Ep #30: How to Get Your Children Reading Over the Summer

How do we get our kids’ reading more over the summer? I think this is a question that nearly every parent has because we know that reading is so important, but screens are such a temptation for our kids. And we’re wondering, how do we make it a little bit easier to get them off the screens and into books. Now, the good news is there are some great ways to do that and I have some amazing suggestions for you coming up right after this. We are going to talk a little bit about why reading to your children matters so much and having them read on their own, both of those pieces are important.

And we’re also going to talk some strategy about some ways to make it really fun and pretty simple to get kids to read. I’m going to share three of my top favorite things. There are some resources that you can use and then maybe just some ideas of how to do that on your own. And bonus, you’re going to be teaching your kids some goal setting skills as well at the same time. So listen to these ideas, they’re coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Well, hello friend. Today I am excited because we are going to talk about something that I am extremely passionate about and that is ridiculously fun and it’s important too. So let’s get into it. Have you heard of something called the million word gap? Now, we talk a lot about reading and why reading is important and why it’s important to read to small children. And one of the reasons is this million word gap. Now, what this means is the children that are being read to as young, young children, it’s never too early to start. You can read to them as babies.

But what happens is, is that children that are read to have heard about a million more words than children that are not regularly read to, that maybe are watching television or other things. Now, this seems crazy and the number can be higher than a million, but this seems like a lot. We are talking to our children every day. How is it that reading is giving them that many more words than say just having conversation with us or watching television shows, even educational ones, things like that?

So there’s some research, a lot of good research around this actually. And what’s really fascinating that I’ve been learning about lately is that when researchers have analyzed conversations between even adults. What they have found is that 93.9% of words contained in our conversations come from a total of a 5,000 word lexicon. A lexicon is what your language basis is. And so that’s it. That’s not very many words. And another thing that I’ve read recently is that 20% of the words that you use in your daily conversation actually come from 13 words.

So 13 high frequency words make up 20% of your conversation. And we don’t notice that when we’re chatting because we think we’re talking about all kinds of really interesting things and we are. And yet we’re using the same words over and over and over again, the same basic words. So what happens is when we’re reading to children from books we’re actually giving them a much wider exposure to words that are not in our basic daily lexicon that we use every day. And so reading is so important.

Now, there’s a lot of other really important pieces of this as well just in addition to giving them language exposure. So when we talk about the science of reading and what’s coming out and what researchers are saying, the most important things that teaching our kids to read, one of the core pieces is vocabulary. So we’re giving them exposure to a much wider vocabulary when we’re reading to them from books. When you’re talking about nocturnal animals for example and you’re reading books about that, they’re getting a much wider exposure to words around that.

And just sometimes words that are maybe similar to a word that you would use but a slightly different word and it gives them a much wider vocabulary and a network around words that maybe they already know where they’re now connecting with other words which is really important. So that’s important. Another thing that we have learned through the science around reading is how critical background knowledge is to language comprehension.

They say that reading tests are actually knowledge tests, because a child can read a passage and if they don’t understand the context of what that passage is about they can decode the words and read them fluently out loud and have no idea what they just read about. And so understanding and having background knowledge of the topic that they’re reading about is actually almost as critical as being able to decode the words. It would be like us trying to go and read alien language and if we understood how to sound it out we could do so but we wouldn’t have any understanding of what it is if we didn’t understand what those sounds meant.

Another thing that they’re learning is language structure. When we’re reading different books they’re getting exposure to different phrases and different words and how they’re connected together. And they’re going to get something different than maybe the way that we phrase things, especially if we’re reading a wide variety of texts from a lot of different authors. And so this gives them a lot better understanding of how language structure works in a lot of different contexts and verbal reasoning as well. So these are all really, really important things.

Another thing that’s really interesting as we’re talking about vocabulary. When they’re learning to read and do decoding there is something called autographic mapping where they’re building sounds and they break down the sounds and then they’re relating that to something, they’re connecting it to meaning. And this is how they’re memorizing it and putting it in their heads, those high frequency words. And this process is sped up if they already have exposure to that word. So if they know the word they’re going to be able to learn it a lot faster, be able to pick up their fluency and be able to pick up their speed in reading because they can map those words a lot faster.

