Incentivizing the Young Reader: Make Reading an Adventure

Wouldn’t you agree that it’s so much easier to catch a fly with honey than with vinegar? Well, yes indeed. I would agree with that statement. I’m sure that if I could ask you in person, you’d say the same thing. It’s just plain, old common sense.

And although I’m not trying to compare children to a fly, I want to use this same analogy because it rightfully applies to children as well. As a matter of fact, I would venture to say that children appreciate some encouragement and positive reinforcement (the sweet stuff rather than the sour) when it comes to doing activities that are out of their liking, interest, or comfort zone.

Reading can be that activity for some. Not for all, but for some.

I love to read. Always have, even from a very young age. I just took to it and never looked back. As a child, I especially gravitated toward Beverly Cleary books. I’m sure I read just about all of them. And I never got tired of the different series that developed from that particular author’s imagination. Judy Blume and Judy Moody got my attention too.

And my love for reading blossomed from there. I continued on in my pursuit of reading adventure. And in doing so, I could get lost (for hours) in the different characters in different settings, going through the motions of life in the different events that took place over the course of the books in which they existed. I was in reading bliss.

Do you think my love for reading stopped at my elementary school years? No, it did not. I continued to feed my reading hunger with teen books, young adult, and on to self-improvement/how-to books.

What can I say? I have an enthusiastic fervor for reading. But not everyone does. Some may need a little more encouragement to stick their heads in book than others. And that’s okay.

That’s where I come in.

I’ve made it my mission to find creative ways to make reading become more tolerable for those who are reading-averse due to any number of reasons. I can spend the rest of this blog post listing out the reasons individuals may not want to read, but that’s not the purpose of this discussion. The purpose of this discussion is to provide an idea for making reading more appealing to our young population.

Yes, I picked the children for the focus of this discussion. Reason being: catching our youngsters at these formative years (so incredibly important to their childhood development) is where my wheelhouse lies. I have an up-and-comer in middle school now, and I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of educational time with him and observe what has incentivized him to become the reader he is.

Little Man loves to read, but he worked his way into the place in which he currently resides as a reader. He wasn’t always there. But, he’s developed his reading skills over time and there were different strategies that worked for him more so than others. I’ll be sharing a few of them with you in this blog series.

And here’s one right now . . . MAKE READING AN ADVENTURE!

Yes, folks. Our much younger counterparts enjoy excitement with as much of the frills and thrills we can throw at them. In reading, it only makes sense to create experiences of the adventurous variety, if possible. Children eat that stuff up.

I mean . . . we want their buy-in with the whole developing-their-reading-skills process, don’t we? Well then, we have to sweeten the pot, so to speak. We have to make reading come alive for them. And I have just the actionable item you can implement right away.

Here it goes . . .

Give your child, student, mentee, tutee, relative (other than your child), etc. a good old-fashioned field trip to your local bookstore or public library. Seriously. You know how children like to get out of the school building or house to get out of academic instruction from time to time. And, I guarantee you that this is one of the most enjoyable field trips a child can participate in if you let him or her do the leading.

What I mean by that is . . . let your youngster pick out his or her own book (within the boundaries that you set, of course). Make the field trip all about him or her. The child gets to pick the bookstore to go to or the library to go to. If there’s an opportunity to get a membership card for children at the bookstore, let your child get his or her own membership. Or, if your child doesn’t have a public library card of his or her very own, let your child sign up for one with adult help provided, as needed.

The whole point is to make this an adventure for your child. We’re looking for child buy-in here. Remember? We already know that our youngster will, undoubtedly, get a book full of the adventure he or she is looking for. But your job is to making the “getting a book process” as adventurous as possible. Get where I’m coming from?

There’s nothing like getting a new Barnes and Noble membership card or a public library card to buy or check out a book. And letting your child save up money to buy his or her own book is an added bonus to the adventure (or not), depending on how your child looks at it, of course. (I suppose most children appreciate spending their adult’s money verses spending their own, especially when it comes to spending it on a book.)

So, what I’ve taken all this time to say is I want you to make the book buying process and the book check-out experience an adventure. Make it a field trip that your child will thoroughly enjoy and want to repeat over and over and over again.

Oh, and when it comes to the book check-out process, a variation of the actual process that happens at the public library can happen in your child’s classroom or in your own home. As a matter of fact, I remember the days when my son regularly came home from his third and fourth grade classes with a book that his teacher let him check out from his classroom. They did the school library thing as well, but the children had an additional opportunity to check out books from their main teachers’ classrooms. I loved that.

Furthermore, my two adult children collected books over the years which they were able to pass down to their little brother. We never actually used a book check-out process in my home. But, this idea is something that you may consider utilizing in yours, especially if you have multiple children and loads of books collected over the years. Instead of giving all those books away from your older children, save them for younger up-and-comers. Create a home library and let your children go through the process of checking out a book of their liking with a homemade library card, to boot.

More options for reading (through his classroom, his school’s library, and the public library) were always welcomed. And, I considered getting free books (for the period of time he could keep them) a total win-win for my son as well as for myself. Oftentimes, we alternated reading those books out loud to one another.

I thoroughly enjoyed our “before bedtime” reading routine. Reading is my jam and Little Man really took to reading out loud after we developed engaging reading sessions with it. (However, he’s since graduated to reading all by himself now. Oh, well. Got to let the kid grow up.) And checking out books is definitely a cheaper route to acquiring books than buying them outright.

So, if you’re looking to create a book adventure for your child, take him or her to get a book. Trips to the local bookstore are exciting excursions in and of themselves (nothing like the smell of new books), but checking out a book works too. And I have some awesome tools for you in the whole book check-out process at home or school.

CALLING ALL EDUCATORS – from grade school teachers, librarians, other educators, family and friends of young children, children’s books/child reading development advocates, and parents alike . . .

Please check out the following items that I’ve highlighted (below) from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. This store is for anyone to peruse — not just the teacher. The Degrees of Maternity store showcases reading and writing tools and resources for the child and adult. So, I would love for you to take a look at the following book check-out systems, waiting for someone to utilize them for his or her child’s next reading adventure. (You can click on each image to take you to their location at the Degrees of Maternity Teachers Pay Teachers store.)

Make Reading an Adventure!