How to Keep Your Kids Reading Over the Summer Holidays

How to Keep Your Kids Reading Over the Summer Holidays

Schools are always encouraging children to read on a daily or weekly basis throughout term time but what about the long summer holidays? It’s important that your kids keep reading even during the school holidays and, in this blog post, we’ll look at ways to make that happen. Reading is such a great activity to enjoy during the summer holidays – outdoors when the weather is nice and inside on rainy days.

• Get them excited about summer reading

Start by being a good role model and showing them that you’re excited about having some time to read new books or old favourite books this summer. Talk to them about your favourite summer reads as a child and involve them in your process of selecting books. Perhaps you have a list of books that you’re hoping to read this summer? They’ll soon get excited to get reading too which takes us to the next step…

• Let them choose some new books

Head to a book shop and let your kids choose some new books to read over the summer holidays. This is most fun done in physical book shops which can be a lovely outing to do together, but you can of course choose and buy the books online or in your supermarket too.

• Sign up to a Reading Chest book subscription

A brilliant way to save money and keep new books coming is to sign up to Reading Chest which is a book subscription that lets you borrow books in your child’s reading band. The books get delivered to your door and when you’re done with them, you send them back in a prepaid envelope and very soon after new books will arrive! It’s a great way to get kids excited about reading and a wonderful way to ensure that you can access new books from the comfort of your home without having to buy them all. All the details can be found on the Reading Chest website and there’s a giveaway at the bottom of this post for a subscription too. You can find my full review of Reading Chest here.

• Plan trips to the library

If you have a local library, you can also head there to top up the books available for your kids over the holidays and find some for yourself too. There are often fun book-related activities in libraries during school holidays and they’re a great way to encourage the love of books and reading too. It’s also great to support your local library as many libraries have sadly closed recently.

• Always take a book with you

Over the holidays, there are usually quite a few moments of waiting around whether that is while travelling, waiting for an event to start, or waiting for dinner to cook while camping etc. All those moments could be spent reading instead of your child complaining about being bored! Always have a book available for times like these – or even better, get your child to be in charge of this and put a book in their bag when heading out.

• Get friends involved

Getting friends involved is a great way to encourage kids to read more too. Start a book club with a friend who’s near or far or arrange book swaps with friends to access even more new books!

• Keep track of the reading

I always thought it was fun to track how many books I read when I was younger and used to have a little reading diary that I added to every time I finished a book. This can work as encouragement for children. Sticker charts is another fun way to keep track of how many books your child has read and a good visual reward.

Collaboration.