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

Anything and everything is reading material, street signs, adverts, notices, maps etc.

I think reading to a child in the evening is the most beneficial way to encourage reading in their future life.

Read with them from being little and this will encourage them to continue reading :)

Read to them, from a very early age, and they'll grow up loving books

My kids loved reading with me before they started school and we used to read every day and talk about the pictures. Since they have started school and have to read every night as homework, they have lost their passion for it which saddens me as they rarely pick up books to read at home now through choice.

By reading to them before they go to bed and talking them about what they have been reading .

Most important time of the day is bedtime reading.My son loves it, this has encouraged him to read to me when i need a daytime snooze.

We make a point of going to the library 3 times a week after school, they love the kiddie corner where a lovely lady tells stories, then she gets them to interact by asking them different things about the story. They then pick their books to take home and we always have a reading session before bedtime.

i take the children to choose books and let them have a flick through. also we take it in turns to read and use 'voices'

Surround them with books from a few months old

I've always read bedtime stories every night to both my daughters since they were tiny. They both absolutely love books still

We always read bedtime stories, and found story tapes very useful to encourage interest in books. We often went for long journeys and always listened to story tapes to pass the time.

Buy books that suit their likes. For instance my daughter loves ‘doing’ books so ones with flaps, levers, etc.
We also have an easily accessible bookcase so she can choose her own and we go to book shops a lot.

Every week we'd visit the library so they could choose books. Every night we'd have story time before bed. We'd talk about those stories and what we remember - characters, plots, jokes etc.

My children and I read every evening. We take it in turns to read a page each and they love putting on different voices for the characters

We have read with the kids from a really young age every bedtime and they are now good readers in their own time too..

Getting books on a subject that they would find interesting,farm animals especially or a book based on a tv show they love sitting down and watching

We have lots of children’s books in the house and read a bedtime story together every night as part of my sons routine.

I have always read bedtime stories to my children, and also taking them to the library to let them choose there own books. Now I have a Grandchild I will be encouraging him to do the same.

Seeing their parents read for pleasure is a good way to encourage them to think of reading as something other than a school-based chore.

We all love reading books and will often spend a few hours looking for new books to read. a good place to get books is in a charity shop you can always find a good bargain and when they have finished reading them we will usually donate them to a charity shop again.

Leading by example! There's always a book or two nearby and I'd much rather relax with a book than the TV!

I've been writing poetry for 27 years & recently started writing little childrens' stories in rhyme for my great niece, god daughter & godson & I always include their names in my stories so they love to read them. My friends encouraged me to send one off to a publisher & I got an offer right away so I'm sure when my great niece sees her own story published as a book she will love it even more

Thankfully my daughter never needed much encouragement but I used to read with her and get her to read it to me when she was learning. Now she'll just pick up a book and sit on the couch for an hour reading quietly.

We always read to our children and they love it, this has made ED interested herself and also reads. She has a bookcase in her room and so she can read whenever she likes, she also reads on longer car journeys.