Top 10 Ways to Keep Your Child Interested in Reading during Summer Break

Top 10 Ways to Keep Your Child Interested in Reading during Summer Break

Robin @ Kids Matter

1.     Join a reading club at your local library.  This allows for interaction with their peers and may broaden the range of books from what they would normally read.

2.     Read the book then, watch the movie or cartoon.  It’s fun to see the words you’ve just read come to life on screen.  Afterwards, you can discuss the differences in the two.

3.     Have a book-themed celebration.  For example: have an ice cream party after reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Don’t treat it like a reward for reading, which makes reading seem like a chore.  It’s just as an occasional special experience.

4.     Help your child practice reading skills as part of everyday activities such as reading a menu, looking at a map, identifying letters on street signs, or reading a recipe.  This helps build vocabulary.

5.     During long trips e-books or books online may be a good option to help pass time.  There are many free books available for all ages.

6.     If you have relatives far away or your child has a friend who has moved out of town, encourage your child to write letters.  It’s a good way to practice spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  And it’s really fun to get letters back from them. 

7.     Challenge your child to write a biography.  It may be a biography of their own life, or of a celebrity or sports hero.  Younger children may draw pictures and tell you what to write for each one. 

8.     Change it up and have kids read a bedtime story to the parents.  This gives children a sense of pride in doing something that is usually the” parent’s job”. 

9.     Buy a notebook for your child to use as a journal.  It may be for everyday use, or just to record fun experiences from summer travels.  This is a very special keepsake that they will likely love to reflect on in later years. 

10.   Make a special trip to the library and let the kids pick out several books that interest them.  Getting a variety of books that catch their attention is good.  You can schedule library time every two weeks or so to change the books out for new ones.   The Association for Library service to Children (ALSC) offers a list of award winning books that will be helpful if you want suggestions.  They also have recommended book lists, games, puzzles, and other great library related suggestions for parents, children, and educators.

Happy reading!  Hope you have a wonderful summer!

My Child the Author

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”  ~ Albert Einstein

The imagination of a child is limited only by the restrictions we, as adults, place on them. If we want our children to grow and aspire to be better, to have more, and to do better than we did, then we must encourage the imagination of our children. The most impacting display of imagination is through creative writing. By encouraging a child to explore a story from beginning to end with all the detail that comes to their mind, you are allowing them to open new doors in life, look at things from a different perspective, and live happy, fulfilled lives.

I’m a firm believer in encouraging children to participate in creative writing. For nearly 20 years, my family has written a story and read it together as a family on Christmas Day. Each child and grandchild writes their part of the story.  It is then pulled together into one amazing emotional piece of creative art that has become a huge part of our annual Christmas tradition. Over the years we have learned so much about each other and I've watched as the kids matured in their writing styles. I know through personal experience that a child who has no earthly desire to write a single word can, with encouragement and growth, go on to write beautiful heartfelt stories.

Many children and adults alike are intimidated by the mere thought of putting pen to paper. The blank piece of paper can be a frightening monster, but if you allow your imagination to freely express itself that blank piece of paper becomes a canvas of life. A parent may never be more amused and inspired than when sitting down with a child to write a creative tale. A child may bring inanimate objects to life, give objects colors you would never imagine, or give people and animals superhero traits of the likes we have never seen.

Go on, you know your inner child wants to be released; you are just a click away from helping your child’s imagination fill their book of life. Below are resources for you to take a journey with your child. See the world through your child’s eyes and laugh like you did as a child. There is no greater opportunity in life than to be a part of a child’s life.  Why not share in their story?

1.       Scholastic: Wonderful tool with graphics and very user friendly, great for the beginning writer.

2.       My Story Maker: Allows your child’s story to be shared online for other budding authors.

3.       Storybird: A bit more complex tool yet allows for online sharing of the story.

Belinda @ Kids Matter

Tuesday Teachings - Encouraging Early Literacy

There are many ways to encourage early literacy skills for your child during her normal play time. You do not have to sit down with your child and force her to complete a worksheet for you.

During the day there are numerous times to "fit in" literacy. If your children are playing and she says "Let's play restaurant. I'll be the waitress." This is a great opportunity! Suggest that she write the "order" down on a notebook and hand her the notebook and a pencil. This is a huge learning activity for her. She has to stay in character, write down what you ordered to eat, go get the food, recall what she wrote down and then return to you with the food. When she returns to you, tell her that she needs to tell you what everything is as she sets it on the table.

