Tuesday's Tiny Treasures: Starting a Book Club for Kids

I have been debating whether or not I should start my own book club at school or just for fun, so this idea came to me as well. Want to create a reader? Start a book club for kids! Parents can take this idea anywhere and I will show you how.

I suggest talking to the parents of your child's friends to discuss whether they believe it would work and if they would be willing to share responsibility as far as hosting the event and providing the activities. Discussing different books that fit the reading level of the kids is also a good idea. I will be giving everyone some ideas for book titles next week.

A good starting point is figuring out the goal of the book club. Do you want the books to have a certain theme every month and keep it to one book a month or would you rather set a goal of a certain amount of books each month? Keep in mind that you do not want to push the kids, you want them to enjoy what they are doing, so keep the goal simple yet fun and challenging.

Next, pick your books. This is obviously quite important so put some time and thought into this step. Like I said earlier, I will be providing my personal list of books for different age groups next week. Make sure that all the kids that are going to be reading the books are at similar reading levels so they aren't too challenged or the books are not too easy for them.

Activities for the get together should be fun and educational. You want the kids to be able to discuss what they have read, which is the point of a book club. On the other hand, you don't want the kids to be board when they are discussing what they learned. I would recommend coming up with different activities to help them express their thoughts in a fun way. I have written about reading what your kids read and this would be the perfect time to do this. That way you can easily come up with fun activities for everyone. If you share the responsibility with other parents, each parent can trade the months that they read the book and create the activities.

Finally, come up with a name and theme for the book club. Do you want different themes every month or would you rather just have a continuous theme that fits with the name. Overall, just make it fun.

Now that you have some ideas before you, go out and start a book club with your kids. You never know how much fun it can be until you do it! Have more ideas? Let me know in the comments below!