TIP #1 – ADVERTISING
Think about how much impact a TV ad has on your kids. You need to do the same thing with books! Make them look exciting and enticing. When books are shoved onto a shelf and are never touched, then your kids won’t be interested in reading them. Have books facing out. Or put a few books on top of the shelf with a fun activity. Need ideas? Here are some things I do to advertise books to my children, as well as my classroom kids:
- Talk about books – all the time! Share about the books you’ve read to a friend, your spouse, or neighbor while your kids are in earshot
- Are you doing arts and crafts with your kids? Make a playdough character from a book you’ve recently read or draw a picture of your favorite book character
- Decorate a room in your home to reflect a picture book series. I say “series” because than the décor can stay up for a month or so while you work your way through the entire series. This will remind you and your little reader to read ALL THE BOOKS.
- Here is an easy one: display a picture book with a matching stuffed animal. Simple and effective.
- Choose a topic that is relevant to your current life events. Then, find books on that topic. Last, place those books in a cute basket where the kids can see & access them.
- Place a book on top of a shelf and add a funky figurine, piece of art, or knick knack next to the book that goes with its topic.
- Make a story telling basket to go along with a picture book. This is a big hit with my little ones. I usually choose a storybook that has lots characters that I can salvage from our toy bins.
- Brag about how many books you are reading! Kids are naturally competitive and will probably want to beat you! I keep track of my books on goodreads, and I announce it very loudly when I add another book to my “Books I’ve Read” list.
Tip #2 – SURROUND YOUR KIDS WITH BOOKS
If you want to encourage reading, then you need to give your kids access to all different types of text. Books, magazines, newspapers, digital reading material, etc. Having a large variety of reading material is also helpful because it helps your children discover new interests. Am I telling you to go out and purchase tons of books? Absolutely not! Go to your local library with your kids. Let them explore and check out as many books as they want. Believe it or not, there are no limits on how many books you can check out! BUT…remember to return them! Speaking from experience, I’ve paid a hefty fine once or twice because of late returns. How do I avoid library late fees?
- I have two small shelves in my house that are reserved for library books. I try to keep them separate from all of our own books, because if they get tucked away on one of those shelves then I’ll never find it!
- I put the due date in my phone calendar with reminders 2 days in advance.
- If I know that a library book won’t be reread before its due date, then I place it in our library bag that lives in our mudroom. This way I always know where the library bag is and I can grab it on the way out to run errands.
Can’t make it to the library? Or maybe space is tight and you don’t want a bunch of physical books crowding your living space. Go Digital! You can still surround your kids with books even if they are digital books. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Do your kids love YouTube too? When my oldest isn’t around I log into his YouTube account and I follow/like a ton of children’s book YouTubers so they’ll constantly show up on his feed.
- Have your children earn their game time by logging 15-20 minutes of digital reading time using free apps such as Hoopla, EPIC!, Sight Words Reading Games, Endless Reader, Spark Reading For Kids, Kindle, or Audible
- While you’re at it, have the notifications for their reading apps turned ON and the notifications for their game apps turned OFF
- Set up your Amazon Alexa to do a read aloud in the morning during breakfast. It’s nice to wake up to a silly, inspiring, or motivational story first thing in the morning.
- Recently, I’ve been having Alexa remind me to take part in her Harry Potter Trivia game. I get super into it and my little boys get excited for me even though they haven’t read the books!!!! If you have HP fans at home it would be fun for them to play and motivation for them to read.
Tip #3: MODEL READING IN FRONT OF YOUR KIDS
This is my favorite tip! Read in front of your children. We model behaviors alllll day long. For example, my youngest mimics me in his play kitchen because he’s used to seeing me prep, cook, & serve three meals a day. It’s the same idea, but with books. When he sees me reading all the time, then he pretends to read just like mommy….even though he can’t read actual words yet. Even my oldest gets curious when I’m reading in front of them. He asks things like, “Mommy are you still reading that book? When is book club? Do you like this book? What is your book called? Why aren’t there any pictures in your books?” They’re all great questions and they open up conversations about books!
Check out my oldest son, A.C. This happened while I was relaxing with coffee and a book and it was completely unprompted so I had to snap a pic!
Do you have any ideas to add to my lists of examples? I’m always hunting for more ways to advertise books to my kids, as well as ideas to get more books without breaking the bank! Leave me a comment 🙂
Kelly