Stay busy this summer by starting a kids book club! Not only is a book club fun, it’s educational. Keep learning all year long.
How to Start a Book Club for Kids
Get people interested. Email parents from your child’s school to get some interest in your book club. If you want to get fancy, start a newsletter!
Decide on the reading level. Don’t base your book club on age, base it on reading level. A 7 year old that is on a 6th grade reading level will be fine reading the same books as a 12 year old on the same level. While it’s fun to hang out with friends the same age, if you’re wanting to read a book together you need to be on similar reading levels.
Pick the day, time, and location. This is fun because the book club location can rotate every week (or month, depending on how often you gather)! Choose a day that works best for everyone – a weekend day is usually better during the school year, but a Friday night could work well, too.
Name yourselves! Give your book club a fun, catchy name! Brookville Book Babes, Reading’s Red Hat Readers, New London Literary Lions. Or simply the Lakewood Book Club — that works.
Make a list. What kind of books does everyone want to read? Choose a genre or a mix of genres, or even an author, and go from there. Check the level before making a purchase.
Some suggestions:
— Diary of a Wimpy Kid
— Divergent Series
— The Maze Runner Series
— Hunger Games
Classics (like Little Women, Mark Twain, The Wizard of Oz, etc) are also good ideas!
Enlist help from grown-ups! Depending on the ages of the kiddos in the group, you might need to enlist the help of parents. Moms (or dads!) can take turns reading with the group.
Organize your meeting. You want your book club to be fun, but you want it to be organized, too! Complete chaos is never good, especially when it comes to trying to get everyone to read! 🙂
The first few minutes of your first book club meeting can be for introductions. First, introduce yourself – then introduce the book. Have the other kids ask questions about the book, or if the kids are stumped, have a grown-up chime in to get things rolling.
It’s a good idea to have questions printed out ahead of time, so if an older child has time to help with this, it will get the conversation going (and flowing) smoothly.
Cut it off. Don’t let the book club meeting drag on and on. Stop the discussion after about an hour (less for younger kids), and write down any questions you still have so you can ask them at the next meeting!
Keep it educational. Have everyone share one new word they learned from the book, and what it means. Ask everyone what they think will happen next, and when everyone has completed the book, ask everyone how they would’ve ended it if they were the author!
Have you ever started a book club? Leave your tips in the comments!
You can find more ideas for frugal summer fun for kids here as we share a new frugal summer activity for kids each day for 100 days!
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