Hi Everyone!
I have an announcement to make! The second book in my Our America series, The King Philip’s War Adventure is now available! And, the first book in the series The Pilgrim Adventure is now available on Kindle!
The King Philip’s War Adventure takes Finn and Ginny back to colonial times again where they get caught up in one of the least-taught and most dreadful wars in our history. I enjoyed writing this book even more than the first one in the series, and I hope that you folks enjoy it too.
I thought that today I would write about something for those of you with younger children—how to encourage a love of reading in your children. If you can hook your kids on books, then half of your job as a homeschooler is already done. Not only will teaching spelling and grammar be a lot easier if your kids love to read (in fact I never taught my son spelling; he just picked it up by himself because he read so much), but they can also teach themselves things by reading that you may not even have thought of.
But how to do this? Here are some things you can do to encourage your young children to love reading:
1) Limit TV and electronics time in your home. In fact, it’s a good idea to not even allow very young children to watch TV at all–at least until after they have developed a love of reading.
2) Have lots of books available for them to read all over the house. Not only library books, but books that you own. I haunted garage sales and library sales for years buying books for my son.
3) Keep books in the car for your children to read while you are driving.
4) Read yourself—if your children see that you read for pleasure, it shows them that reading is a fun thing to do.
5) Read to your children as much as possible. Start as soon as they are born—even babies like to be read to. I used to sit on my back next to my son, holding a book over our heads and read to him while he was a baby. He’d wiggle his feet and get excited when we came to parts he liked in the books. (He especially liked rhyming books at this age.)
6) When your children first start to read, look for lots of easy books that they can read themselves to give them something to be proud of. The Bob Books are especially good for this, or you could do a search for “easy reader,” or “beginning reader” on Amazon to see what types of books are out there.
7) Once your children can read, get them hooked onto a series. If you can find a children’s series that they like, then they will want to read more books in the series, and then they’re hooked.
These are the methods that I used to foster a love of reading in my son. If any of you have any other suggestions, please feel free to mention them in the comments!
Sue
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