Help Avoid the Summer Slide with Summer Reading!

Along with outdoor play, trips, and other activities, reading can become an important part of summer. Since reading helps build vocabulary, lengthens attention span, and develops a sense of sequence and story, summer reading gives your child a jump start for the coming school year and helps your child avoid what teachers affectionately refer to as the Summer Slide.

Here are some ways to encourage reading at your house this summer.

        Provide lots of interesting reading materials. Place them in strategic places around the house.

        Tie in books with television shows. If your child sees a show about African Animals, go to library and find books about the same animals.

        Send your children to bed at their normal bedtimes but tell them they can stay up a half hour later if they want to read in bed.

        Take books along on trips to the doctor and dentist office, and to the beach.

        Let the child choose what they want to read. Children often choose to read books for fun that are much lower than their ability.

        Read a chapter of a book each night at supper. See sidebar for some favorites.

        Rent videos of the books if available after you read them. Discuss how the movie was different from the book.

        Check your public library for summer reading programs. Take your children to the library weekly and spend time looking at different books. Encourage your children to read a little bit of a book to see if they like it before they check it out, or read parts of books to them. Introduce children to books by popular authors. Ask the librarian for recommendations.

        Find practical ways to use reading. Have your child read the grocery list to you at the store. Let him read a recipe while you cook. Hand your son the sports section of the paper so he can read about last nights game that he watched on television.

        Find books that support your children’s current interests and hobbies.

        Listen to books on tape whenever you are going to be driving for 15 minutes or longer. Check out both the tapes and the book at the library so they can read it on their own after listening to it or while listening to it.

Some read aloud favorites.

These youth share what book they have most enjoyed having read to them.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, JK Rowling -- Tyler, 11.

Tonight on the Titanic , The Magic Treehouse series, Mary Pope Osborne -- Jessica, 10.

No Promises in the Wind , Irene Hunt -- Brook, 12.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis -- Joy, 12.

Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder -- Emily, 8.

Because of Winn Dixie, Kate DiCamillo -- Steven, 11.

Katrina Cassel, M.Ed., is the author of five books including: The Junior High Survival Guide.