WOW, what a great kid you have there. And you know great kids come from great parents. Good job!!! I am trying really hard to be a family of reading. My daughter Genesis (9 years old) use to love to read, but now she dreads it. I keep getting books for her hoping that one will spark her interest. I’ve made it a requirement that she reads a chapter before getting online or TV. I just don’t want her to hate reading, which right now she does.
Any tips?

This is something that’s brought on a lot of thought and prayers for me over the years… years that I sure didn’t feel like I was doing a “good job”! This question of how to go about nurturing readers, especially when a child doesn’t seem very prone to reading on his own perplexed and intimidated me. Yes, I can honestly say that teaching our oldest son to read was like this big hurdle in my mind… I just knew that if I could get him reading well, the rest would come! It didn’t even occur to me then that he might not like reading much, once he’d learned. I too bought books that laid around unread for years before they were *discovered*, which yes, eventually… they have been!

OH! … and what an insurmountable task it seemed to me, looming before me like some mysterious quest that I didn’t know exactly how to embark upon, to teach my oldest child to read. I think the simplicity of it really eluded me… that teaching phonics, and then nurturing a genuine love for reading, isn’t really so difficult as I’d inadvertently built it up in my mind as being, and so in many ways discouraged myself before I’d hardly begun. That however, is the curse of a perfectionist, and I digress… Yes, this journey has definitely taught me as much as it’s taught my son, about perseverance. It really does simply take a little bit of consistent effort, and time set aside every day.

Our son was not always nearly so enthusiastic about reading as I was, nor as he is now, unlike his younger sister, who’s been a bibliophile from the time she was five and started reading on her own, stressing me out over on the opposite end of the spectrum because I hadn’t taught her those phonograms yet and she might get all mixed up!

Yes, with all of the fumbling, planning, worrying and learning that I’ve done over the years, I think that I’m finally starting to realize that my kids are learning not because of me, but rather in spite of me. Laughing… Seriously though, there are a few things that I do believe I’ve done right in the way of nurturing our up and coming readers, which may even warrant my passing along to you, and so I shall.

Nathan used to moan when I’d give him a book for required reading that seemed to him like it would require too much effort, or didn’t catch his attention immediately by way of its title and cover. Oh, how often I did fret over his seemingly delayed readiness to even learn how to read. And I emphasize seemingly because I soon learned that I was gauging his readiness by the wrong standards: I was judging where we were by my own preconceived expectations and self-imposed time-line, rather than by his…

I do believe that starting with a solid phonics program is the key to giving your children a strong reading start. However, at the same time, I also think that it’s important that we don’t rush them, forcing something before they’re ready. If we want our children to love reading, we should be sensitive to their readiness, because they will eventually be ready and want to learn!

We took it slow, beginning to learn basic phonics when he was six, and progressed steadily from there. Let’s just say that it was not his favorite thing to do, and so I persisted at an easy pace, sometimes only five minutes a day (per what I’d learned from my plethora of reading teacher materials), and eventually I turned it into game-time, which he responded most readily to (in second grade). That’s when it all begin to click for him…

Here is an excerpt from an article that encouraged me immensely in the earlier years, to relax… to pay more attention to him, than to my own fears of failing him.

Better Late than Early
An Excerpt from: Homeschooling for Success
How Parents can Create a Superior Education for their Child

For younger children, the emphasis is usually on building a solid foundation in reading, writing, and basic math. Where schools believe in starting formal learning as early as possible, most homeschoolers believe in delaying formal studies until the child is seven or older. This allows the child to mature physically and emotionally before she is asked to sit down and study.

Dr. Raymond Moore and his late wife, Dorothy Moore are probably the best-known advocates of the later-is-better approach. The Moores’ 1975 book Better Late Than Early summarizes research supporting their contention that children are not psychologically ready for formal learning until age eight to ten. They suggest that waiting allows children to gain the maturity and logical skills necessary for formal work and prevents them from becoming frustrated and discouraged by attempts to handle material they are simply not yet ready to understand.

It is quite common for homeschooled children, especially those using a flexible homeschooling approach, to learn to read as young as three or to delay until age eight or nine. This may seem like a shocking idea, but boys in particular are often not ready to read until they are seven or older, and they quickly catch up to the early readers.

