Reading Activity Ideas

Reading Ideas for Parents -- to help your struggling reader

My son has trouble reading so here are some ideas that you can use at home.

Being diligent and consistant with a plan usually equals success. Set aside a time and place to do some of these activities.

Trips to libraries, your town or another town's for a visit to view materials is a great field trip and FREE!

Read quality fiction stories (no Disney mass market) -- look at pictures and ask what will happen --ask questions between reading -- predict the outcome.

Keep a dated reading log listing title of book/author/illustrator. Use one of those composition notebooks. Have your child rate the story 1 to 5 stars (draw, stickers, or rubberstamp).

Discuss unfamiliar words -- keep a list in the reading log.

Words kept in the reading log can be identified as nouns (person, place, things, or ideas), verbs (action words), or adjectives (words that describe usually nouns). Use color codes (dots next to words, writting the word in color, or using a colored shape and putting the approriate words in the proper colored shape) for word types: Nouns are blue, verbs are red, adjectives are green. A child sees his/her progress in a reading log, especially one that is filled up!

Ask after reading -- what was the beginning, middle and ending of the story. Ask what is the setting, what time of day? Look at the picture or word clues.
Ask who is the main character and supporting characters.
Ask about a certain character's traits
Ask what the problem was and how it was solved.


Read everyday things together -- menus, ads, cake or cereal boxes, signs on the road or in the store, etc. Have your child find words you think he/she knows, like an I Spy a Word game.

Non-fiction -- what does your child want to learn more about? Pick a topic (example: whales). Read a book about the topic. List 5 facts that were learned in the reading log. You can also make a list of pertinent vocabulary. Select a second book on the same topic. List facts from that book that you did not learn in the first book.
You can do this on a third book.
If possible, find a place you can visit that supports what you have just read.
Non-fiction is great for giving your child a chance to feel worthy/capable of learning about something and learning to read.

Read a nursery rhyme a day or focus on one a week -- this develops a cadance for reading. Act it out or tap out the beat. Have your child learn and repeat the rhyme.
Using the tapping out the beat, tap out the beat of a nursery rhyme and see if the child can guess which one it is.
There are many many children in this day and age that do not know nursery rhymes.

Play rhyming word games -- name a word and see what word you child can come up with to rhyme with it.

Get a pack of sight word cards (WalMart has plenty, there are also downloadable cards online) -- take out 5-10 depending on the child's ability. Show the card to the child. If the child can read the word, they keep the card for a point. Sometimes I use pennies as points.

Write simple familiar stories and have your child illustrate them. I type up the simple story (begining, middle, and end, three sentences usually) my son tells me, we cut it up and paste it into a composition book and he draws the picture.
Or I select "landscape" on the printer and we type out a four page story on the puter and print it out. You need to remember to do pages 1 and 4 on one side, and pages 2 and 3 on the other. (Fold a paper in half, the front is page 1, the inside are pages 2 and 3, the back is page 4.)

This article originally appeared on my Ed site at IVillage then at Geocities. Written 8/05.