How We Instill the Love of Reading in Our Children
- 5 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
We have a literacy crisis in America.
According to the national assessment of educational progress (often referred to as "The Nation's Report Card") only 35% of high school students are proficient in reading.
Reading is a vital life skill. When a child is not proficient in reading, it not only delays the learning the process for other critical skills but it also grows over time. And we should be clear that this problem is not necessarily a homeschool vs. public edcuation issue, although the literacy rates in public schools have fallen dramatically over the last ten years. This is a parenting issue. We have a responsibility as parents to make sure our children are proficient in reading and writing. Children do not need to simply know how to read: they must also know how to comprehend what they are reading and be able to write coherently and legibly. If the method of education that you have selected for your family is not able to help your child meet reading standards, it is your responsibility to practice with them or hire a tutor so that they can become proficient.
There are so many situations in which the skill of reading and reading comprehension are absolutely necessary. When you are driving your car, you are reading and navigating street signs. When trying a new recipe, you are reading the instructions and the ingredients carefully. When your boss give you instructions for a project or work to be done, or you have to read a safety manual on how to use a tool, reading is critical. When you are visiting a zoo or museum, there may be signs explaining the exhibit in more detail. Can you do your taxes without reading the instruction forms? What about filling out a job application? Or selecting the correct health benefits? Regardless of the type of job you have, everyone must be able to read and write proficiently: reading and writing emails, writing a resume, communicating professionally with staff and customers and being able to accurately write invoices.
Homeschool families make reading and reading comprehension an integral part of their homeschool curriculum along with math, science, PE, history, and other subjects. As homeschooling veterans, we have witnessed the many different ways homeschoolers incorporate reading into their lessons and we have included some of our tips for teaching children how to read in this article.
It is also important for our children to enjoy reading as a screen-free hobby. Reading can be lifelong skill used for both enjoyment and for education. We have taught all four of our children how to read, but they also enjoy reading to the extent of reading during their leisure outside of school lessons. They ask to read, even when its not time to do school work. There are so many ways to instill the love of reading in your home, and we will mention a few in this article.
Hello! We are veteran homeschoolers. We invite you to browse our website for articles about navigating the homeschool world, encouragement when making friends and limiting screen time for your family. Our site is not monetized.
We have a Home Library
There are many benefits to having a library full of books at home. Our children can enjoy books anytime that they are interested and there's always a wide selection ready for them to browse. They can keep their favorite book and enjoy it for years to come. Books in our home are passed down to our children as they finish reading them or grow out of them. Having a home library instills the value of reading: that it is not something reserved for school, or something hidden away and only used part time. Having books in the home and reading them are woven into our daily lifestyle. We financial budget to reguarly buy new or used books and we allocate a physical space in our home for them. We also teach our children to care for books by not coloring in them and to treat them with respect.
Here is how we build our home library.
We research books
We are proactive in finding great books to have in our home library and we are selective in what our children are allowed to read. It is no secret that many modern authors are attempting to sneak adult themes into children's books and other media, as a form of propaganda for their political beliefs. We treat the act of buying useful, wholesome materials that will benefit our child's childhood and their future seriously, as a solemn responsibility. This means that we review what they would read, directing them towards good books with strong moral messaging.
We keep our books organized
We group non-fiction books together (US and world history, history of Christianity and Jesus, science, and cookbooks). Additionally, each of our children have an area in our library and in their rooms for their favorite genres of books including the chapter books for their reading level. By doing this, when it is reading time they will know where to select a book from. We maintain our bookshelves buy purchasing books year round and donating the ones that our children grow out of.
Our home library contains non-fiction books
Books about historical events, cook books, art books, encyclopedias, books about animals, and science books are all important parts of our home library!
We remove and limit the Twaddle
This is a Charlotte Mason term that means stupid or silly. Our culture is filled with films and books that lack a wholesome storyline or deeply developed characters. In today's world it is easy for publishing houses to generate books with flashy covers and little or no substance. The next time you choose a book or movie for your kids, think about how silly the story is. Is there meaning in this book, or not?
We allow our children to buy fun books
We allow our kids to purchase and enjoy comic books, search and find books ("Where's Waldo"), puzzle books and animation or fantasy "non fiction" information books. Comic books can be an OK source of entertainment, as long as they read real books during school work time.
