Read Across America Week Ideas

Read Across America Week is quickly approaching so I thought I’d share some fun Read Across America Week Ideas that you can use!

Read Across America Week is an annual event that is an initiative on reading creative by the National Education Association. … This motivational and awareness day calls all children and youth in every community across the United States to celebrate reading.  Read Across America week is usually the first week in March.

At some schools, the whole school participates in this week and has a whole fun literacy week or you can celebrate it in your own classroom or at home.

Read Across America Week Ideas

Take your reading outdoors.

• Take your class outside and find a nice shady area and have storytime outside. You can do the same at home. Find somewhere nice to sit outside, or maybe take a book to a park.

Book Scavenger Hunt

• This one can be done in the classroom or at home. Set out some books that you know have the items on the list and have your little learners look through the books for them. You can print off a picture of the hunt below or you can find the actual printable version of the book scavenger hunt here. We also have an extension page that the kids can fill in all of the items they found in the books that you can grab for free here.

Reading Buddies

• Get in touch with an older grade, 5th, and 6th work well for this, and have their class become reading buddies with yours. They can come and read to the younger kids and vice versa, the younger kids can read to the older kids. You can do the same at home, and put an older sibling together with a younger one and have them take turns reading to each other.

Reading Bingo

• Send this fun reading bingo home with your little learners to make reading even more fun! Have them bring it back completed to you for a small prize. You can grab the reading bingo for free here.

Have Guest Readers or Mystery Readers

• You could invite a local author in to read to the students. Have the principal stop in to read a book to the class or even invite a police officer! Tons of different options you could go with here. You could also invite mystery readers in. Give the class 3 clues to see if they can guess who the reader will be!

Do An Author Study

• Does your class have a favorite author? Some of our favorites to do author studies on are Eric Carle, Laura Numeroff, and James Dean. We have a bunch of activities that you could do along with the author study.

• Eric Carle:
  • Free Printable Caterpillar Hat
  • The Very Hungry Caterpillar Literacy Snack
  • The Grouchy Ladybug Literacy Snack
  • A Very Busy Spider Literacy Snack
  • The Tiny See Literacy Snack
  • Pancakes! Pancakes! Literacy Snack
• Laura Numeroff
  • Cookie Counting Puzzles
  • Cookie Hat
  • If You Give A Moose A Muffin Literacy Snack
  • If You Give A Cat A Cupcake Literacy Snack
  • Donut Ten Frames
  • If You Give A Dog A Donut Literacy Snack
• James Dean
  • Cool Cat Awards
  • Pete The Cat I Love My White Shoes Literacy Snack
  • Pete The Cat Cupcake Subtraction Craftivity

Dress Up As Your Favorite Book Character Day

• Have your choose a book and dress up as one of the characters. The class can take turns guessing who everyone is dressed up as! For yourself, talk to your teammates about dressing up altogether to make it extra fun!

Host A Family Reading Campout

• Choose a night and invite the entire school out to a family reading campout. We have done this in our cafeteria. Set up several tents, make pretend campfires and have some teachers volunteer to come and read too! We also set up a reading craft area and gave out special s’more snacks!

Read With Flashlights

• Set aside some special reading time and read with flashlights! Something so small but makes it so fun! The kids love it!

Beary Good Reader Snack

• Here’s a fun snack to give to your beary good readers! You can put the crackers into a snack bag or you can find pre-packaged crackers that you can just attach the bag topper to as well! Click here to download it now.

Read Books That Promote Diversity And Inclusion.

• The Read Across America website has a fantastic calendar of book suggestions depending on that month’s theme. From foster inclusiveness exploring families and history to promoting respect. You can check out the calendar and book suggestions here.

Make A Literacy Snack

• Have you tried one of our literacy snack ideas? We take a read-aloud and create a fun snack to go along with the book. Each one has a free printable available to go with the book too! We have shared over 100 of them now. You can find them all here.

Do you have any other fun ways to celebrate Read Across America week? Share with us below!

See you next time!

Jenette