12 Months, 12 Characters: Promote Reading In Children
With the arrival of new technologies, children and young people are more interested in other types of activities than in literature. That’s why, currently, parents, educators and professionals in the world of libraries are forced to promote reading with countless creative and ingenious activities that catch the attention of children.
The immense amount of children’s literature books allows the development of numerous activities to promote reading, requiring only a little imagination and creativity.
Therefore, below, we are going to show an idea that can be developed both at home and in the classroom to work on literature for an entire year and, thus, promote reading among children.
12 months, 12 characters: activities to promote reading in children
Despite the variety of activities that can be created around children’s literature and, more specifically, to promote reading, not all of them catch children’s attention. So, can you imagine what it would be like to have this initiative resolved for an entire year? With the activity that we are going to propose below, this will be possible.
First steps: choosing characters
The first step – which will guide the evolution of the activity throughout the year – will be the choice of characters, that is, the books that will be worked on over the next few months.
As we stated earlier, this activity can be practiced both at home and at school, because titles can be chosen by both parents and teachers.
Choosing some titles over others depends on the children’s age and their speed and reading comprehension. Remember that choosing books for a single child is not the same as choosing books for an entire class. In the latter case, the level must be intermediate so that everyone can follow the activity.
For example, for children aged between three and five, you can work with the following books:
- elmer the elephant
- the monster of colors
- From the little mole who wanted to know who had pooped on her head
- What does the moon taste like?
Second step: selection of complementary activities
After reading these books, you can create countless activities: from artistic expression through drawing and painting the characters, to creating a game with memory cards related to different aspects of the books.
Furthermore, this age is also ideal for promoting storytelling, so there is no better way to promote reading in children than through oral transmission.
Other types of activities
With older ages, when children already have autonomy to read on their own, activities can be more complex and, at the same time, educational.
For eight- or nine-year-olds, one of the activities for schools that will help them improve their speaking skills will be presenting the book they read to their classmates.
We recommend choosing characters that are the protagonists of several books to be able to use several of them during the month that this character will be together with the little ones.
Protagonists like the Color Monster, Pupi, Elmer, Lili, the witch or Harry Potter are some of the options you can choose, among many others.
The final activity to promote reading in children
As we said earlier, the 12-month, 12-character initiative will last for one year. By the end of this year, children will have read a minimum of one book a month, although it is necessary to try, as much as possible, to encourage reading more books.
In order for them to see all the progress related to reading they have made during the year, it is possible to make a small notebook or dossier on each of the books.
Depending on age, it is possible to include information about the book, such as title, author or publisher, as well as other data such as the time it took the child to read, the score given to the book and even an illustration showing the that she liked the most.
In this way, imagination and creativity, as well as written expression, come into play almost unnoticed.
