Intriguing ways to encourage reading
I love reading now. I don’t remember choosing to pick up a book as a kid and to be honest I don’t remember learning to read. But I must have.
My little one is in reception and he’s doing really well with his reading, but encouraging him to read is another matter. He knows how to but doesn’t want to, which is a shame because the things he could read if he was willing to give it a try.
So instead of having a battle every time we are going to read together, we’ve started devising new fun ways to read. Now be warned this does make reading time a longer process but he enjoys it.
Road track reading
I made a track out of our k’nex roller coaster kit with the car on and each word he read the car would move along the track. He could finish reading when the car got to the finish line and sometimes he got a little treat. When this lost its interest we moved onto….
Skatepark reading
This time J would set up his ideal skatepark, and at the end of each page he would get to show me a trick on the skate park.
Planet jumping
We’ve been looking at different planets recently, so we set out the planet cards (in order) and then at the end of every page he could make a Lego man jump onto the next planet card. The challenge was to get the Lego man to the sun.
Writing the story on paper
One day I just wrote the story (well some of the story) onto yellow paper (his favourite colour). He enjoyed this, I think it worked because there were no distractions just pure and simple reading.
Tricky word challenge
One day I wrote out all the words that he might find tricky (from the current book we were reading) on a large bit of paper, I also numbered each of the words 1 – 6 and played a game before reading. We each had a some Duplo bricks and we had a dice. You have to roll the dice, and whatever number the dice lands on you have to try and read the word with the same number. If you get it right you add that many bricks to your Duplo tower and it’s the first person to 10. This was great fun.
Minecraft jumping
I set up six letter tiles and at different stages I also placed a fidget spinner. After each line he read the minecraft man moved along to the next tile. At the tile with the fidget spinner he was able to show me a trick. It was J who suggested that the minecraft man should say the letter that he lands on.
There is a slight transporty theme to all our reading challenges, which is fun. I like including things that he’s interested in at the time so that he is more engaged. We do each game for about a week and then move on so that boredom doesn’t set in. I know it probably seems like a lot of work, but it is worth it because we both enjoy practicing our reading.
I’ll have to get my thinking caps on for more intriguing reading fun.