Parents! Improve Their Reading Abilities Over the Summer, Informally

Summer break is here, and if you are a parent, you may be wondering how to keep your child entertained this vacation period. Reading can be a fantastic way to keep your child's mind active and develop their language skills. Here are some simple yet effective ways parents can expose their child (of any age) to reading opportunities without them even knowing it.

Use Everyday Objects

“Brian what does that say?”

“Jasmine, read this to me?”

“Hey how do you pronounce that?”

Create opportunities for them to read as much as possible. You can do this by tying reading into the different tasks you have them do in a day. Even if you really don’t need their assistance, give them a task where they need to read to accomplish the task.

For example, use everyday objects such as signs on the highway, menus at a restaraunt, and magazines to help them practice reading. When going out to eat, let your child read the menu and help them sound out difficult words. Pretend your phone broke and you need them to read the signs on the highway to get home. Scenarios like this require them to stretch those reading muscles.

Word of the Day

On a refrigerator or a wall, create a space to write the Word of the Day. Make it a routine for your child to sound out the word and use the word, every morning. Throughout the day casually challenge them to use the word. For this to work you have to not only choose words that are challenging to them, but that can be commonly used in day to day discourse. To start, maybe just do a Word of the Week.

Games

There are plenty of educational games out there that require the players to read in order to win. I suggest games like murder mystery board games, the famous Scrabble and Roy’s Story Cubes. Here are some games I found on TPT from teachers themselves.

• Zuzana Trail’s MURDER MYSTERY BUNDLE - 10 MURDER MYSTERIES TO SOLVE

• Games for Gains’ Reading Center Games Comprehension Strategy: Inference, Sequence, Cause & Effect

• Language Arts Excellence’s Homeschool ELA Escape Room for Distance Learning

Exposing your child to reading informally over the summer break is an excellent way to keep their minds active, enhance their language skills, and promote a lifelong love for books. They can grow without even knowing it. Parents can make it enjoyable by picking up books of interest, making reading fun, using technology, reading aloud, and using everyday objects. An added benefit is that you get to spend quality time with your child while also helping them learn.