McDonald’s bringing reading to life for kids – our personal experience

If you and your family enjoy the occasional fast food treat, as part of “on the go active” families do sometimes, you may have been excited to see something extra special appearing in every Happy Meal recently.

Reading is a huge part of our little young family life, with every bedtime consisting of story books and reading in our household alone, and one of our favourite times of the day together.  It is a chance where everyone contributes to the stories coming alive and you can see the joy in our little one’s face as he learns and plays with us through books.

McDonald’s has partnered with the National Literacy Trust, Penguin Random House Children’s UK and the Roald Dahl Literary Estate to help encourage family reading time in the UK with the McDonald’s Happy Readers initiative.

In our goodie bag to promote this exciting program, we were sent as a family to test out some of the little Roald Dahl story books given away in the Happy Meals and some character masks to bring the stories to life whilst we read them aloud together as a family.  We thoroughly enjoyed reading these little handy excepts of some of the great Roald Dahl classics we grew up reading as children ourselves, and bringing these stories to live through acting out the voices and characters.

  Our little one is only 2yrs old but already his love for books is growing with it being a daily part of his life, and one he remembers as all of us sitting down together to enjoy before going to sleep peacefully.  He remembers phrases from the books now, and happily runs over to pick out his favourite ones that we end up reading over and over each night.

Top ingredients for exciting storytelling – as voted for by kids!

McDonald’s has also carried out research into story time and can reveal the top five ingredients for extraordinary Roald Dahl-inspired storytelling, voted for by kids aged 5-11:

1. Funny voices to bring to life different characters (70%)
2. Sounds effects and strange, surprising noises (43%)
3. Facial gestures and expressions to make them laugh (27%)
4. Parents, grandparents and siblings taking it in turns to read (20%)
5. Acting out scenes from their favourite storybook (17%)

For anyone picking up a Happy Meal over this promotion time too at McDonalds, you will also receive a voucher on the box to download a free copy of a Roald Dahl book or pick up a copy instores below the RRP.  What a wonderful way to start a young person’s love with reading and even with the world of Roald Dahl.

Although I was sent the promotion copies of books and character masks for review at no charge, the comments and thoughts above are solely my own honest feedback on the promotion.

Love MFF xx