Posted on 03/14/2022
Do those dusty bookcases seem to be getting a little less dusty lately? We certainly hope so! You'll want to celebrate even more as you promote reading and build a culture where a wide range of books are available and reading is prioritized. While you may wish to highlight the route rather than the goal, everyone enjoys seeing the results of their labors.
You may help your child become a lifelong learner and enjoy a few additional surprises by enjoying the inherent benefits of learning, reading, and reaching goals.
Set goals and/or keep track of your reading.
You may choose to set goals in terms of the number of books or pages read or the amount of time spent reading, depending on your child's developmental and reading level. Creating explicit goals for some youngsters may be counterproductive - either because the goals look onerous and take the fun out of reading, or because they'll be done reading once they've completed the "target," rather than reading for pleasure.
To see if your child will benefit from specific goals, print a reading chart that looks like a game board - or simply decide on a technique to track reading time or the number of books read.
Learn in a group and demonstrate your abilities
Learning is most effective when it is demonstrated rather than discussed (or marked down on a test paper, for that matter). After you've read with your child and learned a new skill or lesson, you can dig deeper into the subject with videos, more print materials, or online searches.
When your child is able to demonstrate what he or she is learning to others in your family or social circle, the excitement that comes from grasping something in a new way and the validity that comes from being able to demonstrate it can be quite rewarding - especially if it helps someone or solves a problem in some way.
Perhaps you want to learn how to compost, how to grow and raise a difficult plant, or how to manufacture something from scratch. Perhaps your older child or adolescent can learn how to plan and earn money for a family weekend vacation or barbecue - or even something more important!
Additional Benefits
Many free summer reading programs include additional incentives, ranging from pizza to free books to cold, hard cash. You could use them as incentives, or you could let your child learn to enjoy reading and learning on their own merits, along with the achievement of goals and demonstration of new skills, and then surprise them at the end of the summer with extra benefits from reward programs in which you've enrolled them on the sly.
Regardless of how you use these freebies, the best part is that you can combine them with your local library's incentives to get a lot of perks!
Hopefully, by the end of the summer, those dusty bookcases will be dust-free, and your child will have discovered the joys of reading!
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