Because of the individualized nature of homeschooling, late reading is not a handicap as it might be in a conventional school setting. Schools rely on text-based instruction, but “late” readers at home simply learn through other means, like watching educational TV and videos, asking questions, and observing the world around them. Also, since the child is not labeled as “slow” or put into the slow reading group, their self-confidence and self-esteem does not suffer. The child will grow into an enthusiastic reader, and thus view reading not only as a tool for obtaining knowledge or keeping up with others but as an enjoyable activity.

Raising a lifelong reader is very different from just teaching a child to read. Approximately twenty million people in the United States can’t read. Another estimated 40 million read at a fourth-grade level. While these are unacceptable numbers, there is another reading epidemic in this country. We’re a nation of “alliterates’”, which means we know how to read but we don’t read. A 1999 survey showed that only 45 percent of citizens read more than a half-hour every day—that would include all reading from fiction to newspapers to work-related materials. While the two hours of television the average American watches each day factors in here, could our nation’s lack of interest in reading have something to do with the way we are taught to read in school? Is it because we assign reading (instead of letting the child choose) and require book reports? Book reports in the second grade? Record numbers of children are forced to read before they are developmentally ready. Thus, reading continues to be an unpleasant experience for most of their school career. Unless a reading problem is involved children learn to read when they are ready. It is developmental and not synchronized to meet an educator’s timetable.

The best advice is to teach your child to read when they are ready, regardless of how young or old they may be. {emphasis mine.} Reading specialists have observed that children display certain behaviors when  they are read to read.

Click here to read the rest: Better Late than Early: An Excerpt from: Homeschooling for Success, How Parents can Create a Superior Education for their Child

Also see: Better Late Than Early: A New Approach to Your Child’s Education

I won’t bore you (well, not in this post anyways) with a list of all of the reading curricula that I read for my own edification, some of which I then *used* on him as I designed my own eclectic reading program! However, I will share with you what I think nurtured him along the most regarding his going beyond merely learning how to read, to his eventually becoming a real READER: someone who picks up a good, living book, of his own volition, and reads for his own pleasure and edification… often. {Oh, GLORY day!} This didn’t happen really until he was about 11 years old. Don’t get me wrong, he’d read a few good chapter books before then, but only because I’d required it.

I’ll never forget the day that Nathan actually thanked me for making him read a chapter book on his own, which “turned out to be interesting, after all”, but only after he’d done a lot of grumbling before starting it. Imagine that?! This was also when he got his “don’t judge a book by its cover” lecture. Good times!

He was nine, turning ten years old that year. That was also the year that I started having him read a harder, more challenging book aloud to me regularly as well (both were required reading for our AO, Year 3 program). Actually, we took turns reading it, and it was divided into short portions, scheduled out over a period of many weeks, which kept us both plugging away at it together, without being overwhelmed. That was all that I required of him though at that time, reading-wise, besides some short, regular poetry readings, and occasional read-aloud sessions from his McGuffey, both of which he actually loved! Over the years, he’s learned to trust my selection of books, and isn’t so quick to snub a book I require or merely suggest.

I will say that besides the Moores, the writings of Dr. Ruth Beechick and Charlotte Mason offered me the greatest encouragment regarding the teaching (or rather, facilitating of) reading at the time. Now I’d like to offer a few tips for nurturing your own readers, much of which I think is somewhat intuitive.

The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.  ~James Bryce

Nurturing Readers~ Some tips from our Reading House to Yours!

• Make reading to your children often a priority, from the time they’re babes, even on into their teens. Be selective with this reading time, choosing quality, living books full of great ideas, worthy of your child’s imagination and ever growing curiosity regarding their world.

