5 Creative Ways to Celebrate Read to Your Child Day

1. Share a Childhood Favorite

What book captivated your imagination as a child? This is a great opportunity to rediscover your childhood appreciation for reading. Also, finding and sharing this book will help spread your enthusiasm for reading to your child.

If you don't own a copy of the book, then make a special trip with your child to the library or a local bookstore. If it's hard to find, then your quest can become an adventure. Part of the joy in this journey is that you may find other cherished, forgotten favorite books as you search.

2. Get Interactive

Reading a book with your child can be a highly interactive and animated activity. You can use your body language and voice, acting out the story and creating voices for the characters. You can also take turns reading or having your child offer the voice of one of the characters. With younger children, this works best with a book your child knows well.

There are numerous other types of interactive reading you can do with your child. You can have a dictionary handy and when you come across a word your child doesn't know, have him or her look it up. With a new book, you can pause to ask your child questions about what he or she thinks may happen next in the story.

3. Attend or Host a Story Time

Why not celebrate Read to Your Child Day with others? Your local library or bookstore may have a story time you can attend. If there isn't a story time on Read to Your Child Day, you could host your own. This is a good way to bring together your friends and neighbors to share your mutual appreciation of literature.

4. Reading Arts and Crafts

Read to Your Child Day can be a day solely for reading, but it can also be a day for a general celebration of reading. To that end, you can complete any number of reading-related arts and crafts projects. For example, you can make bookmarks together. You could also create book covers out of brown paper bags, decorating them with pictures your child either draws or cuts out of magazines.

Another great craft activity is to draw a picture or create a diorama based on a scene from a story. This is a fun way for your child to engage with a story on a deeper level. For a more elaborate activity, your child could make a flip book that turns a section of a story into a hand-drawn, animated scene.

5. Write a Story Together

Finally, one of the best ways to commemorate Read to Your Child Day is to write your own story with your child. Writing a story together can be a terrific bonding opportunity. It's also a chance to talk about what your child enjoys in stories he or she has read. By taking the time to think about what stories your child has most loved, he or she may develop a newfound appreciation for reading that will last long beyond Read to Your Child Day.