Do you have picture books in your house? We sit down a few times a week with a picture book and my son will look at the pictures and then make up a story to go along. Sometimes the stories are closely related, other times he can look at the same book 3 days in a row and the story will be different each day. In addition to understanding that the pictures have meanings, he is also recalling his friends and past activities as they often make appearances in his stories. These stories are a building block to strong literacy skills.

Does your child love to paint or color with crayons? They are learning the tripod grip that is vital for writing skills, but they are doing much more than that. As they are painting, they have an image in their head that they are trying to re-create. Once a masterpiece is complete, ask your child to tell you all about it. I will frequently write down these stories that my son tells me so that we have a memento of the moment.

Doing worksheets and memorizing letters are an important part of every one's education, but it does not have to be the only part. There are many ways to learn and as parents and teachers, we need to offer a variety of ways for our children.

Storytelling - A gift for the whole family

Everyone has favorite stories that they love to tell. People tell fairy tales, folk tales, childhood memories, old family legends, stories from friends or family or even just what happened to them today. Many of these stories will become tales that are told over and over but many of them will be forgotten.

Tell lots of stories in your family to stimulate your children. There are several things that stories can help children with.

1) Background: Many people wander through life wondering where they are going but it can be easier if you know where you came from. If your family has special traditions explain to your child why you do these things. That is something your child will carry with them always. Do you eat certain foods at certain times? Do you have a special vacation spot that you go to time and again? Explain these things to your child. Also dig deeper, tell them about your heritage. Where does your family hail from? You may learn several new things yourself.

2) Imagination: When you tell a story instead of reading a book a child must visualize the pictures on their own. This will assist with their reading comprehension and when they begin to write, an imagination will make it easier to come up with ideas. It can be difficult as an adult to use our imagination but try hard to stimulate your child's imagination.

3) Language: Telling stories and reading books are a great way to stimulate a child's language skills. They will hear words that they have never heard before, they will hear the proper sequence of words and they will detect the punctuation of phrases. The more words a child hears, the larger their vocabulary as they age. Be ready to explain a word to a child if you think it is a new word to them or if they ask for an explanation.

4) Convenience: You do not need any supplies to tell a story. You can do it in the car, the bed, a doctor's office or anyplace else that you may be.

5) Reading skills: Telling stories teaches a child the nuances of plot, sequence and characters. They will begin to understand the concept of a story long before they can actually read.

6) Lessons: Many stories that we tell or read often teach a lesson. Whether the lesson is about sharing, not hitting or just being nice many stories teach many lessons. After you tell your child a story, take a few minutes to talk to them about it. Ask what they learned in the story.

Story Projects:
Ask family members near and far to record themselves telling stories. They can read books, tell stories from their childhood, make up stories or recite fairy tales. These will be great for your child to listen too. It not only helps with their development but it also keeps family that they may not see every day familiar to them. If they do not want to record their voice they can also write the stories and your family can read them.

Story Dice: Have you seen these yet? They are wooden blocks purchased from a craft store that you draw pictures on or decoupage pictures onto them. Then you roll a dice and start telling the story based on the picture that comes up. Some samples that you can purchase are below.

Muffin Baby Shop on Etsy - I love that these are in color.

Mama Mayl's Shop on Etsy - love the symbol key and book.

Fancy Fannie's Shop on Etsy - I love the variety on these.

Oh Sew Crafty Canada's Shop on Etsy - These also come with a book to write your stories.





Snowman Names

We had another snow day in my house so I worked with my son on recognizing the letters of his name. I got this great idea from the blog Musings of Me. If you have not checked out Michelle's amazing blog yet, please do. She has some of the best free downloads that I have found online.

Anyway, back to the project. I cut out 6 snowballs from white sticky backed foam. One snowman was the head so I used markers to draw on a face. The other five were for my son's name, one letter per snowball. I then wrote my son's name vertically on an index card. I went ahead and stuck the snowman head on a piece of blue paper (actually two pieces taped together to be long enough). I then gave the snowballs to my son in no particular order and the index card with his name on it. I asked him to put his name in order just like the index card.

He did an amazing job and then we stuck the snowballs onto the blue paper and glued a hat and scarf cut from foam onto the snowman. This is hanging on his bedroom door and he likes to show it off all the time and as he goes into his room he always stops at the door to read his name.