• Make a point of incoorperating narrations into your daily reading routines early-on, and continue as the years progress. This, in our experience, has been an area that easily gets neglected. Every day, we begin again… I have fond memories of Nathan and Tabitha spontaneously planning and reenacting quite a few tales with their stuffed animals. There are so many creative ways to include narrations in one’s reading routines. Narrations often happen naturally as my kids’ enthusiasm for something they’re reading about just spills over naturally, and they want to tell me all about it. I’m often having to consciously set what I’m doing aside to tune myself into what they’re saying. These spontaneous narrations often will then turn into great discussions too!
• Require fifteen, then twenty, and eventually thirty minutes of comfortable (reading level-wise) silent reading each day, from a book that’s part of your “studies”, literature supplemental to your history studies maybe (what we call our “school books”- which are simply the ones I’ve scheduled). Now that they’re older, my kiddos read more, but this was a good starting point in their early elementary years. Practice, practice, practice… a little bit each day, just like the phonics lessons that got them there.
• Require your children to read aloud to you each day as well. I cannot overstate the value of this discipline enough. It’s not only provided hours of wonderful memories for us, but also allows me to hear what we need to work on, clarify phonetic mispronunciations and gives your children needed practice with enunciation and elocution, an invaluable skill.
  
• Be patient. Continue to read good books to them, even once they’re reading fluently on their own. Keep your shelves stocked and tables strewn with more of the same, and they will read… when they’re ready, what they want to (along with a few things you’ve *suggested*, or required via their other studies, to challenge them).
• Be a discerning reader yourself. They will learn by seeing you, and eventually will emulate you and will even want to read what you’re reading- just last week Nathan asked me if he could read my book when I was finished. He’s also forever reading news and geo-political stuff over his Dad’s shoulder. Get yourself some good book lists to refer to over the years, as you make purchases, create a PBS wishlist, or go to the library. I had to learn what books I was even looking for, since my own education (unfortunately) didn’t include much in the way of good literature. I’ll include some of my favorites at the end of this post.
• Provide plenty of *easy* books for them to read, along with magazines, with lots of engaging pictures. These will nurture that symbiotic relationship that’s just beginning between your children and their books early on. I must admit that though we avoid it for the most part, I’ve even allowed a bit of twaddle over the years (Magic Tree House series comes to mind here- I think the kids checked every single one of those out from the library one summer), as well as some of those Illustrated Classics. Catherine Levison has a great article here defining twaddle, which is the literary equivalent to junk food, and you want to avoid, for the most part. My son read and re-read a huge collection of Ranger Rick mags that a friend’s daughter had given us. I remember him piling a new stack of these well-read, falling apart magazines on our bed each evening… Nathan has also LOVED the Usborne World History and Time Traveller books, BIG time, and has read them front to back many times over the years! Last year he devoured Oxford’s First Ancient History, which we’d bought him as a gift, seeing as it was a step-up from the Usborne history books that he’d loved so much. He’s also enjoyed Hakim’s History of US series, which we’ve gradually attained via paperbackswap.com, and has led to some interesting discussions. Nathan will often choose history books for his evening free-reading time, and it has been a joy to see this interest of his grow and blossom over the years. His other all-time favorites have been our myriad collection of picture Bibles. In the last couple of months I have been thrilled to find him snuggled in bed with his grown-up NIV, “reading about David”! It was really hard to tell him “lights out” those nights.

• Allow your children an extra 30 mins. to an hour of time after “bed-time” to sit up and read, before “lights-out” time. It works! Our kids have been doing this for years, and it’s become a very important time to them. It’s also a time that Dad will often snuggle and read to them, or myself, once the baby’s in bed. I’ve also allowed them to do drawing or copy-work (yes, per their request) during this “quiet reading time”. Since Chris and I usually stay up well after they’ve gone to sleep, we’ve often allowed this time to be in our “big bed”, which enabled Nathan and Tabitha to be together, and facilitates snuggling so well. One year we read through The Chronicles of Narnia together, a chapter or two a night. It all started when I announced that we had to read the book before going to see the movie, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe when it came out in theatres. Once we finished that first one, the kids just wanted me to keep going. Now that they’re older though, and their baby sister is sleeping in our room, this time is spent in their own bedrooms. Everything in it’s time. You will find what works best for your family.

• Don’t over do it. Remember that you want them to enjoy reading. Less really can be more, in the long run. If your children seem sincerely overwhelmed, lighten their load a little bit, so long as you’re confident they are putting forth their best efforts. That’s all that matters, that they’re learning, growing… paces will vary.
  
• Help them find good books (and/or articles online even) about topics that interest them.

