The UPS truck pulled up in front of our house and my daughter could not contain her excitement, she had been waiting all week for her new Kindle to arrive. Every day she’d run into the house after school and ask, expectantly, “Is it here yet?!”
And every day when I answered, “No, not yet,” her face would fall and she look up at me with sad eyes. So on this day when the UPS delivery man jumped out of his truck with a small brown box, she was so ready. But then he went up to our neighbor’s house and left the package there. She was crushed.
With tears filling her eyes she said, “I know I need to be patient mom, but I’m just SO EXCITED for it to come, I just can’t wait to be able to read lots and lots of books on it!” I mean, what more can a mama want then for her young kids to be super excited about reading?!
So, when the new Kindle e-reader came the next day, I got it all ready for her for when she got home from school. It was quick and easy to set up her FreeTime Unlimited profile, I couldn’t wait for her to be able to try it out.
Fostering a Love of Reading
March is National Reading Month and is a great time to get involved in your child’s reading and foster their love for great books! The Kindle e-reader is perfect for encouraging your kids to love reading, especially once they are reading chapter books.
A few months ago my daughter started to really enjoy reading beginning chapter books. She got a couple books for Christmas and quickly made her way through those. She was reading so quickly that I had trouble keeping new books on hand for her to read. Then one day I realized that I could get her books on Kindle and let her use my Kindle Fire to read them.
It was a brilliant idea, until it wasn’t. She loved it and was reading all.the.time. Which, I obviously can’t complain about, but she was going through a book every few days and then asking me to buy her another one. While there are lots of great Kindle books for her reading level that are just a few dollars per book, this was beginning to be an expensive habit!
So when I found out about Amazon’s FreeTime Unlimited I knew it was the perfect solution for us! For just $2.99 per month you can set up a profile for your child and they get unlimited access to hundreds of age-appropriate chapter books and early readers, hand-picked just for them!
My daughter has been using her Kindle e-reader to read every day since it arrived. She reads in the morning at the breakfast table, she reads when she gets home from school, and she reads in her bed at night before going to sleep. As soon as she finished one book she can dive right into the next one!
I really appreciate how this Kindle is just for reading and doesn’t have the games and apps that can so easily distract her. She can easily look up the definition of words that she doesn’t know as she is reading, and using the Vocabulary Builder she can go back and review those words and quiz herself. And when she does use the Kindle Fire, her FreeTime Unlimited account is ad free and disables in-app purchases while giving her access to over 5,000 kid-friendly books, games, educational apps, movies, and TV shows.
Through Kindle and FreeTime Unlimited we also have access to lots of books that we can read out loud together as a family. We’ve been reading chapter books aloud to our kids for a while now, and I have to admit that I am enjoying reading them my favorite childhood books as much as they are enjoying listening!
Tonight my daughter brought me the Kindle e-reader to read to her before bed. She said, “Even though I can read to myself, I still like you to read to me.” Me too, sweetheart. Me too!
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
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