Thanks to our readers who joined in on the fun for our October Lesson Idea Contest! We had some wonderful entries via email and it was tough to choose just three winners…but here they are:

• 1st Place – A Year Subscription to Highlights Magazine : Congrats to Rachel for sharing how she used Stump The Teacher to get her son to dig deeper into the chapter book they were reading together. She was really impressed how it only took him a couple of nights to come up with some insightful questions.
• 2nd Place – Special Reading Kit: Thanks to Valerie who had lots of fun playing Straight or Curvy with her 4 year old son. Now he points them out everywhere they go! His special made reading kit will include many cool things he can use to make his straight and curvy letters.
• 3rd Place – $10 Abunga gift card: I hope Lori has a good time choosing a gift for her daughter on Abunga.com! She shared how she has helped her daughter learn more vocabulary words in the books they read by playing Vocabulary Riddles.

Congratulations to these three ladies and thanks to everyone else who joined in! I love reading how you guys use the lessons to help your children read at home. Although the contest is over, I would love to keep hearing from our readers (just remember to post your experiences in the comments!)

More contests to come in the near future…so stay tuned!

You may remember that I mentioned The Latin Baby Book Club here before. If not, be sure to check them out to find out more about Latin authors, bilingual books and reviews, songs, and much more!

So they were having a book giveaway on their site this month…and I won! I never win anything, so I’m really excited about winning! Plus I’ll be adding this great bilingual book to Chick Pea’s library:

If I Could is a lovely and imaginative book written by Nancy Sweetland. With full text in both English and Spanish, it follows the imagination of a little boy who wonders what it would be like to do things, if only he could.

They’re going to have another giveaway next month, so give them a visit, join the giveaway, and see if you win! Muchas gracias Ladies!

Speaking of winning…don’t forget to join our own October Lesson Idea Contest for your chance to win some cool prizes!

This post originally appeared at Reading Coach Online. Thanks for visiting and supporting our site!

They’re at it again…Cheerios will be giving away free books this fall for their Spoonful of Stories Program!

If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a program that works to donate books to kids who need them. From Cheerios:

In celebration of the 6th anniversary of the Spoonfuls of Stories® program, First Book and Cheerios® are distributing 100,000 children’s books by John Lithgow to programs serving children in need across the country.

The book titles for this year haven’t been released yet, but they will include 5 award winning books inside each Cheerios box. They will even be printed in English AND Spanish – can’t beat that! Although I prefer the honey nut variety, I’ll definitely be picking up a couple of boxes this fall!

Looking for a great idea to do with your kids to tie in some of the literature you’ve been reading? Well then you have to head over to Sycamore Stirrings for one of the most innovative ideas I’ve seen in a while! She shows you how to tie in food and treats with the books you read in a really fun and cute way…and your kids can help!

Here’s a preview:

You can see more examples here.

Katy has ready made tins for many popular books and she also hosts contests for her readers with different themes. Be sure to check this out!

I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend! Our thoughts are with all of those that are being affected by Gustav.

This week’s Literacy Lowdown offers some cool resources that you’ll be sure to use again and again. Have fun browsing…

Book Hooked: Do you remember that first book that really got your interest? The one that made you love reading? Well, go share it with the world over First Book! They’re running a voting contest to find out what the top 50 books are that made people love reading as kids. At the end of the voting (Sept 15th), the state that wins will receive 50,000 of those books to give to children in need. What a great cause…spread the word!

Cool Tool: What’s my number one tip for parents and teachers? Read aloud to your kids!. There are so many great things that come from reading books aloud…so keep on reading to them! Here’s a really cool (and totally free) resource that allows you to upload different types of text (word docs, PDFs, websites, etc.) and then have the computer read it to your child. Read The Words can be so useful! You can also use this as a teaching tool for writing. When I was in the classroom, I would always make my kids read their writing aloud to me so they could hear what it sounded like. About 90% of the time they would catch their own mistakes and make it better without me saying a word (just because they could hear that it didn’t sound right or make sense). This would be a great tool for older kids to use for that purpose.

The Classics: While on the topic of reading books aloud…here’s a great free resource for getting classic audio books. You can download the MP3s and even listen to them on your iPod. What an awesome way to expose your kids to the classics!

Comprehension Tips: As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in the process of adding to our Comprehension section. Stay tuned for the upcoming Comprehnsion Strategies and Skills series of posts! In the meantime, Collen Felz shares some great tips on encouraging reading comprehension that go along with the suggestions I’ll soon be sharing with you.

First of all, thanks to everyone who participated in our August giveaway by subscribing to Reading Coach Online! We’ve randomly chosen and notified our winner for the Abunga
gift card (Congratulations!), and we’re even doing another Gift Card Giveaway in September to give everyone else another chance to win.  Don’t worry, September’s giveaway is open to our current subscribers as well as new subscribers.  If you’ve already subscribed you are eligible, and if you haven’t subscribed yet, what are you waiting for?

