Tips to Encourage Reading

Nothing's more important to your children's future than to encourage reading. Children who spend time with books are better citizens and more successful.

On this page visitors to this site share how they encourage their own children to read.

If you have your own tips, I hope you'll share! Use the reading tips form at the bottom of this page.

When I do workshops in the schools, I give blank books (8 pages plus a cover) to students, and let them write and illustrate their own book.

In afterschool workshops, where I have them for several days, I take their artwork for the cover, their title, information for their "author biography" and a photo of each student (I take my digital camera with me), home with me over the weekend.

When I come back the following week, they get a blank book with their personalized cover and blank pages inside where they can write and illustrate their story. This does wonders for self-esteem and my after-school program students are from Title I programs, so making a difference there is huge!

- Kas Winters, Winmark Communications

Debbie has her children earn "screen time" (tv, computer, video games) by reading. (The grown-ups do it too!) A minute of reading earns credit for playing or watching.

Debbie reports: "Our reading time now far exceeds our screen time!"

This same mom has another way to encourage reading.

She got together with the moms of some of her daughter's friends to form a mother/daughter book group. The girls were nine at the time, and the group still meets! Debbie explains how it works:

We chose a name, which was ultimately a combination of many suggestions, and the MaD (Mother and Daughter) Time Travelers were born.

We meet monthly (as best we can). We have met at local libraries, Barnes and Noble and a local retirement community. (The retirement community is a new location for us, and we are hoping to add a few 'grandparents' to our group by letting them know what we will be reading when we visit their place.)

We make our selections based on member recommendations and votes. The daughters bring us lots of contemporary titles, and we Moms try to insert classics.

We even created a 'members only' Yahoo group to keep track of what we have read, what we suggested that didn't get voted in (for when we are looking for book ideas) and links to cool reading sites. I added yours!

On our reading page, I share some of my own tricks on how to encourage reading.

How do YOU encourage your children to spend time with books? If you have your own tricks, please share them. Use the Reader's Toolbox form below.

Thanks!