Summer Reading Challenge

“Mom, read me a story!”

These are words I love to hear…most of the time. Though, these days, it seems that my five year old only requests this when I’m in the middle of mopping or folding laundry or changing his brother’s dirty diaper.

Reading to children has so many benefits. If you haven’t heard this then you have somehow been living in a dark cave away from every parenting book, podcast, magazine, website or talk show. Which, good for you, because if you listened to everything people have to say about parenting you would go nuts!

Benefits of Reading

Now, I know I am a teacher. So I have that education background that can be quite annoying when education becomes a topic of conversation. Just ask my husband. He is quick to point this out each time my ‘teacher friends’ and I start talking. There is no denying that education will become a topic of conversation at some point. And we will get quite passionate about it too!

So, let me just get on my soap box quickly (or feel free to scroll past this section and get to the good stuff) and say that reading to children is so important! It has proven to have so many positive effects. Honestly, I don’t think there is a single negative effect from reading to a child (other than I may not get my mopping or laundry or dirty diaper changed in a timely fashion).

It develops their imagination and creativity. Man, oh man, the things my five year old comes up with. He’s built ships that shrink like in the Magic School Bus and played a doctor in a hospital like in Curious George Goes to the Hospital.

I’m not naive though. I do know that a lot of his imagination comes from things he watches on television. Him and some ‘badies’ (a reference from PJ Masks) are constantly battling it out around the house!

But, books allow children to use their imagination to fill in gaps that may not be pictured on the page. While pictures books for young readers often have a picture for every event, the longer picture books often picture some scenes and then leave the rest to the child’s imagination.

They learn about the world around them. Fiction books are what most of us tend to think about reading to our children. They are the easiest to find for sure. But, wow, books are such an easy way to teach children about a world they may not be able to see. Liam loves reading books about animals. And the facts that he can remember astonish me. One day he was coloring and he says to me, “Did you know worms have no eyes?” Honestly, it sounded plausible but I wouldn’t have placed money on it. “Is that right? How do you know that?” He looks at me, smiles, and says, “It was in that book we read two hundred weeks ago.” His timing may be off but his fact was true!

It improves their vocabulary and language skills. I remember sitting in seventh grade English class. I had a vocabulary workbook. Each week we had fifteen new vocabulary words. One page listed the words and their definitions. The next few pages had repetitive activities to practice these new words. While this is a common way for older students to learn new words (though I would argue not the most effective way for most students), younger children soak up new words simply by hearing them used in context. When Liam throws out words like suspicious, fascinating, and investigate, I grin from ear to ear.

Reading also helps children learn to speak with inflection. This is most beneficial if the reader reads with good inflection as well. Hearing a character ask a question with a raised tone at the end signals a question in the English language. And you can say the word “wow” in a lot of ways and mean a lot of different things. Hearing the inflection of a voice through written words is so powerful and can translate to a child’s spoken language as well!

It’s a great bonding experience. There’s not much better than snuggling in bed or on the couch with Liam reading a book. The conversations that are brought on when reading with him are wonderful. His mind goes to so many places. He notices so many details in the pictures. He has so many insightful thoughts about what is going on. I love listening to his thoughts and hearing him verbally express himself. And, snuggling up with my youngest is just as wonderful. Trying to read him a story or point to pictures while he giggles and tries to turn the pages is heartwarming. And, before I know it, he’ll be building his vocabulary as practice saying brand new words (time slow down!).

Are you ready for a challenge?

I’ve created the Reading is a Treasure Challenge. It is a summer challenge for parents to do with their children. Reading is a great bonding experience but so is playing games and doing crafts together. Each week, there will be a focus book that will have fun games, crafts, snack ideas and more to go along with the book.

What Books?

There are so many amazing picture books. You can find the top picks of classic picture books from Barnes and Noble here (and you can download my free checklist to go with it here).

For this summer reading challenge, though, I have picked both fiction and non-fiction books that are not classics. It’s my hope that these will be books that you have not read with your child and you can both enjoy together for the first time!

Many of these books can be found at your local library (and all of them are on Amazon!). Or I will have YouTube links of the read-alouds as well. If you are like me and like to plan ahead, here is the list of books that will be a part of the summer reading challenge:

What’s the Challenge?

Last summer, I bought my son a Summer Brain Quest workbook. It came with a map and stickers that were to motivate the child to work hard. And it certainly worked for him! This year I bought him another one and he’s on Level 7 and almost done. It’s only June 1! He LOVES getting to put stickers on his map. And, he has a bit of me in him and loves to do the work too. HA!

So, with that idea in mind I created this summer reading challenge:

I actually created three different “levels” to fit every parent. I know every parent can not sit down and do three or four activities every week…but I still want the child to “win”!

Each map requires the child to get their pirate ship to the treasure by completing certain tasks. However, each map has different requirements on how to do that.

You can do it!

It costs nothing! I hope you’ll join me (yes, I’ll be doing this with Liam too!) as we go through a summer of reading, crafting and gaming with our children!

Just sign up below and I’ll send you an email with the three different treasure maps and directions for the summer reading challenge. And each Monday I will post a blog with our newest book and all the activities. Let’s do this!

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