Free Children's Bookplates

Helen Dardik of Orange You Lucky is offering some free kid's bookplates to show appreciation to her blog readers. Very cute!

Games for Teaching Reading Pt. 1

We found some great YouTube videos that will help you teach you kids to read while making your personalized children's books.

Courtesy of Ann Kennedy:

Great Ways to Read to Your Children

With all of the time constraints for families there's increasing pressure to skip or lessen the time we spend with our children. Don't let that happen! As we know, reading to your children is one of the most important activities to do wit your children daily. An article from the University of Idaho documents some creative ways that you can read to your children, if you aren't available at bedtime, as other innovative ways to encourage reading.

If you're away at bedtime, the article gives the ideas of taping yourself reading or reading a book over the phone (something very feasible if you print a couple of copies of books for free from Readsake). And, of course as they remind us, bedtime isn't the only time to read - bring a book with you as you run errands and take advantage of waiting times by reading together.

To encourage reading Peggy McClendon, Read to Me Co-Coordinator, Idaho State Library; and Harriet Shaklee, Family Development Specialist, University of Idaho Extension; remind us to read with our children throughout the day - things like cereal boxes, road signs and billboards. They also suggest doing book exchanges with other kids and making them exciting by wrapping up the books.

Hello World!

Welcome to the Readsake Blog!

Today marks the official launch of our beta site at readsake.com!

The main purpose of Readsake is to promote quality time between parents and their kids by offering free personalized children's books and coloring pages. Aside from creating and printing free children's books, parents can share their children's work with friends and family. User pages have links to all of the books and drawings posted, so parents just need to share the url of their page (www.readsake.com/~username) so friends and family can also print these treasures! Call it social networking for parents.

Visit us today, you have nothing to lose - it's free!