So all of these things are really, really important. And let’s talk then about some options that we have for getting our kids to read over the summer or reading to our children over the summer. Now, I think both of these things are important. If you have a child that’s able to read to themselves, awesome. We want to get them reading over the summer. That’s super, super important. It’s also really, really good to read aloud to children. Now, we want to do that for children that can’t read yet. So picture books are fantastic for that, but also for our children that are reading on their own.

Say you have a first, second, third grader, my fifth grader still loves to listen to me read. And what’s fantastic is that they are reading but if you read them books and I discussed this with Natalie Wexler on a previous episode when she was talking about how important it was to read aloud, sometimes it’s at a slightly higher level than your child’s current reading level. Because it’s pushing them a little bit with some of those things, with some language structure, with some verbal reasoning, with vocabulary, with background knowledge. So we want to read aloud to our children that even are able to read to themselves, it’s still really healthy to do that. So we want to find time to do that if you can.

But let’s talk about some way to get kids reading over the summer and make it ridiculously fun. Now, you may have been to your local library and they have summer reading programs. We had the best summer reading program ever at a library that we lived near several years ago. And we got kind of spoiled, it was fantastic. They had a weekly prize every time you completed your weekly goal for reading. And they had gone out into the community and had different shop owners or whatever, donate a little prize for the child.

So if they completed their reading goal for the week you could go in and get a coupon for a free ice-cream or something for a child at a certain store or a free donut or something like that. And then of course the parent would pay for their own, but it was such a good way for us to get out in the community and discover some new stores and some new shops and some local businesses, which was really fun. And the children got these amazing little prizes every week for reading. So we loved that.

And then we moved and had a different library and their reading program was structured very differently and it was kind of, if you read all summer then by the end of the summer you’ll get a free book, which was really fun except that children, their prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed yet. And so working all summer towards something at the very end that’s so, so, so far away is a little bit tricky. That’s not quite how their brains work. And so while it was a fun idea, I needed something a little bit different for my children.

So I’m going to share with you three different ideas that I have for having a really great at home summer reading program. But keep in mind that of course, if you have a local library, use that as well, why not, but let’s do these three at home ones.

So the first one is having a reading chart. Now, these are kind of like a monthly bingo card and they have all kinds of fun activities for children to experiment with their reading. So one might be read to a stuffed animal or read underneath the table or go read on the trampoline or somewhere outside. And so there’s all these fun different little tasks. And sometimes they’re silly. We have some of these available for you if you do not have one yet. And you can print it out and try it out.

And I like to do silly ones and I like to do some serious ones. And there’s all kinds of different options. But one might be go read a book in an empty bathtub. So the bathtub’s dry, there’s no water in it but go read in it just because it’s silly and ridiculous and children love that. It is so fun to be silly and ridiculous and to just think outside the box a little bit and use our brain in a slightly different way, it’s so fun. And I love doing things like that because it brings some of that fun and unexpectedness to something that we do repetitively because it’s important and brings that fun to reading. So reading charts can be really, really helpful.

And they’re getting kind of that instant gratification where they get to immediately color that square or cross off that thing or something. It gives them a little piece of, I did this, I finished it, I get to put a sticker on it. I get to cross it off. And then you can do something bigger too, if you get to the end of the month and you covered so many squares or completed your card or whatever you want to set that as. Then you can have a fun prize for them at the end or go out on a fun adventure together or something like that and that works really, really well.

Another one that I like to do is our reading punch cards. Now, you guys, I think this is so fun and I love it because it works with our brains. It works with children’s brains beautifully. So the punch cards, you’ve seen punch cards for your local stores when you go and you buy so much of something. If you buy five sandwiches or ten sandwiches then you get the eleventh sandwich free, whatever. And they punch it out as you go. So I love this idea for a couple of reasons.

I love it because it’s teaching children that we’re building and working towards something big at the end which is kind of working that like we’re waiting and we’re working and we’re setting goals and we’re trying to get to something. But then there’s also an element of that instant gratification too that works so well for children. And they’re growing, developing brains that are not really good at waiting yet. And so with the punch card you set whatever their daily goal is and that depends on your child. So you set that and every time that they complete it, so say your goal is to read for 20 minutes.

