There are many ways you can help bring art and reading together in your children’s lives. Picture books offer a good way to help early readers learn to interpret words and images while opening young minds to the power of imagination. For older kids, museum visits can spark interest in a wide variety of topics including, of course, art itself.

Use the following articles and tips to gather ideas to help stimulate your children’s interest in both reading and art. 

• Artistic Adventures: How Appreciating Art Can Promote Literacy
• Combine Learning and Fun at Art Museums
• Getting the Most Out of Picture Books
• The Art of Reading Aloud: Tips for Parents
• Encouraging Personal Libraries at Home

• Creating a Reading Environment at Home 

Hands-on activities can be a great way to motivate your children to read. Try one of these suggestions that pairs a book with an art activity.

• Bumpy Road Painting
• Color Magic
• Creating Collage
• Creating Dough Sculptures
• Folk Art for Teens
• Making a Junk Sculpture
• Making Monster Masks 
• Tasty Impressions
• Quilting Stories

For more activity ideas, try the Activity Database where you can search for ideas by category, keyword and age group.

  View the following resources that we've compiled to help you use art themes to promote reading.

Booklists
Help your children find great book titles about artists, art history or other art themes.

• Great Books for Young Artists
• Books for Exploring Fun with Colors
• Artistic Discoveries
• Booklist for Museum Visits
• Books to Help Make Arts Part of Literacy Development
• Suggested Reading About Children's Book Illustrators

Web Resources
We've compiled several great web links for you to explore. Click here for a full list. Check out these featured links:

• Crayola's "Books & Beyond"
  http://www.crayola.com/educators/booksbeyond/index.cfm
  A fun site for all, the Crayola website focuses on reading, writing and crafts. Parents will find lots of activity ideas.  Kids can submit their artwork, play games and design e-cards.
• KinderArt
  http://www.kinderart.com
  This site offers the largest collection of free art lessons on the Internet. Parents will find an enormous collection of resources featuring art activity ideas.
• Picturing Books
  http://picturingbooks.imaginarylands.org
  A site devoted entirely to picture books, this website provides information about artistic media, the anatomy of a book and how to evaluate picture books.

Fun and Games for Kids
Visit the RIF Reading Planet Art Studio to find online activities for kids. Kids will have a blast with these web features:

• Riffington's Coloring Book
• Illustrate a Story
• Read It & Draw It
• Poetry In Pictures