| Quick & Easy Reading Boosters
courtesy of everychildfirst.com A Dozen Fifteen-Minute Reading Activities : Try one with your children tonight! 1. License to read: On the trip to & from school, make it a game to point out and read license plates, billboards, and gas station, restaurant & road signs. 2. Better than TV: Swap one evening of TV for a good action story or tale of adventure – chapter books read over a few weeks build memory, story recall and most importantly – excitement! The Magic Treehouse series is a good place to start for exciting (but short) chapter books you can read in a few sittings. 3. Look and listen: Too tired to read aloud? Put on a book on tape or CD and turn the book's pages with your children. You'll still be enjoying a story with them, and the voices and sound effects will add a new dimension to the experience. 4. Labels, labels, labels: Label things in your children's room as they learn to name them. Have fun (and help with clean up!) while they learn written words are connected to everyday things. 5. Pack a snack, pack a book: Going someplace where there might be a long wait? Bring along a snack and a bag of favorite short books. 6. Recipe for reading: The next time you cook with your children, read the recipe with them. Step-by-step instructions, ingredients, and measurements are all part of words in print! Even better, first read books about the food you plan to make to get them excited, such as Stone Soup, Bread Bread Bread, Tamales for Supper, and Little Tony’s Pizzeria. 7. Shop and read: Notice and read signs and labels in the supermarket. Give your child a shopping list and pencil on a clipboard to check off items as they go in the cart. Back home, putting away groceries is another great time for reading labels. 8. Your long-distance lap: Away on a trip? Working late & won’t be home before bed time? Take a favorite book with you, call home, and have your child curl up by the phone for a bedtime story. They'll feel loved, and you'll feel less guilt about being away from home! 9. A reading pocket: Slip fun things to read into your pocket to bring home: a comic strip from the paper, a greeting card, or even a fortune cookie from lunch. Create a special, shared moment of one-on-one time your child can look forward to every day. 10. A little longer? When your child asks to stay up a little longer, say yes but make it a 15-minute family reading opportunity – grab a favorite book and snuggle up! 11. Read it all: Reading is reading, whether comic books, recipe cards, food labels, picture books or magazines. Pick a topic your child is interested in and find reading material on it. Order children’s magazine subscriptions, read the Sunday comics together, check out lots of books by a favorite author at the library, invest in a storytelling computer game. It doesn’t matter how – just get them to READ, and they’ll see how much fun it is and want to keep doing it! 12. Make it a game: Make a reading game tonight by recycling a favorite, but tattered, old book. You can cut out the illustrations, cover them with clear contact paper and have your child use them as storytelling cards. Character pictures can be cut out and made into popsicle stick puppets to act out a story, or glued onto index cards to make a matching game. Make a color copy of favorite book covers onto card stock and cut apart into a homemade puzzle – books are fun even after they are worn out! |
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| Notes From Lisa's Workshops |