• Don’t be afraid to tell them no, and make them wait for some books. I did this with The Hobbit, a book that Nathan wanted to read for years before I’d let him, before he was ready. The cover jacket of this book tantalized him to no end, and the inadvertent anticipation this created was worth its weight and wait in gold. When I did finally relent, a couple of months before he turned twelve, he gobbled it up within three weeks, over our winter break, right before starting the LOTR trilogy. Yes, I’ll never forget that holiday break, when I did the homeschool-mama-happy-dance all around the house, while he spent the month immersed in mature books, of his own volition, and *off* from school-work. Now, he’s reading The Hobbit again (per his own request) at a much slower pace, as it’s scheduled into his weekly AO readings.
• Allow them to take their school-work/reading books outside. A change of pace is always nice, and the outdoors invigorating… especially when one has good company.
  

• Get an iPod and load it with lots of great audio books! We’ve done this for the last couple of years, and it’s been such a blessing, not only in catching my slack (having had a baby has really cut into our read-aloud time!), but in providing constructive listening time on long road trips, or as a reading aid for more difficult books. Librivox.org is my favorite place to download free podcasts (chapters) from. We’ve found many of our schoolbooks (classics, in the public domain) available there.

• Siblings reading to each other and even helping with the teaching is also a great reading encourager. How blessed I’ve been to awaken in the mornings to find my son reading to his younger sister, all quiet and snuggly in his room. These are wonderful, precious times and my two older ones are already anxiously working with reading to our toddler!
• Watching the movie made from a book is always a treat around here too. My kids love to critique movies according to their books! Recently they were very impressed by a documentary that we watched, “Exodus Revealed” which incoorperated a lot of archaeology verifying the Israelites’ being in Egypt and their Exodus, which we’d just been reading aloud about again. They were fascinated! We watch a lot of documentaries around here, and I highly recommend Netflix as a great educational supplement. We supplement much of our history and literature readings with great movies.
• Last, but certainly not least, is the fundamental importance of LIMITing screen-time for your kids! At our house, this “screen-time” includes tv, computer and video-games time . In the past this has been fairly simple for us, since we haven’t owned any gaming devices, besides a few educational pc games, and our *vintage* atari game(s) that Chris bought off of ebay years ago. This will be changing soon though, since the kids’ major gifts year will be gaming devices. Yikes! We’ve limited screen-time to the point that it’s just an understood fact of life around here, and will remain so even (especially) once they get their new gaming devices. Chris and I are looking forward to all of the many educational aspects of the gaming world too. We haven’t had cable tv either, except for a year that it was necessary for our high-speed internet connection, and then they had to ask permission to watch certain shows, didn’t have free-reign of the remote, and tv time was limited. Period. They have a set amount of computer time to use each week, and we have a system where they sign in and sign out, so as to keep track of time they’ve used online. Thus, when our kids get “bored”, or have down-time, they often reach for books, rather than vegging out in front of a screen… It’s worked for us. Just last night Nathan was wanting to start a movie at 10:00, and I said “no, it’s too late, but you can read…” So he chose to start the book he’s “been meaning to read for awhile now”, The Swiss Family Robinson, and is immersed in it today, grabbed it and snuggled up on the couch first thing this morning. Thoughtfully placed boundaries are beneficial for our children.

I do hope and pray that you are encouraged! Even as I did these (mostly mundane) things that I’ve listed, and we plugged away little by little with our humble reading routines over the earlier years, I often felt defeated and discouraged, like I wasn’t doing enough… However, now that my older children are ten and thirteen year-olds who relish reading, I can see that it was all just a matter of t.i.m.e., and their being individuals who progress at their own rate, in their own time. There is no formula, because homeschooling is living and learning together, daily. We are not educating with a cookie-cutter mentality, therefore I do believe that the reading journey’s dynamics will be a bit different for each family, and even with every child within that family… naturally.

Book Lists from which to glean~

1. Ambleside Online (see book lists under each year)
   
2. 1000 Good Books List
3. Simply Charlotte Mason
   
4. TruthQuest History
5. Twaddle-Free Literature by Grade Level
6. A Book in Time
   
7. Sonlight
8. Veritas Press

And lastly, I’d like to leave you with a little nugget of advice from my 13 year old homeschooled kiddo, when asked during his interview what changes he might suggest to homeschool teachers,

I think a lot of parents over stress themselves, thinking they have to be up to standards or up above public schooling when they first begin home schooling because they hear that home schooling is better. This makes it to where there is too much stress when they try to teach just like a public school. That is the glory of home schooling because that most of the time the student gets to choose some of his or her assignments and subjects for the day, to have input.

