Looking for a way to make reading fun for children? Y’all know that I’m a massive advocate for reading all day and every day with children. I am, however, the first to acknowledge that sometimes things can get a bit stale on the reading front and it’s fun to shake things up a bit.
Whilst we were in the thick of at-home learning thanks to COVID-19, I had to create online library lessons for my Kindergarten students. One of the suggestions I made in my vids to the kids was to play “Libraries” at home. This is an idea that isn’t restricted just to Kindergarten ages.
I thought I’d give you the inside scoop on this activity in case you’re after a way to make reading fun for children.
📚 Ask your mini-librarians to gather a few books from the bookshelves and let them create displays around their “library.” Will they display the books with their front covers out? Or spines out? (See how we’re already using the metalanguage around the parts of a book?)
📚 Do you just want to drink your tea? If so kick back and ENJOY THAT CUPPA.
Or do you want to inject a bit of #playfullearning? You can ask the librarian to recommend a read. What is this book about? Why do they recommend this book? What was their favourite part?
Talking about a book is JUST AS IMPORTANT as being able to read a book.
📚 You can start to point out the features of a book – the front cover, title, author, illustrator, spine, back cover, blurb, endpapers….
📚 My objective with my lessons is to get the kiddos to remotely role-play the borrowing process. Once you’ve found the book for you, where do you go? What do you say at the circulation desk? You’d best find a random household item to be a barcode scanner here because scanning the book and going “BEEP!” is the most gratifying part of the process.
We have an old computer keyboard that we use at the “circulation desk” to type in the names of our “patrons.”
And please make sure your patrons all have a suitable bag to take their books home in.
READ: Whitney and Britney Chicken Divas by Lucinda Gifford for National Simultaneous Storytime 2020. CREATE: Your own fancy chickens with this Chicken Diva craft.
The National Simultaneous Storytime celebrates its 20th anniversary this year with a rollicking read featuring some jazz-loving, ostentatious chickens.
To celebrate, we created this cardboard chicken diva craft. It was also a fun and simple colour exploration.
What you will need for this Chicken Diva craft:
Printable template
Cardboard
Push pins
Craft glue
Colouring materials
Embellishments like sequins, tissue paper or beads
We traced the templates onto an IKEA box to create our chicken parts.
You could simply print the template onto thin card. Or a paper version would work too.
I provided a variety of colouring materials- chalk pastels, paint pens, oil pastels and watercolours. We discussed the colours of the chicken characters. As we created we discussed the tints and shades of pink and blue. We added details in Sharpie.
We fixed all the pieces together with push pins to create moveable chooks. If you don’t have push pins, never fear. Just glue it all together.
We then embellished our chickens with sparkly things. I offered to provide pipe cleaners and beads so that we could design some jewellery for our chicken divas, but the offer was politely declined.
Your chicken divas are now ready to strut their stuff.
When I posted this simple drawing game for kids on Instagram, the crowd went wild!
So I thought I better dedicate a blog post to its awesome self.This is a collaborative, drawing game that I’ve dubbed “Pass the Portrait.”
Hand-drawn portraits by kids are one of my very favourite things in life.
It involves all family members and simple materials.
Here’s how to play this simple drawing game for kids of all ages. You need some good-quality paper and a Sharpie for each family member.
Everybody starts with an oval on their page. The page is labelled with the name of a family member. That oval is that person’s head.
We started with the feature of eyes. So you had to draw in the eyes of the family member named on your paper.
Then you PASS THE PORTRAIT to the person next to you. Next we opted to draw the nose.
PASS THE PORTRAIT. Add the family member’s mouth.
Keep passing the portrait until all features are filled in and then colour in the portraits. Each family member will end up with a portrait that bears maybe 6% resemblance to their actual visage, but collaborative art activities is where it’s at, my friends!
Yes yes, there are actually 5 members of my family. But the 5th member went off-script and chose to do a self-portrait.
If somebody doesn’t want to stick to the script, my advice is ROLL WITH IT. I would kill for eyelashes like that. This kid is my often-reluctant creator, so it’s important for him to express himself as he pleases.
