There was an article in Thursday morning’s Wichita Eagle about kids and summer reading, and in the wake of all the BEA posts (and since summer started this past week for us here), I thought I could muse about what we do to encourage reading during the summer.
My first thought was keep it less scheduled, but I noticed last year that less scheduled lent itself to more YouTube watching than reading. So, I think this year, we’re actually going to have scheduled reading times. Probably in the morning — the school-age girls have workbooks they want to do (yes, you read that right: they asked for the workbooks!), and we’ll probably combine an hour reading time with that. It’ll be most helpful for A, who just finished Kindergarten, who needs a chance to practice her new found reading skills.
We’re also going to join the summer reading program at the library. (Can’t live without my library!) All the girls will do this, and, honestly, they all look forward to it. There will also be weekly trips to the library — we’ll have to experiment with what time, since the summer programs make for crowded libraries. Maybe we’ll pick a letter and choose books that way. And we’ll probably ransack the non-fiction, poetry and fairy tale shelves, which we never seem to do during the school year.
Another idea is audio books: we go places during the summer — big vacations, yes, but also little trips around town. And, instead of listening to the same old music over and over (which we do like to do), we can pop in a book and listen to that. The years when we’ve done this, there have been times when we’ve become more interested in the book than where we’re going.
As for me, I’ll probably keep my afternoon reading time, an hour or two just for myself to read, plus a bit of reading in the evenings. (Though it seems my TV and movie watching go up in the summertime; maybe I’ll be more regular about my Book to Movie posts!)
There’s some of my ideas: what are yours? How do you encourage reading for your kids, or make sure you have some time, during the summer?
The Book Nut 
When I lived in Chicagoland, my local library had an adult Summer Reading Club. While it felt kinda cheesy to be “rewarded” for reading that I was going to do anyway, it did give me a great excuse to read all those adult titles that I put off during the year. Reading kidlit can be considered part of my job and I blog about it, so it can be considered part of my “other job”, but sometimes the adult books get lost in the shuffle!
Now that I've moved, my home library doesn't do an adult summer reading club, but I still try to make time to read adult titles over the summer. š
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For a couple summers when I was little we lived within baking distance to the library. So every week I would bike over and borrow as many books as I could fit into my backpack. I would read all of them too. I remember one library got all huffy with me, telling me that I should only borrow as many books as I'll read, and to leave the rest for other people. I told her I was going to read them, and she just gave me that “yeah right” look. I can't imagine why someone like that would want to become a librarian!
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I loved the Summer Reading Program at the library growing up. I even won one summer for reading the most books. I still have the card listing them. I wish we had a local book club interested in reading classics. I belong to online ones but I think it would be interesting to talk in person too. š
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I'm on the “librarian” end of this discussion, b/c I don't have kids (except my library kids!). If you want to come to the library when it's less crowded, ask your librarian! We can tell you when it's more peaceful. Our library has an adult summer reading program and various adult book clubs during the summer….as for me, I have requested a giant heap of already read mysteries and I intend to turn my mind off every day when I arrive home from work and reread my favorite mysteries!
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Abby: a summer reading program for adults? What a novel idea! Ours does a reading challenge in the winter, but I wouldn't mind one in the summer, too.
And I do hope my girls have the same memories of doing summer reading clubs when they were kids, too. I am glad for libraries!
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We do a lot of the same things. My kids tend to read A LOT before bed, and during the summer I let them read a little longer–earlier bedtime, longer reading time. We go to the library weekly, and on my summer hourly schedule (magnets) I put reading time on there. I do it separate from the workbooks (which my kids beg for too) because I like to have several excuses for breaks between screen time. My kids do well with schedules, so this works well for us. We also do most of our reading aloud in the summer, and we try to do it at fun times, in fun places–bring it to the park, go out back, etc, so it doesn't always get in the way of bed time when I don't want to do it.
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You're helping me get excited about summer. My kids like workbooks too, but I think they like picking them out more than finishing them! I don't know if you've ever done History Pockets, but you can buy the books on amazon, and the kids put together booklets made out of construction paper about different themes. We love these!
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in the summer we tend to read for an hour or two after lunch, during the hottest part of the day. we also travel a lot during the summer and the daughter logs a lot of reading on the road or on the plane. needless to say we have to plan our book check-out; and our luggage is always heavy.
we have started the audio-books on road trips xmas before last and that has been great. it is as you say though, getting more interested in the book than where we are going.
while we still like to browse the aisles i try to request some books from recommendations during the summers especially, knowing how the shelves are getting extra attention.
getting the number of hours or books our summer reading programs require for prizes isn't much of a challenge for my bookworm so i add the stipulation that some should be from various genres.
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The best way for me to read in the summer is outside. That way, I don't feel like I'm missing out on the gorgeous weather, but I still get to put my nose in a book š And I do audio books in the car too!
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