Do you feel like all your child wants to do over the summer is play video games? If so, have we got a great option for you!
Sonlighters Katie, Lizzie, Abigail, and John enjoy a book together
But first, a sad story involving video games (skip this paragraph if you don't care about gaming)...
My friend recently got an Xbox One. I was excited to try it out with him, thinking multiplayer games must have much improved since the Nintendo Goldeneye of 1997 [if we get a chance to play together, I play Boris]. Sadly, the games of today disappointingly lack an in-console two-player option. If we each owned a $400 machine, a $50 controller, and a $60 copy of the game, we could play together over the internet. ...yeah, not happening. I am rather annoyed that the "new approach to game design" and "next-generation competitive multiplayer" means killing split screens that have been a mainstay of gaming since I was 15. <sigh> Back to summers and other compelling entertainment options since video games have taken such a massive step backward...
Give your child books to read this summer. Printed text may not have the same hypnotic lure of a glowing screen, but great stories pull in even the most dedicated of gamers. I've played many computer games, but I've also found books I couldn't put down. I really like what Kathryn shared with us on Facebook:
Thank you for introducing us to the Spy Mice series through your Summer Readers. Do you have any idea how refreshing it was to hear my son talk for 10 minutes with great animation about something other than Minecraft?!?!
As one who has listened to youngsters -- not to mention my wife -- talk in great detail about Minecraft, I can relate.
If you want your children to experience worlds beyond the screen, grab some Summer Readers and watch them find joy in great books as well.
~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Guardian
P.S. One more reminder: Books can be a group activity! For about $25, you can read a stack of titles to the whole family. That's way better than the overpriced gaming system my friend just bought... Order your Summer Readers today.
Summer Readers are a recent addition, Ken. We started offering them in 2012. The library is an excellent resource as well <smile>.
~Luke
I do not know if you had these when we were in our Sonlight materials, but we certainly we have gone for them. We had a rule that they could only read the covers of the "school" books until they were assigned during the school year. Maybe we just did not investigate this well enough. We took them to the library a lot during the summer, but it would have been really nice to have some "it's OK to read these" sets of books that came in a box with our other books (we tended to buy our Sonlight Core books early in the summer).
It was really not such a bad deal to keep them from reading the Core books during the summer because it built suspense and made the kids that much more excited to read during the school year.