So, there you have it folks… Relax, read with your kids, and enjoy the adventure, since it’s every baby step along the way that will get you there!

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.  ~G.K. Chesterton

Please share with us what you’ve done to nurture your own readers and any tips you’ve picked up along the way in creating a reading house within your own home.

Embracing the adventure,

A lovely photo journal of what looks like an incredible educational trip over at Growing Urban Wildflowers:
“…or, there and back again”

A great post about a duck and a boy over at Life-Led-Learning: Wild Duck Rescue

A review of a book series that I have never read but which we will definitely be checking out at Seeds and Dreams: Why We Love Gregor the Overlander

And a continuation of the discussion of Children’s Church over at Crunchy Christian Mom:
Children and church

And finally a great general unschooling article that I found to be an excellent reminder of how to keep the spark of interest alive: keeping the cart behind the horse

They’ll be bored and probably go to sleep in service with us so they’re better off with children – Or are they?  I have watched and felt that same cringing feeling I’ve felt when witnessing children being forced to attend children’s church as with the ones sent to school.  It’s the same scene- and why wouldn’t it be?  The parent walks up and signs the child in and the child begins to whimper and cry or flat out scream and the parent, unmoved, forces the child to go on, telling the teacher/leader to ignore the child.  I was guilty of the same not too long ago.  Afterward I’d ask my daughter how it was, thinking that surely she’d have some great story that would redeem the whole not wanting to go in the first place scene, making me know I did the right thing after all by sending her.  But the story was not so.  It never was.

Her stories varied from times where she’d say “It was boring, all we did was puzzles”, to how badly she felt because everyone else colored neatly, in between the lines and finished coloring quickly whereas she took her time and didn’t ever before care about coloring in the lines.  Then she told me that no one would talk to her or play with her and the last time it was that someone poked out there tongue at her and called her cousin (who was visiting with us) a bad name.  She said she never wanted to go in there again, especially not alone.

I felt horrible.  The whole thing sounded a lot like school and I didn’t force her there against her will so why should this be any different?  Most people say a kid needs to get used to that sort of thing cause it’s what happens in the real world but I never listened to that in terms of sending her to school but why not this? Is it because it was geared towards God?  Don’t we unschool, talking together about things of God every day?  Don’t we spend time worshipping and praising Him, actively incorporating His principles in our daily walk?  Why should this be any different?  Are these not the same children in the schools and the same parents leading Children’s Church who have the mindset of the traditional educational system in mind when leading these classes?  If I am against subjecting my child to this in one building, why should it be different in another?  Do I sacrifice her will in the name of  “well this is about Jesus!”? Now, I’ve come to the point where, if Jaiela wants to go to Children’s Church then she will go.  So far, she’s not had the inclination to join them and now, finally, I’m ok with that.

I know there are some others out there that I missed–if you see a great one post it in the comments please (including if it is your own).

Penny over at Seeds and Dreams just wrote about their recent experiences with the changes they have made to their homeschool style in happenings of life and love learning

Christy over at Growing Urban Wildflowers shared a wonderful specific experience that is the perfect illustration of how unschooling works and why in On Tying Bows.

Deschooling is the process of changing the way you think about learning and education. It’s moving away from the idea that learning only takes place “in school” and/or by the methods traditionally used by schools.

I didn’t initially set out with a natural learning mindset. In addition to having attended public school for 13 years myself, we began our homeschooling journey using classical materials so we certainly have a lot of experience with curriculum, textbooks, workbooks, etc. But this last school year life just seemed to be constantly getting in the way of our schooling…it felt like we never had time to sit down and really hit the books and I was really stressed out about it. I remember praying and praying and praying some more and I kept getting the feeling that in answer to my prayers God was telling me to relax, relax, relax. (Easier said than done.)

