Reading Clubs for Parents and Children, an example of good practice!

This poster presents the Reading Clubs for Parents and Children, developed in the Ílhavo Public Library, Portugal, since 2009, it’s a project that has clearly had a positive impact on the local community, creating loyal library members of different generations and generates an enthusiastic response from them. The Reading Clubs for Parents and Children (families with children from 3 to 7 years and 8 to 11 years old) are making and contributing to the development of readers. The Public Library has a fundamental role in this, working along with parents, to develop reading habits in children and creating physical and emotional conditions for that development. The Reading Clubs provide a favourable environment for reading in the family context and promote moments of affection, joy, sharing and pleasure, having books as central stage and reading as a factor of individual development. How it works: a monthly gathering of children and their parents which took place over several months with a range of different reading activities; for each session, a different theme was chosen and then fully developed by the children and their parents. At the end of each session the theme for the following session was announced and a new “task” was given for the family to carry out before the next meeting. The task always involved the participation of the children and the family and revolved around children’s literature and storytelling. We realized 111 sessions, with an average of 15 families per session. With this project we are: promoting emotional experiences between parents and their children which revolve around books and reading, stimulating some relevant lexical areas, particularly those related to the world around the child’s life, facilitating the contact with books wich occurred in every session, as well as the sharing of the children’s reading experiences with their families.