by Rachel Wells
If you have a reluctant reader at home, you’re not alone. But reading for pleasure in childhood can greatly improve academic achievement, memory, comprehension skills, and vocabulary throughout adolescence and later in life.
To help increase your child’s time spent reading, a little creativity can go a long way. Instead of forcing your child to sit down with a chapter book, try one of these 7 creative ways to make reading fun. And hopefully these tips will help foster a love of reading that can carry them into adulthood as well.
Lead By Example
One of the best ways to encourage your child to read is to lead by example. Keep an ongoing supply of books you enjoy and make sure to read regularly during your down time – whether that be in the morning, before bed, or after work.
Pair Books with Activities
Bring stories alive with hands on activities. Your child can read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and watch the movie afterword while you cook up a yummy spaghetti dinner. Or read The Chronicles of Narnia the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and watch the movie afterword while you enjoy some Turkish delights. These kinds of connections really help make stories stick.
Use Your Child’s Interests
Any reading is good reading, so don’t worry about reading level or book style when it comes to reading for pleasure. If your child loves dragons, head to the library and check out a variety of dragon themed chapter books, graphic novels, and picture books.
Put on Some Karaoke
This is a bit less conventional, but reading the song lyrics on the screen is still reading! You can enjoy a fun family activity and throw a little reading practice in the mix without anyone really thinking twice about it.
Create Scavenger Hunts
Write a list of items that need to be found with words instead of pictures and have a fun reward when the scavenger hunt is completed.
Write Notes
Leave your child encouraging notes on a regular basis for them to read and encourage them to write back and respond to any questions or jokes that you wrote to them.
Caption a Day
Print out a funny picture and leave it on a highly visible spot in your house. Have everyone in the family submit a funny caption for it on a piece of paper, and fold it up so it can’t be seen. At dinner time have different family members volunteer to read the funny captions out loud. You can leave a picture out for a few days to get lots of funny captions before putting out a new one.