Tuesday Teachings - Math + Cookies = Happiness

One of our winter traditions is to bake cookies a few times a month. That is a lot of baking, so I like to sneak in some "extra education" when ever I can. On the week-ends that are just too crazy to take time out to bake, we play with math cookies.

To make these you will need:

Tan construction paper
round cup for tracing
pen
scissors
black marker
other construction paper

To make these, trace your cup on the tan paper for as many cookies as you would like to make. Cut out all of the circles.

Once they are all cut out, use your black marker to draw "chocolate chips" onto the cookies. You can put as many or as few as you would like. If you are going to play with your cookies as often as we do, you may want to laminate them. Ours looked bad after just one week, so I cut out new ones and laminated them.

When I made mine, I made 21 cookies - that is enough cookies to have from 0-20 chocolate chips. I also wrote the word for the number of chocolate chips on the back of my cookies. Now we can also work on reading skills while playing with out math cookies.

We play with them a few different ways.

1) My son can put them in order from 0-20.

2) I pick out certain cookies and lay them on another piece of construction paper and draw a line beside each cookies. My son then counts the number of chocolate chips and writes the number on each line.
3) I give my son the cookies, a cookie sheet and a spatula. He then pretends to bake up cookies for friends, family and stuffed animals.

Monday Meanderings - Fall Books

Has anyone seen the craze Story + Art = a great stART? Many bloggers are participating in this, including us very soon. The whoel idea is you choose a children's book and then an activity to accompany the book.

I have linked up some great ideas below.

A Mommy's Adventure did a great activity for There Was an Old Lady That Swallowed a Bat. If you have not read this book yet, we consider it "must read for Fall." This activity is also very cute and she has other great ideas on her website.

Red Ted Art made a great bird marrionette to accompany the book Leaf Trouble. I am going to be looking for this book at the library now.

These are just a small sampling of the Great StART stories that are online. Have a look around and find one for your next book.

I have a baby. Now what?

When you come home from the hospital with your little bundle of joy, you see nothing but promise when you look into the eyes of your child. Soon you realize that there is a lot of competition between parents. As you are thrilled that your child starts holding her head up on her own, someone else talks about how their child is already rolling over unassisted.

These conversations can get you down quickly and make you wonder if you are doing all that you can for your child. Rest assured that every child does develop on a different time frame. The American Academy of Pediatrics has a list of guidelines and target ages to meet the guidelines but even they know that just because you are not on "target" does not necessarily mean that there is something wrong.

The most important thing you can do for your child is to encourage them and to see everything as an easy opportunity to teach. Some people have a hard time talking to a small baby that is basically unresponsive but that is when a child is absorbing everything you say. They can not speak yet but they can remember words you say and figure out the meaning of the words. They can pick up on small nuances in your voice and demeanor. If you are stressed or angry, they can pick up on that and re-create the same emotions.

Speak to your baby, sing to her and read books to her. This will assist her in time to learn to speak. It is okay to sing the same songs to her over and over. When my child was small, I completely narrated everything I did to him. As I got him dressed I pointed out his arms, legs, head, fingers and toes. He was one of the first children in his class to recognize these body parts. We never really "worked" on learning these things, we just sang a little tune as we got him dressed each morning and then again when we put his pajamas on at night.

Under no circumstances am I telling you that you must go out and buy every toy you can find that says it is an educational toy in order to further your child. I am also not telling you that you should always point out how great your little Timmy is doing and ask your friend why little Abby is so far behind. I am encouraging you to use your imagination to teach the basics to your child in the first years of his life.

As you put on their shoes, ask for the left foot and then the right foot. They will not always get it right but they will learn that there is a difference. As you tie those same shoes, recite the shoe tying song (sang to the tune of Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush):

This is the way I tie my shoes

Tie my shoes
Tie my shoes
This is the way I tie my shoes
So early in the morning!

By making little bunny ears
Bunny ears
Bunny ears
By making little bunny ears
So early in the morning!

I tie them in a little knot
Little knot
Little knot
I tie them in a little knot
So early in the morning!

As you do things throughout your day, sing about it to your child. You will not immediately see your child carrying on conversations but you will be rewarded later when they begin to develop language skills.

Do not just speak to your child though, they need your touch also. Snuggle, cuddle and rock your baby. Every touch stimulates the baby's brain. Do not just do these things when your baby is upset, nurture him when he is happy, alert and quiet also. This will be just as rewarding for you as it is for the baby. This will release some tension for you and will help you to bond with the baby. Your child looks at you with eyes of love and trust when they are happy and rested, relish this time.

