Five Ways to Celebrate Children's Book Week as a Family

I thought this was an appropriate first post for my Children's Book Week celebration.  Thank you to Suzanne Lieurance for stopping by today with her thoughts.


Suzanne Lieurance is a children's author, writing coach, and founder and director of the National Writing for Children Center. She also hosts Book Bites for Kids, a talk show about children's books, every weekday afternoon on blogtalkradio. Her latest children's book is The Lucky Baseball, a middle grade historical novel.

If you live in the continental United States, enter the daily book giveway this week to celebrate Children's Book Week at the National Writing for Children Center by commenting on each day's blog post.

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Five Ways to Celebrate Children's Book Week as a Family
by
Suzanne Lieurance

Every year since 1919, educators, librarians, parents, and children have set aside one week in May to celebrate children's books and the love of reading. This special week is known as Children's Book Week. This year, Children's Book Week is May 10th-16th. Many organized events will be taking place across the country this week, but here are 5 ways to celebrate Children's Book Week as a family:

1. Take your children to the public library and ask them to each choose a book to share with the family this week. Each evening, each child in the family gets to read one chapter (or one short book) out loud to everyone after dinner--or they can simply present an oral summary of a chapter. After each child reads a chapter, take a few minutes to discuss what was read. You might also want to share these family reading sessions--with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who live far away--online, via Skype.

2. You and your children can each design and create your own bookmarks to use with your favorite books. Have plenty of construction paper, poster board, colored markers, rulers, magazines (for cutting out pictures), glue, and other crafts materials on hand. Protect the bookmarks by covering them with clear plastic contact paper or laminating plastic that doesn't require a laminating machine.

3. Take your children to a local bookstore. Let them choose one or more books to purchase for donation to a local children's hospital or family shelter.

4. Start a book blog with your children--where you can all write reviews of books you read and enjoy throughout the year. If you've never written a book review before, read a few reviews online to get the hang of it, then be the first to post a review to the blog to show your children what information should be included in a helpful book review. If you have a video camera, your children can create video reviews of their favorite books and post them to the blog, too.

5. Hold a family Read-a-Thon. Pledge money to your children for each book they read during Children's Book Week. At the end of the week, total up the money you owe each of your children. Let them use the money to purchase new books for themselves or for books to donate to the local library, children's hospital, or family shelter.

These are just a few ways you and your children can celebrate Children's Book Week together as a family. You'll probably come up with all sorts of other ways to celebrate your love of books and reading together.

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Don't forget to enter yesterday's Children's Book Week Kick Off giveaway.  One copy of The Monster Who Ate My Peas is up for grabs.