We then unleashed the watercolour palette and paint sticks. Some family members coloured their own portrait. Others coloured the portrait of another family member.
These simple cardboard masks for kids are an amazing project. We originally made them as prototypes for a READ + CREATE class I had scheduled for the holidays. We all know how that story ends #coronavirus Seeing as the class was cancelled, I’m giving the idea to you.
To run this as a READ + CREATE activity in your home, simply read a book about monsters or wild characters.
We were going to read ‘Wild’ by Emily Hughes. ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ would work beautifully too.
Then invite your child to create their own wild creature.
Create your own simple cardboard mask for kids
Seeing as we are all indoors for the moment, we have had a huge influx in online shopping delivered to our door.
Use the boxes to create these cardboard mask.
I cut out several oval-shaped bases for the faces and pre-painted these.
I then cut out various shapes to resemble facial features. Lots of circle, semi-circles and rectangles.
I presented these shapes to my kids with paint sticks and paint pens.
We discussed the different shapes that we could use to represent different facial features.
They coloured their cardboard facial features.
My main tip would be to encourage your children to experiment with the placement of cardboard facial features on their base board.
Once they are happy with how it looks, glue all the features in place with craft glue.
I then presented some tulle and ribbons so that my kids could further embellish, but they weren’t too hot on that step.
Tape a dowel rod to the back of the cardboard mask and let your inner-Wild Thing ROAR!
You know that I am a passionate Literacy Advocate Warrior Woman, right? I’m passionate about finding ways to encourage kids to read more. And more. And more.
I passionately believe that reading has the power to change and enrich lives. At the moment, we’re all trying to stay home as much as possible, right? #thanksCOVID19
This means that I’m sick of hearing my own voice by the time I get to bedtime stories with my kids. The consequence of this is that my bedtime read alouds have become a bit, ahem, sub-par. Reading isn’t something that should just be saved for bedtime. It should be happening at different points throughout the day. The current situation did make me consider how we can inject more reading into our kid’s days in a stress-free and authentic way.
So here are my 5 ways to encourage kids to read more…
Plug into audiobooks or podcasts
This is my number 1 tip for when I’m sick of hearing my own voice. Audio books and podcasts are an awesome way to ensure that your child is hearing the written word spoken aloud. Furthermore, an important comprehension skill is being able to take what you are hearing and create images in your mind. Audio books and podcasts aid in the development of this skill.
We’ve been loving accessing BorrowBox through our local library’s website.
Here in Australia, we love the podcasts on offer from ABC4Kids. (I’m not sure if my overseas friends can access these. Sorry!)
We also like the Big Life Kids poddy and the Brains On! Science podcast.
The David Walliams Marvellous Musical Podcast is ace. There is also a (paid) Roald Dahl app that allows you to download his stories.
My 2 eldest kids listen to podcasts during their daily “Quiet Time.” This is when they play quietly in their rooms for 90 minutes or so. Sometimes we’ll play a podcast as we eat lunch or we’ll often listen to an audio book on the school run in the car (remember when we used to drive around?!)
Read recipes and get kids in the kitchen
Look, I know that having kids in the kitchen can be messy and stressful. But recipes are such an authentic way to engage readers in a procedural text. They are one of the most engaging and authentic ways to encourage kids to read more.
And you end up with something delicious to eat! Win!
Create a Book Nook
I’ve yet to meet a little friend who doesn’t love building cubbies and forts. If reading is feeling a bit stale and unloved at your place, rethink the location. Helping your little reader to create a book nook filled with cosy cushions and great reads can be a fun way to mix things up and encourage kids to read more.
I’m also a big fan of scattering books in different places across the home so that books, and reading, are always accessible.
If space permits, I’m also a huge advocate for displaying some books with front covers facing outwards. Books on a bookshelf with spines out can be quite uninviting to a child.