Or your goal is to read a picture book together every day, whatever your goal is. If it’s a chapter of a chapter book, then you can as soon as they finish, go and let them use a hole punch, which this is also really good for their grip strength by the way and working on those fine motor skills. But they can go and punch out one of the little things at the bottom to show that they completed it. So they’re getting that instant gratification, I did it, I did my job, I got my stuff. But then the punch card means that they have to build all the way to 10 of those and then at the end they get a prize.

Now, this is really fun and you can make it work however you want. Is that prize a treat? Is it a dollar? Is it a date to go out with you to have an adventure? What does that look like? And you can decide that and they get to earn up to that bigger thing but they still get their instant gratification of the daily punch. So I love reading punch cards, they’re fantastic, they’re so much fun for kids. And we have those available in our Play to Read program. So if you would like to try those out then you can go to playtoreadfun.com and our punch cards are available as part of that package.

Now, the last one and this is one that I do with my children. And you can kind of combine some of these if you want, a little bit of a hybrid. But this is one of my favorite, favorite things that I have done with my children for the last several years and works across a wide variety of ages and has been so fun and really good for relationship building. And that is our weekly goal setting date reading program that we do. Now, what happens is at the beginning of the summer I have my children sit down with me and we make a plan of several different really fun adventures that we want to have over the summer.

We might add in a prize or two that they want to earn, small things maybe from like Five and Below or Dollar Treat or something. And then we also maybe add in a couple of treat date ideas. And so we have kind of a list going, 10 or 11 of these things to use over the summer. And then what happens is every single week on say a Monday we have all of my children set a reading goal. And they get to set their own because I have kids from high school all the way down to elementary. And so they get to set their reading goal and they say, “I think that I’m going to read a book every day or I’m going to read so many pages or I’m going to try to finish an entire Harry Potter this week or whatever.

And they set their reading goal, it’s individual, they set it. Now, what I love about this is the children are learning goal setting which is a fantastic skill for children to learn how to do, and I mean that we need as adults. If you learn how to do this as a kid and follow through with it, it’s incredible. And we’re building this into our reading which is awesome. Okay, so they set their own goal. They have ownership of it. Now I have veto power. So they don’t get to just say, “I’m going to read two sentences and then I’ve met my goal.” I have veto power but they get to set their own goal based on what we’re doing that week.

Are we going to be traveling? Are you going to be at camp? What’s that going to look like? And then whatever of course their reading level is. .So they have ownership over it, they get to set it. Then all the children get to work through the week at meeting their goal. So for example my son who is 11 set a goal this week that he was going to finish an entire book and he has 11 chapters left and it’s a Friday. So what happens on Friday is everyone who’s met their goal gets to go and have the adventure, the weekly reading adventure with mom.

So if we’re doing one of the fun adventures or if we’re going out for an ice-cream or if we’re going on a trip to Dollar Treat and you get to go buy something for a dollar, whatever the prize was for the week. Then anyone who completed their goal gets to do that. So we’re at Friday and my 11 year old son is maybe a little bit behind and has 11 chapters of his goal left. And so he told me last night before bed, he says, “I am having a readathon tomorrow.” He’s like, “What time do I have to have this done by?”

And so he is planning to wake up this morning and read 11 chapters of his book to get it finished because he’s set that goal. And then what’s interesting is we evaluate at the end of the week too and we’ll talk about it and we’ll say, “Okay, how was that goal? Maybe was the goal too big or maybe did we maybe not spend quite as much time as we would like to on it earlier in the week or what did that look like and how do we set you up for success the next week?” At setting realistic reasonable goals and also making sure that we’re following through all week so we don’t end up on a Friday morning having kind of an enormous amount of reading to do.

Although sometimes having a really good readathon on a Friday morning is not a horrible thing either. So I love this strategy because I also love this opportunity to go build my relationship with my children every Friday and go out and play with them and have so much fun together and go out and do grand adventures which is something that I like to do anyway. But now we just have it kind of connected in with reading. So there’s so many pieces of this plan that I love because we’re building a lot of skills while getting to get our reading in. And the children have so much ownership of it and enjoy it so much and it’s so good at building relationships. So this is one of my favorite ones.

