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

Library, seeing us reading, regular stories as a wind-down. I heard that following your finger along the words from an early age helps little ones recognise that the words come from there rather than from the pictures.

Let them choose the books! You may be itching for them to read the classics you read as a child but letting them read something they have an interest in (even if it is Paw Patrol) and will enjoy is important! Perhaps try and pop the odd Malory Towers or Jonathan Swift (maybe as shared reading) but if they're not enjoying it relent and let them choose the next one.

We always have access to books and use the library weekly. Audio books gets the children to listen to books they might find too challenging but then makes them keen to read them.

Read to your child from the earliest age and get them used to visiting your local library for storytime sessions. Also read to your child as often as possible and don't stop reading to him/her once he/she learns to read!

Start them very young so that it become second nature for them. Write short stories for them. Oh, and of course lots of fun.

Reading is part of our bedtime routine. Always 2 books just before lights out. We also read during the day.
She picks her books, sometimes it’s the same 2 for a couple of weeks but as she gets older she is tending to pick different ones each night:-)
We go shopping once a month for new books, I pick them up from charity shops, buy magazines and we go to the library. Currently doing the library summer challenge.
As she gets more confudent she now joins in with the reading, reading odd words.
I have lots of my own books around the house so she can see that I like reading and we write lists for shopping and what we need to take on days out which encourages her reading too.

I don’t need to encourage her now as I read to my daughter from being a newborn, it’s akways been apart of her life. As she got older, she would read to me. We love books here!

My daughter is a very reluctant reader. She hates the books issued from school to read at home and will not attempt to read them well. At home however when the book is a book she has genuine interest in and is humorous she is completely different, her reading becomes fluent. So for me it really is about finding the right style of book and reading them with her. I read her a chapter and then she goes back over the chapter when I have finished.

Read books before bed each night and visit the library at least once a week. It makes reading new books exciting.

We also read story’s and then act out the games either with his toys for example read a train story and use his wooden railway to play the same story. Or if the story is about going to the moon in a rocket, pretend his bed is the moon and read each bit of the book pretending to be the characters in the story. It’s a way to fill a few minutes on a rainy weekend day.

I make my only little flash cards with different words each week and we make learning them like a fun quiz , we then also read every night for half an hour , I read a book and then my son reads one to me

We read every night always have books around to encourage reading, lots of lovely affordable books in charity shops also trips to the library

As a parent it is only right you introduce your child to books. It's like showing them another world, other than the one they live in.
I have always read with my children, and they love reading with me as I take my time do the silly voices, explain stuff even go off piste.
My eldest used to love me telling my made up stories the best, as he was in the story along with pixie, Oxie and Agsie. (He helped me with the names.)
It's a learning experience as now I always get him to read a bit too, and it's the only thing that makes bed time fun! At the moment it is seeing what happens to Grandpa in "Grandpa's Great Escape" They will always remember mummy reading to them.

children will mimic what you do, so reading we enjoy the children copy and love it too

I think the children love books if they see their parents reading.My children like reading,especially my 10-years old daughter, and now I see how it's good for her-she has a rich imagination, use difficult words and she knows the things about the world which sometimes grow-ups doesn't know.I am very glad about that.

We started them off with pop out story books.

Reading is part of our everyday routine and has been since birth! We always have story time before bed and one of our biggies is Book Appreciation. We are really strict about looking after books and encourage books as opposed to electronic readers....did you know that some companies do a book advent for Christmas - they charge as little as £1 a book and wrap them and number them so you can give your child book advents - lovely idea!

Both of mine have a good selection of books, both classics and then newer books which match their interests. We encourage them to both listen to us read and for them to then read us stories.

from birth we have always read to our little boy and even though he had a few stumbling blocks in his early development....he is now an avid reader and reads to himself after we leave his bedroom

Starts out with a bedtime story. After that as they grow i'll introduce them to books i think will help shape their view and give them perspective.

I am so lucky that both my children love books, my eldest now reads books to herself as she is alot older then my youngest. I have always used books as part of our daily routine so we read every night before bed. I did this even when they were tiny. However to keep it interesting and not to make it part of the day and more a treat I get them excited about going to the library and getting to pick their own books every couple of weeks. They both love this and feel really grown up checking the books in and out themselves at the desk. When reading I have always made sure its in a room with no other noise, so no TVs or other people to distract them. I encourage them to repeat some funny phrases or sounds of the book to me so we join in together. We talk about the pictures and face expressions too so it keeps them thinking. I have to say all this has worked for me for nearly 10 years now and even I enjoy our reading times!

I'm a massive bookworm and I started buying books for my son before he was born! I used to read to him all the time which he enjoyed and he had favourites. To my great sadness I don't think he has ever read a book himself and never will. He just isn't interested. I think my grandchildren are different though, they seem more interested in reading.

Read regularly
Allow them to choose their books
Voices and acting during them!

My dd is only 10 months old, but I have read books to her since the begining. I honestly think reading from a young age is massively beneficial for children, my parents read to me everyday until I was old enough to read myself. I take her to the library every week as they have a bookstart program from youngsters and she loves it.

Encouraging children to read factual or fiction books, or magazines about topics they love. I was horse mad when I was a kid, so stick a horse on the cover and I would read it repeatedly.
Using audiobooks in combination with the paper book is also useful

We have tons of books and go to the library on a Monday after school. The library summer reading challenge is always good to get involved with.

Reading before bed really helps build vocabulary and an interest in reading.