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

Surround yourselves with books. Make sure they see you reading. Make it fun. Talk about books.

Take advantage of all the events and activities on offer at the library.

Always have books around.
Read while cuddled together regularly.

We make no secret of our own enjoyment of reading- our books as well as theirs. So they know that we have books we each particularly enjoy reading to them, we say that we’re looking forward to the next chapter of a particular book at bedtime, etc.

And we never let on that sometimes we would rather be downstairs cracking open the wine than reading DD’s favourite glitter rainbow fairies rubbish

I'm lucky my 8 year old has inherited mine and my sister's love of reading and doesn't need any encouragement. He loves going to the library and choosing books.

I never force them to read but have read lots to them since they were tiny and they both enjoy it now. They have good vocabularies and imagination which is lovely to see.

It's important to start showing babies books and reading stories to them from an early age. We always had a lot of children's books lying around and made a lot of use of the local Library so they could try lots of kinds of books to see if they liked them. Sharing books together was just part of daily life. There was always a bedtime story. Both DC loved books and on one occasion DD arrived beside my husband who was still asleep, pushed his eyelids up and said, "Open them, read it."

We're great lovers of books in our house, so spend plenty of time reading stories. Bedtime is the guaranteed time to fit one. Nowadays the six year old reads to the two year old which is lovely!

When I was a little girl no one had time to sit down and read some books with us and I didn't end up with big love for reading. Nevertheless I used to lessen to recorded stories on a tape every night before bed and that's exactly when I decided that I will do this differently when I'll have my children, and I did! We read together every night and it will surprised you how quickly your children can learn if you give them that attention.
I found that if children choose their books them self they more likely to be kin to read them therefore we visit out local library every few weeks. Both of my children have passion for reading but only in subjects they love and even I can find my special place with good book and cup of tea 🤗

Bribery! My (almost) 6yr old will never choose to pick up a book. So for every page he reads, he "earns" 5 mins play on my new scooter. So far he has earned 2hrs since the school broke up. Probably not what most experts would recommend but it works for us!

My DC have been bought a comic each month since they were very small. We now buy a book each month instead and they love choosing - they see it as a treat. If we go to a car boot sale we'll buy loads - pretty much whatever they want as long as it's appropriate. I think the displays in book shops help - they can look quite exciting.
We went to the Roald Dahl museum when they were little and that visit really inspired them as it's very interactive.

My DC have been bought a comic each month since they were very small. We now buy a book each month instead and they love choosing - they see it as a treat. If we go to a car boot sale we'll buy loads - pretty much whatever they want as long as it's appropriate. I think the displays in book shops help - they can look quite exciting.
We went to the Roald Dahl museum when they were little and that visit really inspired them as it's very interactive.

My DC have been bought a comic each month since they were very small. We now buy a book each month instead and they love choosing - they see it as a treat. If we go to a car boot sale we'll buy loads - pretty much whatever they want as long as it's appropriate. I think the displays in book shops help - they can look quite exciting.
We went to the Roald Dahl museum when they were little and that visit really inspired them as it's very interactive.

My DC have been bought a comic each month since they were very small. We now buy a book each month instead and they love choosing - they see it as a treat. If we go to a car boot sale we'll buy loads - pretty much whatever they want as long as it's appropriate. I think the displays in book shops help - they can look quite exciting.
We went to the Roald Dahl museum when they were little and that visit really inspired them as it's very interactive.

Aargh sorry! It said it had failed to post but instead posted multiple times!

Make choosing books a special trip, go to an actual book shop and give them lots of time to browse. Give them their own book shelves, and encourage them to talk about what they're reading. Mine are read to, and have their own quiet reading time, every day.

We are a reading family and have lots of books in the house, and would read daily to the children from being babies. Christmas and birthday presents always include books, and we would visit the library regularly. However despite all of this saturation with books we have one avid reader (age 12, a book a day) and one reluctant reader (competent but doesn't enjoy reading).

I guess you can put all the right mechanisms in place but still can't guarantee they will love reading

I have always had a house full of books being an avid reader, they are everywhere so books are part of our everyday life theres no escaping them here.
I try and encourage my kids without being to forceful, ive always read bedtime stories to them when ive had time, i let them help choose new books when we go buy new ones, we have a variety of styles. We have old favourites that i liked growing up like MOG, Alfie books and we have my older kids favourites like The Large family as well as lots of newer books.

I love reading so my daughter is used to seeing me read mainly in bed and on my sunlounger! When she feels anxious or Unable to sleep I always tell her that reading will transport her into another place when her mind will be thinking of the story she’s reading. It always works and soon enough she’s 😴

I’ve always tried to make time to read with my dcs. They love that time before bed when we read together.
We ve had lots of interesting books and books that were fun like pop up books, lifting the flaps and hand puppet books so they saw books as very entertaining from a young age.
I also followed their interests. When ds was going through his dinosaur obsession, we read tonnes of dinosaur books.
Now they’re older, they’re not passionate about reading but they do enjoy reading a bit before bed.

I buy books linked to current interests constantly.
If they find a series they enjoy I buy them one at a time, or present one at time from a set of cheaper, to keep the excitement high. I don’t make them wait long though so momentum isn’t lost.

We read books before bed with both our boys 5 and 2 and the 5 year old has books from school which he reads before bed. The library is one of his favourite places and I encourage him to choose books for him to read according to his school reading level and books to take out for us to read to him. I find a lot of praise and patience is needed whilst teaching him to read!

Lots of books around - both in bedrooms and living room. Whenever they get given books make a big deal about how lovely they are. Lots of time spent in bookshops and library browsing books.
We also read a lot so it is normalised as a fun activity to do.

I am an avid reader & I think the fact that my kids see me reading regular encourages them to read too. I regularly buy my kids new books. They love the book bus at school which visits each year.

Weve always read to them so rhey naturally took it up. I also love subtitles when watching programme and actually think thia helps too! Word games also helpful. We love a scrabble match in our house!

Have books that are easy for DC to access at home. Get into routine of daily reading from when they are very little and we got them library cards and took them to the library regularly from around age. It's been harder since DC1 started school to get the balance between doing their assigned reading books but not making reading feel like a chore. I often agree to just read 2-3 pages a night, or split the reading between us both. They then choose the rest of the books themselves.