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter E

As we move our way through the alphabet we are stopping at the letter E this week. Some great E words are: Earth, Evening, Event, Empty, Elm, Employee, Eel and Elbow.

E

Be sure to download the letter E for your activities. I thought and thought about which E activities to do with my child and finally settled on these.

First up is an Elephant from the letter E. My son painted the elephant (I let him choose the paint colors) and then I glued on the trunk and the ear once the paint had dried as he had already gone to bed. He loves to paint more than anything else so he does not mind my finishing up the project.

Next up we glued google Eyes all over a letter E. He really enjoyed shaking the eyes around and seeing then spin.

For the next letter E, I wanted to do something with Eggs. My original thought was to color eggs. This activity would be twofold, coloring the eggs and talking about the letter E and then cracking the shells to glue onto the letter E but alas it was not meant to be in my house this week. Too much else going on so I cut out some paper Eggs from some scrapbook paper I had laying around. You do not have to use scrapbook paper, construction paper would work also but I am never going to scrapbook so I figured I should get some use out of the "fancy paper".

For the next craft, I really love hand print crafts to track my son's growth so I painted his hand gray and once it dried I glued an ear on the palm. I think he is adorable and I know I will keep that forever. Not only is it cute but it is always fun to hear the deep belly laughs of my son as I tickle his hand with the paintbrush when I am doing hand print crafts with him. That is why I prefer paint over a stamp pad, those laughs always brighten my day!

You can print out the letter E and put it in a clear sheet protector/report cover or laminate it and give the child a dry erase marker to practice writing the letter E.


You can write the letter E on a chalkboard and give the kid a small amount of water with a paint brush. They can dip the brush in the water and use it to erase/trace your letter.

Find the letter E. Give a child a marker and an old magazine or newspaper. Ask them to go through a few pages and circle the letter E.

Lacing Cards - Print out the letter E and laminate it. Punch a hole every inch or so and let the child lace yarn or a shoestring.

Paint Bag - Squirt some tempura paint of shaving cream in a zipper style bag. Seal the bag, squeezing out as much air as possible. For safety and cleanliness sake, tape the bag closed also. Now put the bag on the desk and allow the child to trace the E.

All crafts that are easy to save, please hold onto those and put them all in a Alphabet Binder for the child. To make the binders I will put the pictures in sheet protectors and then put them in a 3 ring binder.

Some foods that start with the letter E are: Eggplant, Enchilada, Elephant Ears, Elk, Endive and Edamame.

We made another fun snack from the letter E with our "Candied Eggs". We melted white/vanilla candy coating in the microwave in 15 second increments. Once it was all melted I transferred it to a zipper style bag and snipped a small corner with the scissors. I piped the melted white coating onto wax paper in egg shapes then my son laid yellow M & M candys in the white candy to make the egg yolks. We had lots of fun making them and think they look really cute.

Take some time and practice the alphabet with your kids.

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter C

This week are moving on to the letter C. I thought of lots of cute things that start with a letter C: cats, collage, continents, cleaning etc., but these are the things we Crafted (another C).

You can print out the letter C by going to to the shared file page.

Our first craft was for Cars. We rolled the wheels of some of our little cars in some watered down tempura paints and then we rolled them across the letter C page. My son had a lot of fun with this and I actually had to supply him with several pages of paper to "drive" on as he thought that was one of the coolest things he had ever done. I will give you a tip about this though, the cars that have "tread" on the wheels make the best and most realistic tire marks but they also soak up the most paint and take the longest to dry out.

Out next craft was Caterpillars. We pulled out the stamp pad with multiple colors to it and stamped his finger on the C page. Once that ink had tried, which did not take long, I went back and drew in the details. I always love the finger/hand/foot print crafts we do as they seem so personal.

The next C word we discussed was Circles. We used our Do A Dot Art Markers for the circles on our page but you could just as easily make smaller circles by using a pencil eraser or any other round items you find around the house.

You can print out the letter C and put it in a clear sheet protector/report cover or laminate it and give the child a dry erase marker to practice writing the letter C.


You can write the letter C on a chalkboard and give the kid a small amount of water with a paint brush. They can dip the brush in the water and use it to erase/trace your letter.

Find the letter C. Give a child a marker and an old magazine or newspaper. Ask them to go through a few pages and circle the letter C.