So after many months of God pointing me in the same direction I finally began the task of deschooling. The first step was to deschool myself and Wonderful Hubby. We read books…

Learning All the Time by John Holt

Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling by John Holt

The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World as Your Child’s Classroom by Mary Griffith

Homeschooling Our Children Unschooling Ourselves by Alison McKee

The Unschooling Unmanual

We discussed what we knew about our kids, their strengths and weaknesses, what we knew about ourselves and our own educations, how we learned best as kids, what we remember about school, where we failed and where we enjoyed success. We finally began to see life through the lenses of natural learners.

Once we felt comfortable with this new mindset we stopped using the term “school” to describe what we did all day. If we happened to have time for a workbook or if we happened to be using a text book we called it “book work”. We wanted to the kids to start thinking about their education as something that was happening all day every day, not just when we were “doing school”.

I also stopped recording and referring to our learning by subject. When you break it down into math, reading, writing, social studies, etc., where do you put things like; helped Grandma move or watched Dad fix the leaky pipe under the sink or helped make and pass out fliers while looking for our lost cat? These things are educational and were part of our real life but they don’t necessarily fit into the little subjects my record keeping book provides me with so I went through the book and crossed out all the subject labels. Now I just record what we do as it happens and without worry of where it fits.

A few months into all of this now I will say that I’ve found our toughest “deschooling” task to be learning to trust each other. I have to trust them to learn with out my constant badgering and they have to trust me to let them say no when I suggest an activity they aren’t interested in. J is doing fine and is very curious about learning. W on the other hand is going about the whole thing a bit more cautiously. I really pushed him in the beginning and he doesn’t really believe yet that he has the freedom to say no.

Little by little we’re getting the hang of living and learning in a natural way. The boys still ask “Have we done school yet today?” and I still have moments of panic and wish they would engage in activities that are more obviously academic. But we’re getting over it and learning to value each and every moment we’re given.

I LOVE picture books, especially picture books that inspire me as an artist. My grandparents made sure we had tons of books growing up, subscribing to Scolastic books and the like for us from the momemnt we could hold a book in our hands. The thing is picture books didn’t inspire me to read. They inspired me to draw and paint, even now the favorite picture books from my childhood inspire me as an artist.

What inspired me to read were those great big books my mom put up high so I wouldn’t destroy them–books like Winnie-the-Pooh, Heidi, A.A. Milne’s poems, a couple Reader’s Digest anthologies for kids, a book of poetry with very few illustrations but designed for children, and several great big sets of vintage children’s books–short on pictures bu full of bits and pieces from wonderful children’s stories through the ages. I would often ask my mom to read to me from them as they were a mystery to me, these books with few pictures but so man words that were clearly designed for children.

Another thing that made me want to read was seeing her cuddled up on the couch, reading a novel. I would snuggle up to her, trying to get her attention. When that didn’t work I would look over her shoulder, trying to figure out what held her attention. To this day I still remember that wall of words and how I couldn’t understand what was so great about it. Every once in a while she would pause her reading to see what I wanted, and I would always ask, regardless of what I had originally wanted, where the pictures were and why she wanted to read a book without pictures. She would always reply, “because I enjoy a good story and like reading books.” Then she would return to reading and I would look over her shoulder, staring at the page trying to see if I could decipher any of the words on it, trying to make sense of the blur of squiggles. Sometimes, if it were a suitable book, she would take a moment to read aloud some bit that I would point out to her, asking what it said. It would be years before I would learn to read and enjoy it because I struggled with the way they taught reading in school–teaching words I didn’t care about, that didn’t follow any rules, reading stories that were stupid and pointless. It wasn’t until I was older and found books I wanted to read that my voracious appetite for reading developed, and never for the books that were supposed to read (except for The Scarlett Letter, which I loved and then got in trouble because I didn’t read it slowly with the class–1 chapter a week but instead read the whole thing in a night and then moved on to other books that I devoured.)

Nowadays I often read aloud to the kids from chapter books with no pictures–the kids know not to ask to see the pictures but one or all will sit by me, looking over my shoulder reading with me (or in Esther’s case, taking the book when I stop for the night and reading the rest on her own.) When I read to myself, Issac–my new reader, will often come cuddle next to me, looking over my shoulder, occasionally stopping me, reading a few words aloud, asking if he read it right, then asking me to reread the whole sentence together so he can hear how it is supposed to sound.

And I am thinking that, on the whole, that is a much better, way to learn to read.