I hope that those ideas are helpful. You can do that one all on your own. Of course the reading charts we have available for you, we’ll have a link for you down in the show notes. The punch cards, we’ll have the link for that for you down in the show notes as well if you want to try either of those strategies. And sometimes those can work in with your weekly reading goal too if you want. Punch cards are just fun all the time. And you could even do the punch card to go kind of a hybrid between the punch card and the weekly reading goal if you wanted to.

There’s so many options there but I wanted to get you started and have you thinking about it and talk a little bit about the importance of why reading matters so much and why you should do it and make it a priority this summer. I would just say one other thing because I have heard and gotten the impression that a lot of us I think feel like audiobooks are cheating. It feels like they’re cheating because we’re not reading.

If all you ever do is audiobooks and children aren’t actually having to go through the process of looking at words and decoding them and reading them then there is a problem there. Because that is using a different part of their brain and is building actually out a different part of their brain that they need to build to be able to read. So it is important for children to actually read, but audiobooks can be such a beautiful part of their reading. Audiobooks help build language comprehension which is kind of the precursor to reading comprehension. It sets them up for that.

So that as they build their decoding skills they already have these really great language comprehension skills that are just going to make their reading comprehension amazing. So audiobooks can be really good for exposure to different accents and different phrasing and different language dials and kind of really help build that overall verbal reasoning and language comprehension. And so don’t leave those out. Another thing that I’ve really used audiobooks for is when I’ve had children that didn’t love reading, shock and awe, oh my goodness, how could I have a child that didn’t love to read at first?

Well, I have, I’ve had kids that hated reading, it was so weird. I’m like, “How could you have come out of me? I’m obsessed with reading.” And they were capable of it, they could decode, they knew how to read but they didn’t always love it at first. And so I had some that did that were obsessed. And I would have to take their books away, so they’d go to bed at night. And then I had some that didn’t love it. And one of the ways that I found that was the most effective at getting those kids who were maybe second, third, even into fourth grade that didn’t love reading yet is that I would get them into an audiobook.

And I would find a series of audiobooks. One of the ones that we used that was so fun, this one was magic for us was The Sisters Grimm. And I would get my kids listening to that say on a road trip or something. And they would start listening to the book and they would get really, really invested in the story. And then when we would get home and they want the rest. And so I wouldn’t give them more audiobooks because we only use the audiobooks when we’re all together as a family and we’re in the car and we’re traveling, we’re road tripping.

And so the next thing I know they’re going to their school library and getting the next book of The Sisters Grimm. And I had several kids read through the entire series because they loved it so much. So audiobooks can be a really good way to get children into a story and excited about it too, in addition to the benefits of the language exposure from that. So don’t be afraid to use those, just maybe don’t depend on them completely. We want to still read to our children and of course there’s so much about building connection and relationship with your children if you’re sitting there reading to them. So you want to do that as well.

But using audiobooks as part of your reading strategy can be super helpful so don’t be afraid of it and don’t assume that it’s cheating because I think it’s kind of wonderful when used in context with everything else.

I hope those ideas were super helpful. I hope you have an amazing time reading this summer. And if you have any thoughts or ideas or suggestions about some of your favorite ways to get your kids reading over the summer, let us know. Come find us on social media, leave a comment. We love to hear from you, it’s our favorite thing. And so come and chat with us and let us know and we would love to hear about it. And maybe we can add it to a future list. You’re amazing. Have a fantastic summer and I’ll catch you next week.

Don’t you just love all the fun things we’re learning on the show together? Well, we wanted to give you a chance to practice a little bit of it at home. And so we made you a special freebie just for being a listener here. And you can grab it at planningplaytime.com\special-freebie. That is planningplaytime.com\special-freebie.

So what this freebie is I’ll tell you, is an amazing alphabet activity that you can start using with your kiddos. And it is based in play and is so fun. You can use dot markets with it. You can use Q-Tip painting. You could use circle cereals. There’s all kinds of options, but you can print it out today and get started. Just head over to planningplaytime.com\special-freebie and we’ll send that to you right away.

Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website, planningplaytime.com. See you next week.