For World Book Day I’m thrilled to be co-hosting a blog hop all about a love of reading – #loveliteracy. Myself and 7 other bloggers are immersed in children’s literacy in a variety of ways, and on a daily basis. For me, I’m in the most exciting phase so far, as my 9 year old daughter begins to appreciate books that I also love to read, and I’m enjoying discovering and discussing stories with her.
But it wasn’t always this way. I remember very clearly the daily struggle to get her to read her school book, and the frustration and tears that would manifest as anger when I pushed her. It did eventually just click, as everyone says it does, and she has never looked back, but we have picked up lots of tips to get your child reading when they encounter a block.
Tips to get your child reading.
- Read to your child often. The more stories they hear, the more they see the words on the page, the more they are likely to want to fathom those stories by themselves. In the early days, even as a small and very feisty baby, the only thing that would calm my girl would be looking at books together.
- When your child is just beginning to read, try to make it enjoyable. Let them focus first on the pictures – children need visual clues to help them decode the words on the page. If they struggle with a word, do read it for them, it will help cement the letters and the meaning in them. Don’t make reading a test. For more on how children decode words you might like to read this post.
- Reluctant readers sometimes just don’t want to read books! And that’s fine. Try magazines, children’s websites, collector card albums like Match Attax or Moshi Monsters. Whatever excites them will soon make them want to read. We love our weekly children’s newspaper, First News, and The Bug enjoys finding out the animals in National Geographic Kids magazine.
- Visit your local library, not just to borrow books, but to spend time there. Often rifling through piles of books will flag up a type of story that appeals to your child. The Bug has recently discovered graphic novels and I will often have to confiscate them in the middle of the night! GG was a huge fan of Rainbow Fairy books, which I hated, but she was reading, and that was all that mattered.
- During the school holidays, most libraries run a Summer Reading Challenge which can be motivating for some children to keep them reading out of school.
- Even when children are accomplished readers, it’s still helpful to read with them. It’s how I weaned my daughter off easy reads, and onto the more challenging literature I knew she was capable of; she didn’t have the patience to persevere until she realised quite how interesting the stories could be. Have a look at this post for an idea of some books you could try with a 9 or 10 year old.
- Consider a Kindle. We have the latest Kindle Paperwhite, on which you can install the Kindle Free Time app. As well as good parental control options, you can set challenges for each individual child, and reward them for a set amount of daily reading. There are lots of books available to download for all ages, including picture books, which surprised me. I’ve been able to set up both my children on my Kindle, and load their profiles with books they like from my account. They can have totally separate libraries, or I can even duplicate the books to both accounts – which is handy when they both want to read the same thing.
Do you have any tips to inspire children to read? Join in with #loveliteracy on Twitter, Facebook, or with your own blog post.
Please check out my co-hosts World Book Day posts too:
- Here Come the Girls
- Sun Hats and Welly Boots
- My Little 3 and Me
- Rainy Day Mum
- The Fairy and the Frog
- Damson Lane
- Thinly Spread
Feel free to grab the badge code, and link up any reading related posts below.
I had exactly the same with my eldest. She hated learning to read and I don’t think the reading scheme did much to inspire her. But I’m happy to say that, at the age of 10, she is a proper little book worm.
We struggle a bit with eldest like this as like GG she can read well but some books are just too grown up – will be bookmarking this post for ideas!
Great tips there. Little Roo loves to read, and just recently she’s gone from reading the books she brings home from school, to wanting to branch out to children’s novels. She’s also loving the Horrible Histories series, which is pretty grown up for a 5 year old!
Elliot is just beginning to appreciate stories as well, he’s always coming over with a book for me to read to him. It’s so lovely!
Hooray for reading!
Love your top tip that children don’t need to just read books. Magazines, comics, newspapers, cereal packets, instructions, recipes. It doesn’t matter what it is – it is still reading!
Fantastic Tips for reading – I am so worried about turning J off of reading. The phonics books coming home are boring and same same same these tips will ensure that we don’t Off to find National Geographic Kids Magazine as he will love something like that.
My daughter’s just stared to show an interest in reading, so I loved this post. We read road and street signs, or wording on the bus when we’re out and about to make it fun. She loves being able to spot ‘her’ letter or number. Thanks for all the tips.
Great post Helen. I think you’re absolutely right that reading shouldn’t just be thought of as books, especially for reluctant readers, there’s lots of other ways to get kids involved in reading like you say, maybe reading and making a recipe, comic books, online reading etc etc. There are so many different genres to explore.
Learning to read can be such a chore – both my kids have struggled with it, but thankfully they have also come out the other side, and the youngest in particular, despite not wanting to sit still for much, is very happy with his head in a book! Thanks for taking part in the Parenting Pin it Party this week my dear.