NEA's Read Across America Takes Place on March 3, 2014

Calling all children, it’s time to read! National Education Association’s (NEA) 17th Annual Read Across America event will take place on Monday, March 3, 2014.

The day is designed to encourage reading among school kids. Here is more about the event from the website:

 “The Seussical celebration will kick off a week of reading across the nation as NEA members gather students, parents, and community members together to share their love of reading. It’s never too early to plan your event and NEA’s RAA will be posting tips and resources to help you make your event Seussational.”

Schools, libraries and book stores are encouraged to host their own events to support the cause. For example, Barnes & Noble is hosting free story time events to support the national day of reading at stores across the country.

Read a Dr. Seuss book with your young ones.  Take your learner to a bookstore so s/he can make a make a purchase choice and feel ownership for the book.  What a wonderful way to model a love of books, particularly during Read Across America!

U.S. Children's Reading Habits-Ages Two to Ten

After posting such a gloomy forecast recently regarding teens' reading habits, I decided to share with you a happier piece concerning younger children's proclivity for reading in the United States.

While the ages mentioned in this post span a huge difference in cognition, on an average, children ages 2-10 are reading an average of 40 minutes per day, spending 29 minutes reading print, 8 minutes reading on computers, and 5 minutes reading on digital platforms, according to a new report from The Joan Ganz Cooney Center called Learning at Home.

For the study, the organization spoke to more than 1500 parents of 2-10 year old children across the country. According to the report, 62 percent of these kids have access to e readers or tablets, but only 31 percent actually use these devices, because their parents want them to read print books.

Reading is definitely an important part of a child’s day, TV dominates. The research revealed that  children spend an average of 42 minutes a day watching educational TV.

On this blog, I've published quite a few helpful tips to help keep kids' reading interests high.  At the risk of redundancy, I'll list a few of them again:

1.  Model reading in your home.  If reading is seen as valuable to parents, most children will value books as well.

2.  Have reading material available everywhere in your home.  If books are placed in favorite areas such as the family room, kids' bedrooms, etc., research has found they will be read more frequently.

3.  Place word signs around so that young children can "read the room,"a technique that is highly successful.

4.  Allow kids to pick out their own books (with some guidance from you) in bookstores.  If they feel ownership in their purchases, books are usually read cover to cover.

I hope this helps and gives you some good news about U.S. children's reading habits as well!