We allow our children to follow their interests
This is a great way we reinforce the love of reading. Our children are reading about topics and themes that they enjoy. For example, our tween son is interested in Godzilla movies. I was able to find some Godzilla fan fiction books for him to enjoy. There's nothing wrong with this, as long as they are reading at or the above their proficiency level so that they are challenged.
We limit devices for our children.
Limiting devices for your children is a parenting issue not a homeschool issue.
The studdies are out! Having unlimited access to devices is harmful to children. Children do not have a desire or motivation to dabble in a screen free hobby, meetup with friends, do an art project or read due to the round the clock device crutch.
We are not a screen free family. There are many ways we limit devices for our children. We use a flexible daily schedule with designated screen time and limit what websites and media they can access (which does not include Youtube or Tiktok!). Our children do not have a smart phone with free rein over the internet and apps. Our children are not allowed to use devices in public when they should be present and listening to others.
We also limit their device usage by providing healthy, age appropriate screen free activities for them to use in their leisure. This includes art supplies, toys and yes, books as well in our home library.
When we are out and about at a restaurant or waiting room, we provide our children screen free travel activities and books as well. Recently, I took my family to the mall. My children spent their time looking at a "Where's Waldo" book together while my teen and I shopped for shoes at a shoe store.
We do not use the public library
We are big believers in literacy and the life-long love of books and reading. However, we are very against the use of our tax dollars to be used for public libraries.
One of the reasons the cost of living is so high is due to the high budgets of local tax funded, government services like the public library. Government spending inherently causes inflation, which raises the cost of everything, whether a federal, state, or local level. And while you may believe that the small amount of money need to fund a local public library is insiginificant, think about that neighbor who is barely making ends meet and who needs that $100 to $200 extra per month. Think about the $5 million bond plan that went to fund that new community center with the new public library. Who do you think is paying for that?
Public libraries are one of many government services that we must end. It is a large financial burden for tax payers to maintain and staff, and you have no say in what the library actually does with your money. You are directly funding wicked programs like "Drag queen story time" and other grossly inappropriate children's activities and books, whether you participate in them or not. The solution these problems is to stop funding them.
There are many budget friendly ways to acquire great books. They are available for free on "buy nothing" pages or at "little free libraries" around our communities. Used books are available to purchase on Ebay, Amazon, used books stores and thrift stores.
Tips for teaching children how to read.
We have taught four children how to read.
Learning to read takes time. Its is estimated that it may take 10,000 hours of practice from the time it takes that a child begins to sound out letters to the time that they can read unassisted. In other words, reading is not a skill that happens overnight. Other children may be able to pick up reading in only a few months. Depending on your child and your parenting, it may take months and years for your child to grasp the phonics required to read proficiently.
There are seemingly infinite resources, curriculum and programs available to help you teach your child how to read. One thing we do is simply have them read out loud to us. We correct them when appropriate and teach them how to sound out the words. Repitition is key: there's no trick to reading and much of learning to read is simply memorizing sounds and associating them to seeing letters and syllables.
However, we do not pressure our children to learn to read, if they are not ready. If they are having trouble and not making any progress in sounding out letters or parts of words, it's possible that they have not yet developed enough. Our children began to learn to read between the ages of 4 to as late 8, and this wide range is normal. If your 4 year old can't get past sounding out letters, we focus on play based learning and then come back to reading in a month or two to try again.
Reading is required during school time
One of our homeschool lessons for our children is for them to read their book. Sometimes we allow them to choose their book. The title must be age appropriate at their level. For example, our teens are not allowed to read comic books during school time. We often have the children write or give oral book reports. They have to not only read but then be able to write down an explanation for what they read and what the story was about.
Reading is incorporated in other lessons as well. For example, they must read instructions in their math workbooks to understand the assignment. They do word problems or must follow science instructions.
We reward our children for finishing a book.
Especially for our early readers, we provide them with a reward when they finish a book to help motivate them to continue practicing reading. It may be dinner to a restaurant with one of us or a special new toy.
We read to our kids.
This seems obvious to me. When our children were young, we read them a bedtime story at the very least, sometimes more often than that. As they are growing older, we still read them out loud on occasion. We read to them during meal times as well which may include a school lesson, a vocabulary lesson, poetry, a story with a moral, or conversation topic.
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