Summer Reading - Tips 4 Parents
Your involvement with your child this summer can help make the Summer Reading Club at your library is an exciting adventure!
Here are some ideas to help you make this summer’s Summer Reading Club all that it can be for your child.
- Establish a regular time for reading in your home for all members of the family.
- Offer to share stories at bedtime or as dinner conversation.
- Encourage your child to share favourite stories with you.
- Help your child to set a realistic goal for summer reading. This may be reading for at least fifteen minutes every day; reading a certain number of books; or exploring books on a particular topic of interest to your child. Try to encourage a goal that will challenge the child but not be so ambitious that reading becomes a chore.
- Show genuine interest in the stories or programs your child discovers during the summer.
- Appreciate all books the child selects, even the ones that look "too easy". Summer is a time for fun, after all, and you can always guide your child to a more challenging book the next time you visit the library.
- Read to your child. Even if children can read themselves, they still enjoy hearing good stories read to them. Readers in the early grades can understand far more advanced vocabulary and complex stories than they are able to read - it helps their reading later if you continue to read to them.
- Encourage older children to read aloud to younger children or to you as you do chores.
- Read yourself! Make sure your child knows that you enjoy reading too. There is nothing like a good role model.
- Take your children to the local public library to choose books or to attend Summer Reading Club programs. Many children appreciate going with friends - ask your child to invite a friend or two.
