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Reading is one of the most important and amazing skills we teach at our elementary schools. To encourage a lifelong love of reading, we do some very special activities. February is a special month as it is the official "I Love To Read" month. For years, teachers at Lakeside Elementary have been celebrating and encouraging the pure joy and extraordinary skill of reading a book.

This year, out theme for February is: Wild About Reading. Although we put much effort into planning activities to make this a fun event, our true goal is to improve the reading skills of all of our students. Lakeside students really enjoy this month because of a variety of activities such as: all-school reading time, prizes and rewards for reading Accelerator Reading books, movie with the Principal and an all school culminating celebration of our reading accomplishments.

The real question that parents often want to know is: "how do we encourage our child to read"? We all know that reading to a child is so important but is it really being done as much as we know it should? A statement in a Denver Post article by Megan Wilson says: "a study conducted for Reach Out and Read shows that fewer than half of American parents read to their children daily." If this study is true, we need to encourage more parents to read to their children everyday especially if the children are under six years old.

Children, who see their parents reading, often become readers and come to accept that reading is a matter-of-fact activity. So sit down and curl up with a good book with your son or daughter, or grandson or grand daughter, and help encourage a wonderful lifelong skill.

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