Lacing Cards - Print out the letter C and laminate it. Punch a hole every inch or so and let the child lace yarn or a shoestring.

Paint Bag - Squirt some tempura paint of shaving cream in a zipper style bag. Seal the bag, squeezing out as much air as possible. For safety and cleanliness sake, tape the bag closed also. Now put the bag on the desk and allow the child to trace the C.

All crafts that are easy to save, please hold onto those and put them all in a Alphabet Binder for the child. To make the binders I will put the pictures in sheet protectors and then put them in a 3 ring binder.

Food Suggestions for the letter C:
Corn, Cookies, Crabs, Chicken, Candy, Cheese, Cream Cheese, Cottage Cheese. Cauliflower, Cupcakes, Carrots and Chow Mein Noodles

For our letter C food, we decided to make Cookies. Now just like many of you, I am a working mom which means there is not always a lot of "extra" time in my days. As a result you will notice that these cookies have a distinct square shape to them, that is because they are break and bake cookies. There is never any shame in taking a little help to get your to do list completed.

Make it a great day!

Where to start? Reading or Computers?

As we prepare to raise our children in a world that was much different than our own upbringing we will have to ponder many important decisions. Just one of those questions will be what is more important for my child to learn and be proficient at, reading or technology? Some parents may think that you can combine the two now with the computerized books and all but I think reading the old fashion way, with a real book that does not contain a computer chip is still the way to start. There are places where computerized books are beneficial but I think every child should have real books in their lives.

There are many sides to this argument and I am not here to tell you which is the best choice for your family. I am just going to tell you my opinion that has been established raising my own child. I know the whole world now revolves around technology but I still believe that reading should be a very important part of any person’s life, regardless of age. As a child I would read to exercise my imagination, my parents would know that I was also exercising my brain and learning things but that was not important to me. What I cared about were the places I could go and the things I could be. I had and still have many friends that never developed that love of reading. I still find that sad for them. They never knew the joys of escaping the drudgery of your every day life and do anything you want. Want to be an astronaut, a lion tamer or a cowboy? All it takes is opening the pages of a book. Want to climb a mountain, lasso a horse or rule over your castle as a Queen? All it takes is opening th epages of a book. I am not saying that computers do not have a place in your child’s life. All children should learn about technology and be proficient at it, but they first need to explore the things in their lives that they can only get with reading. Reading will always be a vital part of their life.

Take the time to read a book to your child and let them see you enjoying a book. It will be a lesson that they can take with them forever. As a small child, try to limit their technology time with computers, TV’s and video games and encourage their love of reading. If you go to your public library the librarians will be happy to provide you with listings of books that are encouraged by ages. If your library does not offer this service, you can go the website for Lexington Public Libraryand they will have book lists with accompanying games to go with them.

Dolly Parton began a program in 1996 called Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Ms. Parton started this program in her home of Sevier County, TN. The premise of the program is that each child under five will receive a brand new age appropriate book each month from birth until age five. The first book is always the classic “The Little Engine That Could” and the last book is always “Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come”. As word spread of the program other communities wanted the same service offered to their youth. The program has now grown and many, many communities are included in the program. If your community is involved, you can register your child that is under 5 to also receive free books each month, regardless of the families income.

Enjoy a good book with your child tonight and please post a comment with your opinion of technology vs. reading.

Tuesday Teachings - Word Family Eggs

Found this great project on line at Living and Learning Now

And I just wanted to expand on it some for our Teaching today.

Well Easter has come and gone and about right now you are wondering what are you going to with all of those plastic Easter eggs that are all over your house?

The eggs are perfect utensils to help your children recognize word families. Word families are groups of words that have a common feature or pattern - they have some of the same combinations of letters in them and a similar sound. For example, at, cat, hat, and fat are a family of words with the "at" sound and letter combination in common. The 37 most common word families in English are: ack, ain, ake, ale, all, ame, an, ank, ap, ash, at, ate, aw ay, eat, ell, est, ice, ick, ide, ight, ill, in, ine, ing, ink, ip, it, ock, oke, op, ore, ot, uck ,ug, ump, unk.

On the small side of the egg you can place stickers that have a letter per sticker. For Example, if you are making a word family egg for the family of _at, you could put a sticker with:

B
S
C
F
R
M

On the small side of your egg and then a sticker with at on the large side of the egg. The child can then twist the egg to make each individual letter match to the word family. This encourages word recognition along with letter recognition.