Two years ago, I was introduced to this wonderful project called “Reading for the Love of Reading”. It is essentially a book bag that goes home every week (or every second week) containing a book and an activity. The main purpose of this project is to create a love of books, to explore the magical worlds created by words, and to discover that there is more to reading than phonetics, tests and homework. It is meant to be read by a parent TO their child as this is not meant to be a decoding activity for the child. If the child WANTS to read WITH their parent, that is fine.

My Grade 2 Team and I worked hard to put together this project for our students. Every two weeks, the students take home a pouch that contains a book and a reading activity. They have the pouch at home for one week. The books are to be read by a parent to their child, and the activity (game, writing based, art based, etc.) is to be completed together.

I cannot get over how much the parents and my students love this project. My students look forward to receiving their book bags and having the books read to them by their parents. They also thoroughly enjoy the activities that go along with the books. It was a lot of prep work, but it was so worth it! I think we as educators can all agree how important it is for children to develop a love of reading, and this project fosters just that!