With school starting back up our time to be intentionally teaching the kids has once again shrunk to small morning and evening windows. Educating & engaging with our kids outside of school is a huge priority for us, so when we heard that the Fire HD 8 Kids Edition tablet could help us do this we jumped at the chance to try it out. Using the Freetime Unlimited feature which comes free for a year we picked out a couple books from their selection of thousands to read together this fall – family book club style.
Creating a family book club night once every couple weeks is a great way to have the entire family engaged and connected in learning together. Here are a few tips for doing your own and making it festively fun for everyone.
Festive Family Book Club
1. Pick an age appropriate book
It is easy to pick books based on age and reading level with Amazon FreeTime Unlimited. We explored all the options together and picked 4 books to read through together over the coming fall. With each family member getting to pick one book out – it allows us all to be a bit more engaged in what the others are excited about reading. Incase the kids are at a little different reading levels, there’s an option to choose how many reading hints to give for each book or to even have the tablet read the book aloud.
2. Serve up treats!
What’s a book club without treats??? Obviously we need to make our discussion meetings a little on the festive side. Whoevers book we are discussing that night gets to also pick the family treat. Ice cream with sprinkles! I know most kids will be willing to read to get their hands on a bowl of sprinkles and ice cream.
3. Work through discussion questions
One of my favorite things about Amazon FreeTime Unlimited are the discussion questions. I can access the parent dashboard where there are a list of discussion questions for the books my kids are reading. I can print them out and bring them to family book night to facilitate a great conversation. I can also peek at the notes for any of the books the kids have started reading! This has become such an awesome way to engage with them about what they are reading.
4. Give everyone space and time to read
With Amazon FreeTime Unlimited we can set parameters on the tablets to allow our kids to use them for reading without peering over their backs to make sure they didn’t trade their book for building rollercoasters in Minecraft. ;)
Our kids always have a daily at home reading assignment from school and in the evenings we like to spread out around the house to all find a comfy spot to read in. I love that my kids have access to thousands of books on their tablets and that I have access to the parent dashboard where I can ensure they do their daily reading assignment before any game app is opened.
Although school can sometimes make us feel like we are all going a hundred different directions, having a fun combined activity like this family book club keeps us connected and learning together.
This post is sponsored by Amazon, I look forward to sharing more about how the tablet helps our family learn together this school year.
(Photography ©A Subtle Revelry by Ali Denney).
