Mumsnet users share their tips for encouraging their children to love reading with McDonald's

[JustineBMumsnet]

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Reading with your child can be a fun, educational and rewarding experience, but reading may be an activity your child comes to associate with schoolwork rather than fun. With their fifth Happy Readers campaign coming up soon, McDonald's would like to hear about how you encourage your children to love reading.

Here's what McDonald's has to say: "We're committed to helping families enjoy time reading together and believe in the power of stories to ignite children’s amazing imaginations. However it’s not always easy to fit regular reading into busy lives. As we prepare for our 5th Happy Readers campaign, giving away a free book with every Happy Meal, we're keen to get advice from Mumsnetters. Your tips and advice for building a love of reading with your children, inventive ways you manage to build regular story time and reading into your busy lives, and, with the school holidays in full swing, all the ways you encourage, nurture and ignite your children’s imagination. Through reading and beyond."

How do you encourage a love of reading? Do you have tips for building reading into your child's daily routine? How do you ignite your child's imagination while reading with them?

However you encourage a love of reading with your child and using their imagination, share this with McDonald's below to be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher for the store of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

Insight Terms and Conditions apply

Frequent trips to the library

Make bedtime funny story time.

I am a big reader. I read most days and have always had bedtime stories with my dd. I also encourage my daughter to tell me about the books she is reading. Luckily she loves to read and reads well above her age. Xx

My daughter loves to read, and she reads fast. So I take my children to the library a lot. We went on Friday and not only did we borrow a few books to keep her going, we bought a load of withdrawn stock for 25p each. My son took a while to get into reading but he first started getting more into it by us buying him magazines. He reads his Lego magazines from front to cover, and has now begun to enjoy 'proper' reading books too.

We read to my daughter everynight and she loves to be read to and look at the pictures, hopefully it continues as she grows

Make it fun, I do funny voices sometimes when reading and discuss the pictures with them.

we like to read a story about something we have seen or done in the week to keep ava interested and we can make our own story ending up together. We buy a lot of books from charity shops so that we can have a library at home

Children love our night time story. Mostly they choose the books. It’s great how much they enjoy it.

Its important to make should books are a an everyday part of life. Don't be too precious with them, they aren't for decoration. Make sure they see you reading as well, and enjoying it. Make time for reading not just last thing at night but during the day as well.

Having books as easily accessible to my child as toys is important to me. We read a story every morning and every night before bed. We often read a story at meal times when DD is struggling to sit still for a meal

we have story time together and make going to the library an event by teaming it with a trip to the local bakery for a cream cake ...the kids cant wait to get all their books read so we can go back again!!

Showing that we love reading. Leading by example!

There are books everywhere in our house. I love reading and really encourage my kiddies. We regularly go to the library and book shops. I read every evening to both of my kiddies. I encourage my kiddies to read to themselves too. We have lots of fiction and non fiction books.

My girls love reading. It starts from an early age with library visits, and also it makes a huge difference reading aloud to them every night as I've done since they were born. They always participate in the library summer reading challenge and are both confident, independent readers at age 6 and 8 respectively.

I read to them from newborn age. We are a very bookish household, there are books everywhere and I have a book in my hand whenever I can. My DS suddenly lost all interest in reading around the age of 9 which was perplexing, but I found a series I knew he would enjoy (Skulduggery Pleasant) and he's continued to read ever since.

Both of my little ones have enjoyed reading from an early age and I put this down to a variety of reasons. I have been reading them stories before they could even speak. The pictures, the voices and tones I used and the atmosphere around reading has always been fun and exciting. They both joined the library as soon as they could crawl and when we are all sitting it down together we take it in turns to read a sentence each (my toddler does animal noises instead!!!) Everything surrounding reading is a fun experience and that reflects in their attitude towards stories.

The earlier the better, getting them reading from such a young age as a fun activity embeds it as such and they will carry that love on as they grow. A new book every month keeps it fresh.

I read to DS every night before bed and we go to a car boot every Sunday and always buy a new book each week.

We have always read books at bedtime, there are always books around in the bedrooms and living rooms and we encourage them to choose us books to read while we are playing during the day.

We love reading. We used to have so many books but we had a big declutter which has been brilliant. We go to the library more often now and the kids love choosing new books. We are definitely reading more now than we did before. When we had bookshelves full of books they just didn't get excited by them.

We have books from when we were small. My two sisters and I, saved them from our childhood. We sit and read them together with the little ones, and really get into the characters, by doing voices, actions, and if necessary getting up from the chair and dancing round! The DC's think it is hilarious! We have such a good time and the stories remain family classics. This creates wonderful memories!

we read every night :)

I encourporate it into bedtime routine and when they have done their school reading I will read them a book they choose

Read books together every night and always get involved in the holiday reading schemes at the library. There are great activities over the summer holidays.

Having had three daughters I soon learnt that they had to be treated very differently in encouraging their reading. Having always used the same baby/toddler books, bedtime story traditions etc. my eldest seemed to be born a book lover and could not read enough. The youngest two were much less enthusiastic but it was factual books with fun facts that the middle one enjoyed and the youngest would read comics and annuals. Taking the time to enjoy their chosen style of reading and making it fun I am sure helped their imagination.