Sep 29, 2024
“Read what you love until you love to read.”
— Naval Ravikant
Strategies aimed at nurturing a child's love for reading are essential for sparking and sustaining an early interest in books, as well as cultivating a lifelong passion for reading.
Reading not only serves as the cornerstone of learning but also as the gateway to fostering lifelong learning, a critical skill in a world that is evolving at an exponential pace. While some children have an innate affinity for reading, others find it less instinctive.
The approach to reading that really resonated with us emphasizes that one should allow their child to engage with topics that truly interest them, in order to nurture a deep love for reading over time. Unfortunately, we have seen too many children for whom traditional school has completely destroyed their love for reading because they were forced to read things that did not interest them at all. A great benefit of homeschooling is that it allows children to follow their interests in reading.
Below you will find some strategies that were successful for us.
Ideas for beginner readers
Learning to read can be quite strenuous and is not always particularly exciting. Recognizing letters, learning their sounds, and memorizing many words can sometimes be quite tedious. But because we know that children learn best through play, we used games and activities to make reading more exciting for our children. Here are some of our favorites:
Treasure Hunt Adventure: Hide alphabet letters around the house for your child to find. When they find the letters, ask them to say the sound and a word that starts with that sound. As your child progresses, you can also organize treasure hunts for common letter combinations (like cl, ch, br) and high-frequency words (i.e., words that need to be memorized because they cannot be spelled phonetically).
Phonics Scavenger Hunt: Send your child on a quest to find as many objects as possible that start with a specific letter or combination of letters. For example, you could ask your child to search for objects that start with “b” or “ch”.
Letter Race: Draw letters, combinations of letters, or common words on the sidewalk with chalk. Then shout out a letter or a word and have your child run as quickly as possible to the corresponding letter/word on the ground. Our son, who is very active, particularly loved this one!
Fishing for Letters: Buy a set of magnetic letters and create a fishing rod with a stick, a string, and a magnet. When your child fishes a letter, they should pronounce the letter and identify a word that starts with that letter.
Letter Bowling: Set up paper Set up paper cups with various letter sounds on them (e.g., "bl", "br", and "sn"). The goal is for your child to knock down the cups with a ball and say the letter sound and a word that starts with that sound. Turn it into a competition by seeing how many cups your child can knock down in a specific amount of time.
Letter Bingo: Create bingo cards with various letters or combinations of letters (or buy them). When you call out the letter sounds, your child marks the corresponding letters on their card until they have a full card and can yell “Bingo!” Alternatively, you could create bingo cards with pictures on them, and when your child hears a letter sound, they can mark all the pictures that start with that sound. This was a favorite of our daughter!
Letter Hopscotch: We created a hopscotch game with letters instead of numbers. When your child hops onto the letters, they say the sound of each letter.
Letter or Word Memory Game: Create pairs of cards with letters or common words on them and play “Memory,” where your child looks for matching pairs and reads the letters or words aloud when they flip the cards over.
Ideas for advanced readers
As enthusiastic readers, we naturally thought that our children would share our excitement for books. However, it turned out to be more difficult than expected to get them to read regularly. A struggle that many parents we have spoken to can relate to. Here are some things we tried with our children that have proven to be effective.
Develop a Love for Books First, Then a Love for Reading: Mastering reading can be a challenge, especially for beginners. Therefore, it's not surprising that some children do not take to reading immediately. By letting them experience the joy of an engaging story - be it through parents reading aloud, listening to an audiobook, or enjoying an entertaining story podcast - you help them fall in love with the art of storytelling. This love for stories will become the gateway to a passion for reading.
Tailor to Your Child's Interests: Don't worry about what children are reading - just let them read what they find interesting. For example, our son began reading when he tried to read the scores of his favorite sports teams, and for our daughter, it was trying to decipher recipe books because she loves baking!
Creating Family Reading Time: Being a good role model is crucial. When children see that their parents value reading, they are likely to value it too. Consider introducing a family reading time where everyone dedicates a fixed time to read together. In our household, the Sunday tradition is to devote 45 minutes to our selected books. Our youngest daughter cannot read yet, but she uses Epic, a great reading app that reads books to her.
Start a Book Club: The only thing more powerful than a parent exemplifying a love for reading is other children doing it! Look for children with similar reading levels and interests to start a mini book club. Reading the same book with peers or friends, as our oldest daughter does with her best friend, can really boost motivation. If there aren't good options for establishing in-person book clubs, Outschool offers great virtual book clubs.
Reading Alongside Your Child: When our daughter started reading simple chapter books, we found that she was more motivated when we read the book with her — meaning, she read one page out loud, and then I read one page. Now that she is more advanced, I read the same book as she does, but we do this in our own time and then discuss the book as we progress.
Engaging Your Children with a Book Series: We found that one of the best ways to get our children to read is to have them read a book series - if they like the first book, they are eager to read the next ones. Some of the book series our children have loved are - for beginners: Piggie & Elephant. Simple chapter books: Narwhal & Jelly and Dogman. Intermediate chapter books: The Magic Treehouse, Boxcar Children, and Wolf Girl. Advanced chapter books: Harry Potter, The Land of Stories und Keeper of the Lost Cities.
Organizing a Book Exchange: We organized a book exchange in our homeschool community, which allows the children to exchange their favorite books. It was a great opportunity to let the children talk about their favorite books and share their enthusiasm for reading.
Create a Mystery Reading Bag: We haven't tried this ourselves yet, but I read about it and thought it was a great idea! The idea is to create a bag with books that your child might like, and wrap them like presents. Each time your child is ready for a new book, they can take one out of the bag.