Be a Reading Role Model
In order to see reading as a valued pastime and valuable skill, children need to see the adults in their lives reading for pleasure and embracing books. This is awesome if you’re a book-loving adult. This is your carte blanche to read, read, read. If you’re not much of a reader, I’m going to ask you to fake it until you make it. The benefits for your child are far-reaching. This role also means that you can open up conversations with your children about the books they are reading, what they are enjoying and what they are not. Being able to talk about books is an important reading skill!
Read + Create
If you’ve hung around here for awhile, you’ll know that teaming reading with creating is my superpower. This allows children to go beyond the book and deepen their understandings of and links with a book.
Need some help with reading + creating?
If you sign up to my newsletter crew, you receive a free 30+ page READ + CREATE guide.
Found yourself suddenly thrust into the role of homeschooler thanks to Coronavirus? Looking for some simple and fun learning ideas for learning from home? Let me see what I can do for you.
So here’s the thing.
As a teacher, I don’t expect you to replicate the classroom in your home during these strange and confusing times. I would hope that you’re all just loving hard on your littles but it’s a weird one to balance, isn’t it? I’m ALL FOR giving kids the space to get bored. But I also find it useful to have some ideas to fall back on when my kids apparently lose all ability to think up an activity for themselves and are climbing up the walls.
Trying to maintain normalcy in times that are wack seems near-impossible. So don’t go too hard on yourself if your *lessons* don’t turn out as planned. The ideas for learning from home outlined from here are all open-ended. Don’t be rigid and go with the flow. You never know where it will take you.
Process not product, people!
Okay if we try and be positive and look for some silver linings, imagine all the books our kids can enjoy during this time.
Missing friends and social isolation is a big worry for our little ones. Rally a group of schoolmates and meet up via FaceTime, Skype or Zoom and discuss the books that are being enjoyed at each home. You could structure each call with a guiding question like “Who was your favourite character and why?” “Tell us about your favourite part of the story.”
Maybe you could use my Book Scavenger Hunt (developed for Book Week a few years ago) as a way to thematically organise each call. For example, “This week we’re going to find all the books about Dinosaurs on our shelves. We will share our favourite Dinosaur book when we call each other.”
Board games are a totally under-rated way for families to slow down and connect. They also give children a fab chance to practise turn-taking, winning and losing. Take an audit of the board games in the cupboard and pull one out every now and then.
We had so much fun designing these designing these Halloween board games. Designing a board game is such an excellent design and make experience for children.
Imaginative Play
Set up an imaginary restaurant. Holy moly all the writing practice a child will get playing a waiter or waitress! All that vocab development as you construct a menu. See how such a simple set-up is infused with authentic learning opportunities?
Choose a teddy and plan a birthday party for him or her. Write invitations. Plan the party food. Peruse catalogues or supermarket websites and write a shopping list. Calculate your budget. Create decorations. What parts of the syllabus have we covered here? Writing for different purposes and contexts. Letter-sound relationships. Reading for a purpose. Money. Number. Addition. Subtraction. Learning disguised as play? My favourite.
Play dough is always a winner here. Set up a bakery. Or make some tea party small worlds.
This is one of my parenting mantras. When everybody seems to be residing in Cranky City or Tantrum Town, I offer a bath.
If I’m in dire straits, I add lavender oil to the bath water to calm the farm.
If you have cornflour and food colouring in the pantry, you could make bath paint.
Alternatively if the weather is nice, I send them into the backyard with some buckets of water.
They can wash the toy cars. Or wash the windows.
Write an old-fashioned letter to a friend. Take a few snaps of it and send it via the Interwebs for instant connection and easy writing practice. Or try your hand at some of these cool pop-up cards from Maggy at Red Ted Art?
Go on a virtual excursion
The borders of the world may be shutting down but the world is opening up virtually.
My friend Hana runs the Curious Wanderers Society– it’s chock-a-block filled with resources to explore the world from home.
Lastly, what do you do when the proverbial poo hits the fan?
Channel your inner Lady Gaga and “Just dance, gonna be okay.”
Turn the music up and DANCE. (My husband attempted to introduce my kids to rave music this morning. They were not impressed.)
Here’s a super fun activity that teams music with painting.
