Kids see that the parents or the adults in their lives like to read and like to write, not just on the computer but with pen and paper, and they start wanting to do that themselves. And sometimes even sharing with young children bits of things that you’re reading, you know showing them the cover of your book for example and saying “oh you know look at this that’s on mommy’s book cover, I like this book so much, what do you see?”
And if it’s a horse you can say, “do you have a book that has a horse on the cover?” Or something like that so the kids see that there’s a connection there and, and interest on the part of the adult in reading but the adult is also reading interested in what books the child is exploring. Also just having books lying around, lots of places, kids pick them up, they read them, they flip through the pages. My daughter who was going into the 8th grade still has some of her childhood board book favorites on her bookshelf. Because those are books that she had read to her constantly that she loved as a little one and they’re treasured companions. So she keeps them close-by even though at this age she’s reading novels.
As your kids get older just talking to them about books like you know, what do you think of those hot vampires in Twilight anyway? And they love to share you know they love to share their observations about books. And it’s a nice window into the way that they’re thinking to have them discuss books with you.
Let’s as far as the writing is going, or encouraging writing, just having tools available seems to be a big thing but also it doesn’t have to be writing with characters. Like sometimes kids just like to write non-fictional things. I see this especially with boys, they want to write a whole book about sharks. Like 100 pages about sharks and that’s great, you know. So I guess it’s all about encouraging the type of writing that they want to do, too.
