One of our main reasons for creating our little club with daughters and moms, is to encourage our girls to read and inspire them to LOVE reading. Reading can be the key to unlocking their potential to learn and understand the world around them. Besides all the wonderful knowledge and experience it opens for them, it also a foundation for developing solid writing skills, a varied and wide vocabulary and stronger spelling skills.
With all the in mind, we want reading to become something they LOVE like ice cream and playing in the park. Making reading time a special time helps to do just that. Here are a few ways you can to make reading something they look forward to.
1. Every Little Girl Needs a Castle: Well, it may not be a castle, but it could be a corner filled with fluffy pillows and twinkling lights, or a pretty comfy chair and a reading lamp, or an indoor tent filled with pictures books and Christmas lights, or perhaps a corner of the attic made into a secret hideaway. The list can go on and on, but the idea is that little girls love to imagine and they love their own tiny corners of the world where they can dream. Creating a little nook that is just for special reading time, is a great way to encourage reading. When I was a little girl, I loved to escape into a story, but I couldn't fully do so with the clatter and clamour of my complicated life all around me. One day at age of nine, I ventured into the recesses of our attic and cleared away all the boxes and cobwebs and hung scraps of materials, discarded lights, old sofa pillows and blankets and carted all my favorite books to my new little castle. It remained my own haven for many years. Making a special corner for reading can be something as simple as big over-sized pillows that find a quiet corner of your home only during reading time or as elaborate as an indoor "house." The important part is to make it special, make it quiet, and make it only for reading time.
2. Cuddle and Story (Read Aloud): The day may sadly arrive when our daughters don't need to cuddle us as often and a quick hug is all they need. Take advantage of those cuddles while we can. Picture books or continuing stories that you and your daughter only read together with a cuddle and cup of hot cocoa make for special bonding time and great memories. Teach them the art of reading aloud and the wonder of it. Be silly when necessary. Pull out your dramatic side, making different voices and inflections. Stop and ask them what they think or comment on something you just read to them. You are both mentoring your love for reading and making the story come alive in a fun way. This mentoring is a part of teaching active reading, which will be discussed in future posts. Girls still crave time with their mamas so take that opportunity to share your love for reading with them.
3 Reading Adventures: Of course, every books holds its own adventure, but take it on the road! Plan special outings to coffee shops, interesting book stores, parks or the beach. Pack your books and snacks and make it a fun reading outing.
4. Book Baskets (Integration): Create baskets of books with themes. At the change of seasons, fill the basket with poetry books and pictures of that season and a chapter book or two. If there is a topic in school with which your children is fascinated, fill your basket with an assortment of fiction and non fiction books, both picture and chapter, to encourage their curiosity. Let them dive in and decide what they want to read. This makes a deeper, lasting connection to the subject studied and encourages further curiosity.
5. Dolphins, Princesses and Gymnastics (Interests): Whatever their currents "favorites" are, collect books on the subject. Make them varied, finding chapters books, pictures books and poetry. Offering options puts it in their big girl hands to make the choice. The point is to find things they can relate to whether it is a favorite hobby or animal or an issue that is on their mind. You are creating opportunities for them to relate. Children relate at a young age, so use relating as a way to encourage reading.
6. In Search: Going along the lines of #3, planning an outing to bookshops and the library "in search" of certain books makes it a fun adventure. What little girl doesn't want to be a detective and solves clues or complete a scavenger hunt with books. For my daughter's last birthday, I had her pretend to be Nancy Drew and solve a mystery that took her all over town in search of the missing book. Perusing the shelves of her favorite book shop (Books on Bay) made a lasting memory and further developed her love of a good mystery book. She made friends with the story owner and always loves to visit her and talk about what book she has recently found.
7. Find Fellow Book Lovers: Miss Betsy LOVES Nancy Drew. She teaches at a local college and has a quaint little rare book shop. Gracie adores her and loves to read Nancy more now than before because she loves Miss Betsy and her enthusiasm. Having our girls inspired to read because of positive mentor's passion for reading is a good thing all around.
8. You Be the Princess and I'll Be the Frog (Invention & Imagination): Play pretend or encourage them to do so. Read a story and then create opportunities for pretend play. Perhaps have them act it out for the family, play dress up, have a pretend tea party with the Mad Hatter, or perform a finger puppet 3 Little Pigs. Girls love dress up and they love imaginative play. Why doesn't love food? My daughter still talks about reading Winnie the Pooh and making "hephalump cookies" and that was a silly last minute idea after reading one afternoon when she was 4.
9. Be VanGogh: Read a book or a piece of poetry and then throw out the clay, paints, glue, and of course, glitter and let them just create something inspired by the story. Make it an organized craft or an artsy anything goes. Associating the stories with their creativity makes wonderful connections and masterpieces for your art hall of fame!
10. Book Club!: And now we have come full circle. This is a big reason we are having this little club together...to inspire our girls to read and read and read. Of course, we also want to teach them how to choose wisely what they will read and take into their minds. That is why we are choosing books with character about girls with character.
There are so many ways to instill the love of reading in our girls' hearts. These are just a few. I hope you have made it through this long read today. We will have future posts on more ways to encourage reading, but for today, the idea to take away is to make it special. What ideas do you have or have you tried to make it special? Comment below and share with us what has worked for you. I will include a link to my pinterest page on reading corners etc.
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