1. Ways to encourage your child to read

2. Purpose
“Ways to Encourage Your Child to Read” is a parent workshop which offers ways to help parents to connect the home life with making reading an important life skill.

3. Reading
Reading to your child

4. Encouraging Your Child to Read
Ask about your child’s new library books
Create a reading corner
Visit the public library
Read with your child
Give books as gifts
Enroll your child with a book of the month club

5. In the Home Provide a reading atmosphere, free of distractions
Build reading time into your schedule
Maintain a reading ritual
Keep books everywhere
Cuddle while you read

6. Connect reading with life skills
Read a recipe out loud while you cook together.
Read and interpret the directions of a game or manual etc.
Read shopping lists and package ingredients together.
Reading Internet websites.

7. Skill Building Tell stories about your childhood.
Help your child make their own book.
Play word games together.
Cook with your child.
Listen to books on CD, play away, Kindles or any other electronic device.

8. What to read Fairy tales Rhyming and poetry books
Counting and ABC books
Unusual books which include books with flaps to lifts, tabs to pull etc.
Books that are about your child’s personal interest
Science books
Reference books
Wordless books
Television and movie tie ins
Newbery and Caldecott Medal Winners and Honor books
Book Flix –Power Library web site

9. Motivating your child to read
Recognize your child’s interests and suggest books, and magazines relating to the topic.
Watching a good movie is a starting point for pleasure reading.
Traveling and planning a family vacation can spark interest in reading.
Being a good role model and reading yourself.
Setting up an activity which includes searching for information.

10. Read Aloud Skills Bring the story to life
Discuss the pictures, inviting interaction with the story.
Introduce the book before you begin.
Slow down while you are reading the story.
Ask for predictions in a story.
Discuss the characters, plot and setting of the story.

11. Web Site
Book Adventures created by the Sylvan Learning Foundation is an online reading motivation program for children grades K-8. Children create their own book lists, take multiple choice quizzes and earn points and prizes.

12. Web Site
Raising Eager Readers is a web site that views advice and book recommendations from the Eager Readers website.

13. Web Site
Reading Rockets web site can help parents find the right books, fun activities to use with reading.

14. Highlights Magazine
Monthly changing web sites can encourage reading and activities.
Activities a parent can work with a child to develop verbal and reading skills.

15. Deepening Reading Experiences
Visit web sites that celebrate the author being read.
Support reading programs in school
Bucks County Reading Olympics
After school Village Library Program
Make a board game from a book
Plan a trip and visit an author’s home, etc.
Be familiar with what your child is reading at school.
Promote journaling or scrape booking

16. Food for thought
Do not make the excuse I am not a good reader. Only 50% of the parents reported to actual read to their children.
Another excuse, my child is not interested in reading. It is to our advantage to teach children to discover the joy, freedom and the power of reading.
It is important to connect reading with pleasure, which will help to sow the seeds of an enthusiastic reader.

17. Children with Special Needs
Greater emphasis on read aloud stories. Most children listening skills are stronger than their reading skills.
Dyslexic children can learn phonics. They need a structured, multi-sensory reading program.
Teach children to look and listen for the 5 W’s when reading.
Who are the main characters?
Where does the story take place?
When does the story take place?
What is the conflict in the story?
Why do the characters do what they do in the story?

18. Middle School Students
Keep reading with your child.
Keep setting a good example.
Provide a warm and inviting reading atmosphere.
Never withhold books or use them as a threat.
Encourage reading in bed.
Keep good reading material available in the home.
Encourage the giving of books as gifts.