Hopefully you’ve had a chance to browse through our Lesson Ideas and have found activities that are both fun and educational for your children.  We encourage you to not only try these ideas, but also leave comments and let us know how they’ve worked for your family (including any tweaks and variations you come up with).

We have a big contest planned for October, and all you have to do to enter is leave a comment on one of our Lesson Ideas or write a blog post linking to your favorite lesson idea. We’re lining up prizes right now, and we’ll release prize details as soon as they are finalized. I just wanted to give you all a heads up on the October contest so that you have time to try out some of the lesson ideas if you decide to join in on the fun. So stayed tuned for more details!

We’ve had a great week here at Reading Coach…we’ve nearly doubled our readers! We’re getting a lot of great emails and comments from you guys – sharing your stories and asking some really good questions (I’ll soon turn some of those into a post). People are passing us around and we’re getting in contact with some really cool families. So a big thanks to all of you out there that support us!

With that in mind…there’s still one more week left till we giveaway the gift card to Abunga.com. So feel free to share us with your friends who might want a chance to win too!

In other news…here are some great links for you to check out to see what others are doing this week. Happy reading!

Dr. Mommy shares her tips for motivating your teen to read. Very useful!

The Little Blue School is organizing an awesome literary event/contest for homeschoolers of varying ages. It sounds like something really cool to get into if your kids enjoy writing. Check out her post about their Book Arts Bash for more details! She also shares a pretty creative Unit Study on elections (called Vote For Me!) that’d be perfect to do this year.

This Homeschool Mom generously shares her novel guides with you so that you can have your kids do some creative things with the novels they read. Many of her activities help children deepen their comprehension of a book (and vocabulary words) in a fun way!

Catherine shares her experiences with teaching reading to her preschool daughter. It’s always nice to see when kids can have a hand in leading their own learning…even at a very young age!

Okay, so I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of kids watching tons of T.V. – but a show that’s created for the purpose of expanding children’s vocabularies gets a big thumbs up! Read more about this new show and how it can help your early reader at Fun With Vocabulary.

Check out this week’s reading roundup for some cool posts from other homeschoolers…happy reading!

Dawn at Day by Day Discoveries has discovered that reading is the key to her daughter’s success with math problems – and that they’re actually fun now!

Yielded Heart shares her tools for organizing her homeschool…she really likes making reading logs for her kids.

No Time For Flashcards shares a fun Summer Olympics activity for you to do with your child that includes a book that ties in with the activity. Check out her site for tons of ideas for other crafts that go along with books!

Topsy-Techie, who’s working on “raising homegrown geeks”, shares her reviews for online/computer programs geared towards helping kids who have learning disabilities with reading and other subjects. There are some really cool programs on there that can be used by anyone – but is especially helpful to those who need some help with special education for homeschoolers.

While on the topic of online games and such, Vocabulary Can Be Fun reminds their readers of the Fun With Vocabulary Games that they have on their site. They have some great resources on there to help your child build their vocabulary!

Thanks to The Hen over at Bilingual in the Boonies for the heads up on the launching of the new site Latin Baby Book Club.

I’m really excited about this new resource because it allows parents to find new books and music in Spanish for their kids. This site will serve as a great place to learn about latin children’s literature and culture for anyone interested in sharing a new language with their kids. As a bilingual homeschooling mom that’s trying to raise a bilingual family, I can’t begin tell you how helpful this will be! Okay, maybe I’ll try.

I’m always looking for new Spanish books and songs to read and sing with Chick Pea, but I’m so limited on local selection that I have to focus most of my efforts online. Then there’s the problem of time…I just don’t have enough of it to sift through countless sites to find quality bilingual literature and information to use at home. Enter The Latin Baby Book Club!

These wonderful ladies do all of the work for me! They feature great book reviews, author interviews, songs, tips for early readers, bilingual mom tales, and more. Be sure to check them out!

In the spirit of keeping our great readers updated with the latest in homeschool reading and beyond, I’m launching our new recurring post named Literacy Lowdown. Visit the site each week (or better yet subscribe here to receive updates automatically!) to learn what is going on around the blogosphere as it relates to homeschool reading and more. There are so many great resources, stories, tips, and news out there that you can spend hours surfing for good information. Well, let me do some of the work for you by rounding up a variety of interesting posts from other homeschooling families! Feel free to email me or leave links in the comments that you think our readers would like.

Kicking off our first Literacy Lowdown is…

Carletta over at Successful Homeschooling, who shares her homeschooling reading success tips. They’re similar to Dr Mommy’s useful homeschool reading tips…the simplified version, of course. Check them both out for some great ideas!

Carrie Lauth shares her guide to recognizing your child’s learning style…this can help you figure out ways to make reading instruction fun and interesting.

Spunkyhomeschool enlightens one of her readers about “living books” and shares how awesome it is to use these to teach her children without having to rely strictly on textbooks.

Happy reading!