Make Reading a Part of your Fun Summer

Summer offers many opportunities to weave literacy into everyday activities with your child. Beach trips, swimming in a pool or family barbecues provide ideal opportunities for conversation, reading and looking at letters—skills that will help your child become a reader and writer later in life. Try some of these tips for making your young child’s summer full of literacy fun.

  • Be a reader yourself. When you read newspapers and books or write letters and lists, you are showing your young child how reading and writing are useful. By demonstrating why reading and writing are important, you will motivate your child to become an avid reader and writer.
  • Check out summer programs at your local public library. Many libraries feature special story times, sing-alongs and puppet shows during the summer. These programs offer fun opportunities for your child to expand his literacy-related skills.
  • Look at letters and words as you enjoy summer activities. As you walk to the park, point out stop signs and letters in street signs. When you visit the local pool, point out the list of pool rules. Let your child draw and write with chalk on the sidewalk. By drawing your child’s attention to print and letters, you teach her about specific letters and words while pointing out the many uses of print.
  • Take books along on outings. Pack some board books in your beach bag or picnic basket, and bring a stack of books on long car rides. You and your child can enjoy books together anywhere you go this summer.
  • Connect read-aloud choices to summer activities. Read your child a book about the beach or swimming or even summertime food (see examples below). When you read and discuss books about things your child has experienced, you help him learn important vocabulary and extend his understanding of experiences.

Source: https://www.pbs.org/parents/

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Beach Day!
by Hunter Reid (Author), Stephanie Hinton (Illustrator)

Join two children as they have a fun day at the beach. They gather swimsuits and sunglasses, find the perfect spot to set up their towels and umbrella, make sand castles, play with beach balls, eat popsicles and much more. The scenes are accompanied by simple descriptive phrases on each page. Bright, fluorescent colors add to the sensory experience provided by this book.

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Splish, Splash, Splat!
by Rob Scotton (Author, Illustrator)

Splat the Cat does not want to learn to swim. Water makes him soggy, plus it’s scary. There’s nothing that will get Splat to jump in the pool, besides maybe that Spike is scared to jump, too. Now who’s the scaredy-est cat? Not Splat! The earliest readers will love this endearing and hilarious character Splat learn to swim in this board book.