Are your children taking part in a summer reading challenge this year? There are lots of resources available from Activity Village to help them...
The Summer Reading Challenge!
By Sarah B
Many local libraries are taking part in the summer reading challenge and my local library is no exception. All three of my children are pretty keen readers but this sort of challenge is a great way to get children engaged with books and get them to use them in different ways.
Summer Reading Challenge display at the library
Here are some other ways that I am using the summer reading challenge as a spring board into other activities with my own children this summer.
Sitting together to read is the obvious thing here – but the value of reading aloud cannot be underestimated. With Daniel, who is a fairly fluent reader, I am able to check his understanding as well as start to introduce the idea of grammar to him. He is now taking note of exclamations and question marks and it’s nice to hear that come through. With Emma, who isn’t yet reading, we talk through the pages and I’ll ask her what she thinks the pictures show, and we read aloud together as I help her with some of the easier words.
Once we have finished each book, we are completing a book review. We did this last year and the librarians at out local library put one of Daniel’s up on the wall display. This is a sneaky way to get a bit of writing practice in, and we have used a couple of book report templates from activity village for this. Daniel quite likes doing these and now he can read the questions and prompts I can leave him to fill these in on his own. With Emma, I use this simpler report template which asks her to draw a picture, it’s an easier way for her to complete the report template.
Daniel enjoys filling out a book report
Creating their own story is something that I love to hear Daniel and Emma doing, and this summer I am going to prompt them to draw/write their own book. These story starters are good prompts and I’ve got a couple of these ready for Daniel to use. I think we will use these and either produce a comic strip or a short picture story.
This reading worm is a great idea and I’ve got a few ideas for how we will use it. Daniel and Emma want to use it as a reading log, colouring in a section for each book they read, but I am also going to have another one to note down the words he is struggling to read so we can practice them together.
Colouring in a segment of the reading worm for every book read
There are only a few that he trips up on, but noting them down on here will give us opportunity to practise them, as well as aid me in spotting any patterns in the types of words he is tripping with. There are also reading certificates available to print once children have read a certain number of books.
Finally, we are going to make up some bookmarks – these are always great fun and look fab (especially if laminated) and can be given as litle gifts for family and friends – a sure winner with grandparents for us!
This is a guest post from Sarah B. Sarah is a home educating mum to three children aged 5, 4 and almost 2. She blogs at Let Them Be Small where she shares details of their home education journey as well as different activities that they do, the resources they use, the books they read and anything else that forms part of their home education journey.
You can find a list of all our guest posts, here.
