing on tv commercials, cereal boxes, etc. gets points. You get the idea.

Do you have a tip on how you keep your child reading? If so, I'd love to hear it. Please share!