Why Create a Reading Challenge?
- by CrafterFox
- in Book Club For Children Thoughts
- posted January 10, 2022
If you are anything like me, reading didn’t come naturally to you. Maybe, it was something you acquired a taste for along the way – just like I did. Of course, you might be one of those avid readers who was probably born with a book in their hands. Regardless of what category you might consider yourself to be a part of, a reading challenge can be a really good way to organize and keep track of everything you read throughout the year.
It is so much easier to achieve something if you have an end in mind for it. A reading challenge is just that: a plan that will entertain you along the way and will fill you with a feeling of accomplishment at the end.
A lot can be said about the benefits of reading, how it can develop creativity, improve vocabulary, train one’s analytical skills, and so on. Many articles have been written about this topic and I don’t think I have to tell You, Dear Reader, that reading is truly good for you. This is something you have to discover for yourself.
I can tell you, however, why I like to read. I love reading because it helps me understand the world around me better. Books are a really good way of getting a glimpse into the workings of other people’s minds. Literature is a great tool that can make you less prejudiced, more empathetic and, generally speaking, a kinder human being. Reading lets me discover different cultures that I might never get to experience in real life. It lets me meet people with heartbreaking and heartwarming stories that, ultimately, help me understand my fellow humans much better. This is my reason for loving reading so much.
It wasn’t always like this. I remember how much I hated reading in school. The literary pieces we had to read were simply not meant for my age group back then. That, my friends, is a sure way to make your children hate reading. But then, something extraordinarily ordinary happened. My parents bought me the first book in the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I couldn’t put it down. For the first time in my life, I read at night, under the blanket with a flashlight. Like in the movies. I was both proud of and impressed with myself. But don’t think that it all changed for me after that. No. I devoured every Harry Potter book though. But as for other books… Well, school did not change for a while.
When I started high school, we had a different literature teacher. He never forced us to read anything. Never. He suggested a great many books and other literary works, but never ever said they were compulsory. And you know what? I started reading them! And they all turned out to be great! The first book he suggested was Lord of the Flies by William Golding. That book stuck with me and I remember so much of it, even after so many years. I’m eternally grateful for that one wonderful teacher because it was thanks to him that I chose to study literature at university, and that is where I truly got to enjoy and love reading.
But enough of this. We are here to talk about Reading Challenges. I would love it if people enjoyed reading just half as much as I do, so with this in mind, I created a couple of Reading Challenges for you. They are the usual, one book per month by genre and A-Z reading challenges. But I also have a bookmark type reading challenge for you. I don’t know about you, but I love coloring. And mindfulness coloring is something that really helps me tune out. So these bookmarks contain eight tiny mindfulness coloring squares as well as eight ideas to help you choose books.
Coloring and drawing, of course, are a lot more popular amongst the little ones, so I created similar bookmarks for them as well. It doesn’t matter whether you read those books together with your child, or you let them discover the stories by themselves. It doesn’t even matter whether the books have words or not. The point of this is to familiarize little children with books and introduce them into the world of readers. Nothing has to be forced, but you can guide your child in choosing books for this challenge.
So, without further ado, I give you CrafterFox’s Reading Challenges!
Let me know what you think!
