How you can quickly and easily start a children's book club

For children, a book club is a great way to help develop social and communication skills while fostering a love of reading. Here are some guidelines for how to start and manage a book club for children, with tips for rules, making it fun, and mixing up genres.

• A book club can have as few as three or four members and as many as eight or 10. More than 10, though, might get a little hard to handle.
• It's best to make sure that the kids are all around the same age and are friends or know each other. This way they'll feel comfortable talking to each other.

• Put the responsibility for this on the kids. Letting them choose what they're going to read makes it more likely that they'll be motivated to actually take part.
• An adult can suggest that they pick from a selection of three or four books and let the kids vote, or they can each take turns picking a book for the following meeting.
• Encourage the kids to mix up genres, and make sure that the books they select are appropriate for their ages and reading ability.

• Help the kids decide how often they'll meet and where. Also, the participants should all agree on how much of the book they should finish before the next meeting.
• A good rule of thumb is to require that at least 50 pages be read.
• If someone doesn't read more than that, then perhaps the discussion could be about why he or she didn't like about the book.
• Also, expectations of respectful and polite conduct should be established from the start.

• After the discussion, the kids can have an opportunity to extend their understanding of a book by doing a related activity.
• Think of a craft activity or a snack that relates to the story, or let the kids re-enact parts of the story with dolls, puppets or by playing dress up.

• The kids are going to need an adult to help them manage this.
• You don't want it to be too much like school, so keep it fun by offering snacks and allowing for some free time, but help the children make the most of their time by encouraging them to stay on topic during discussions and directing any of the extension activities.