encouraging boys to read | Mum In The Madhouse

encouraging boys to read

Top comics for 7 and 8 year old boys – tried and tested by the Mini Mads

top comics
LEGO Club Magazine – Free, quarterly

A free quality childrens magazine, yes I did say free. The boys love their LEGO magazines and are glue to them from the minute they pop through the letter box. There is a Junior magazine for under sevens and it really is filled with hours of fun. It gives you ideas of things to build with your LEGO, stories, comic strips and puzzles too. There is also an interactive version of the magazine too.

Anorak – £6 per addition, quarterly

Anorak is “the ‘happy mag for kids’ is aimed at boys and girls aged between 6 and 12 years old” and it is a beautiful magazine. Printed on recycled paper with vegetable inks, the pages are matt and it has a wonderful book smell. It isn’t a throwaway publication. Just like much loved children’s magazines and annuals of the past, it is designed to be collected and kept. In fact it is in the front of our bookcase and the boys go back to their previous copies on a regular basis.

The Phoenix – £2.99, weekly

This is a 32 page weekly comic, which is aimed at children aged 8 to 12 years old it features 7 or more exciting story strips, a puzzle competition and a new non-fiction strip every week of the year. If you have an avid reader then this is the comic for you. It is fun, full of quality stories and delivered every week. Both the boys love The Phoenix, but it is too regular for us. We would prefer it on a monthly basis as when they are busy they just pile up and you need to read them in order as some of the stories are longer than one week. If you have a very reluctant reader then The Phoenix is available on the IPad.

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Encouraging reading in boys

I wrote a post about encouraging writing in my boys and wanted to followup with one about encouraging reading. I am an ferociously reader. I adore books and lap them up, no, that is not quite right I adore reading. I love words, their meanings, the way they make me feel, the places they take me too. SO for me it was key that I introduced my boys to books very early on in their lives.

Make books available

We have books everywhere and we make sure that they are within their reach, We have them in the loo, in bedrooms, in the sitting room, we have a bookcase on the landing and one in the conservatory too. When the boys were smaller I made sure that books were in a box at their level and we rotated them. We were offered a free trial of Reading Chest and I have to say Mini loves it. He gets three books delivered and we can post them back when he has read them and we get three more in the post. It is superb if you are looking for books which are pitched at their ability and you do not have a library or in our case there is no reading scheme in Reception, which means Mini doesn’t get any books he can read, just ones that we can read to him.

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