Make a Paper Bookworm to Help Encourage Your Child to Read

Letting your child help you make a cute bookworm from construction paper can be an easy way to encourage your child to read. It's a fun way of keeping count of the books they have read, and very easy to do. It is also a project your child will be involved in, so will help keep their interest in reading at its peak. Since you do it together, making a bookworm will be fun for both of you.

The supplies you need to make the bookworm are simple. All you need are construction paper, scissors (preferably for children), and clear tape or sticky adhesive. You can mount the parts of the bookworm's body segments around the walls in your child's room, on a bulletin board, or even on the front of your refrigerator. Any place with a large flat area will work.

The first thing to do is draw a large head of a worm, along with it's neck, on a full size sheet of construction paper, then cut it out. The neck should only be about 4 1/2 inches wide. The head of the bookworm should be nearly as high as the sheet of paper. You can draw eyes and a smile on the face of the bookworm to make it look happy.

The second step is to fold several sheets of different colors of construction paper in half lengthwise. Cut the sheets of paper in half along the lengthwise fold.

Next, cut the half sheets of construction paper into sections about 2 inches wide across the paper. They will be approximately 2 inches by 4 1/2 inches in size. The strips will be the segments to make the body of the worm. One body segment will represent your child having finished reading a book.

When your child completes a book, mount a different colored body segment behind the neck of the worm. Do this each time your child finishes reading a book, increasing the length of the bookwork.

You can let the bookworm become as long as you like, taking into account the amount of space that you have to work with. If you place the bookworm around the walls of your child's room using sticky adhesive, the bookworm can represent hundreds of books. If you are using a bulletin board or the refrigerator as your surface, the bookworm will be shorter, but will still be able to have many body segments.

If you have more than one child you don't need to make more bookworms, unless you would like to. You can do the exact same thing, for any number of children, using just one bookworm. Just assign a color to represent each child. Mount the correct color body segment on the bookworm as each child finishes reading a book.

For even more reading incentive, use the bookworm to start a fun game, with a reward for reading a certain number of books. For example, let you child pick out a movie to watch after 10 body segments are in place. Or let them choose their favorite meal for dinner after reaching 25. Perhaps they can have 30 minutes extra television time after reading 10 books.

You can keep the rewards simple, or you can become as extravagant as you like. Use your imagination. Only you will know what works best for your child.

Any time you can make a game out of learning it makes it so much easier to do. I know for a fact that bookworms really do help encourage children to read.

When I was in the 3rd grade of elementary school, my favorite teacher made a bookworm for the whole class. It reached all the way around the walls of the classroom at least three times. It was such a fun and exciting project for all of us. The entire class was constantly checking out books. I'm certain that was the year that I fell in love with reading.

Sub Zero Refrigerators
Visit Sub Zero Refrigerators to find great deals on quality refrigerators and wine storage