September is National Literacy Month so let’s talk about my favorite subject – books! I love to read and in an effort to raise readers, I started reading to my children when they were infants. Rarely does an evening pass where we don’t read books together. The house is littered with books, magazines and newspapers. So you would think that I have two model children who sit around and read every moment they get, right? Yeah…not so much. My boys are probably typical. They’d much prefer to race their bikes up and down the trail behind our house, play cars and airplanes and dig around in the dirt in their free time.
But, I can’t deny that I felt a stab of disappointment when my son would fight over reading a book to me. (Luckily, he now reads to me without batting any eye and is doing really well). My dismay at his initial reluctance to read led me to a question I’d never considered before: how can I motivate my child to read?
I come from a long line of book people. My great-grandparents were publishers, my grandmother was a voracious reader (I still remember the thrill of combing through the boxes of books she would periodically send to my mother), my aunt is a librarian and my mom and I can spend hours discussing books. My 8-year-old niece also loves to read and reads well above her grade level.
Since not reading for the sheer joy of it is a foreign concept to me, I conducted my own research to figure out ways to nurture a love of reading in my boys. It seems I needed to take a more objective look at what my kids are truly interested in and frankly, fairy tales don’t fly with these two. We now read a lot more non-fiction and humorous books and even tap some great websites online that allow me to download stories directly to my phone that we can read together (like when we’re between soccer games or in a waiting room). One of my favorite new web apps is Knowonder! What a great concept to get kids into books and stories while also sparking their own imaginations and creativity!
For more ideas to get kids reading, check out my article “Fire Up the Reluctant Reader” which is in this month’s issue of Kansas City Parent. And, I’d love to hear your ideas, too!
Photo courtesy: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
