by Lorinda K. F. Newton
One of my fellow English majors announced during my college graduation, “Guess what? We can now read for fun again!”
As a literature major, I spent four years reading poetry, short stories, and novels, knowing I was expected to analyze them for a professor. I couldn’t simply enjoy the story or language.
It’s easy to turn the joy of reading into work, just as my fellow English majors discovered. Don’t let this happen to your children.
Some homeschoolers, especially those who use literature-based curricula, regularly include read-alouds in their school day. However, this experience comes with the expectation that the child will narrate what was read or respond to discussion questions.
To preserve the joy of reading and develop life-long readers, make time for family read-alouds that are for fun.
Benefits of Reading Aloud
Studies show that children who are read to not only become readers but also become better listeners, writers, and speakers, and have positive attitude toward reading. Reading aloud
- Teaches the love for story.
- Builds vocabulary.
- Exposes children to genres they might not choose on their own.
- Expands their world as they read about people, places, and times different from their own.
- Increases attention span.
- Allows, you, the adult, to read children’s books you missed in childhood.
- Creates bonding time between parent and child.
Reading aloud opens up discussions that might not happen otherwise.
Reading aloud to your kids is also a good way to grapple with difficult issues. For example, you can tell your child, “I don’t want you to hang out with so and so,” but that’s a lecture that will probably go in one ear and out the other. But if you read a book about a kid who gets in trouble by hanging out with the wrong crowd, your child is going to experience that directly, and she’s going to experience it with you at her side, and you can talk about it together. You can ask questions like: “Do you think the boy made the right choice?” “Do you think that girl was really her friend?” When you talk about a book together, it’s not a lecture, it’s more like a coach looking at a film with his players, going over the plays to find out what went right and what went wrong. —Jim Trelease
Reading aloud can shape a child’s moral imagination. In his book, Live Not by Lies, Rod Dreher interviewed the Benda family about how they raised their children to follow Christ behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia. The mother, Kamila Benda, read aloud to her children two or three hours a day—after they had spent the day at their communist school.
She read them fairy tales, myths, adventure stories, and even some horror classics. More than any other novel, though, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was a cornerstone of her family’s collective imagination.
Why Tolkien? I [Dreher] ask.
“Because we knew Mordor was real. We felt that their story…was our story too.”
…Patrik [Kamila’s son] says the key is to expose children to stories that help them know the difference between truth and falsehood, and teach them how to discern this in real life (138).
Why Read Aloud to Old Kids?
You might think teens would consider being read too babyish. But Scholastic’s “Kids & Family Reading Report” found that “Only 17% of parents of kids ages 9–11 read aloud to their children. Yet 83% of kids ages 6–17 say being read to is something they either loved or liked a lot.” My children would agree.
Jim Trelease, the author of The Read-Aloud Handbook, now in its 8th edition, responded to whether parents and teachers should read aloud to high schoolers.
Yes, because if you stop advertising, you stop selling [the importance of recreational reading]. Kids have to read for school but that’s not an advertisement for reading. Most of the material kids read in school, no one would read for pleasure. And if all your reading is tied to work, you develop a sweat mentality to reading, so by time you graduate you can’t wait to stop reading. You become a school-time reader, not a life-time reader. Of course, kids have to do a certain amount of reading that’s tied to work, but you don’t want kids to forget that there are books out there to make you laugh, make you cry, and move the soul.
My Family’s Reading Time
My husband started to read to our son every night when he was a toddler. We continued what we called “Family Reading Time” from 8:00 to 8:45 most evenings until our son began attending night classes at the community college. (Unfortunately, our daughter missed out on this experience during her high school years.) First, we did our family Bible reading. Then my husband read from our current novel for 15 to 20 minutes. Some days we’d start early and read more.
Certain stories and passages became part of our family lexicon, such as the phrase “Droggy noggen dead!” from Calvin Miller’s Singreale Chronicles, a fantasy trilogy. We even called our vegetable soup “Graygill stew” after a meal served in this story.
What to Read Aloud
Select works your family will enjoy. It’s okay, and recommended, to read books above your children’s reading level. They can understand more orally than they can read independently.
Some books work better than others as read-alouds. Trelease suggests avoiding books with heavy dialogue as a listener can easily lose track of who’s speaking. Trelease’s website provides more information about the Do’s and Don’ts of reading books aloud.
Read Aloud Resources
- The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. In addition to explaining why and how to read aloud to your children, this book contains a catalog of recommended books with short summaries. This list ranges from wordless books to novels and poetry.
- Sonlight, a homeschool curriculum company, offers read-aloud book packages for various ages.
- Honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt contains an annotated list of books for ages 0-12 and is written from the Christian perspective with a focus on character building. However, not all the recommended books are Christian.
How to Read Aloud
If you didn’t grow up with a parent who read aloud to you, or you haven’t read aloud to your own kids, this idea may seem daunting. You may struggle to read smoothly or don’t like the sound of your voice.
As a young mother, I worried about reading stories to my son. My husband is an excellent expressive reader, and I felt intimidated. But then I realized my toddler wouldn’t care how I read. Plus, I’d be starting with picture books—much more manageable than reading the Lord of the Rings—unless you are reading Fox in Socks! My read-aloud skills improved with practice and the advancement of my son’s listening and interest levels. So now I’m quite confident in reading out loud for others.
Don’t feel intimidated if you’re just getting started with older kids. Having them watch you learn a new skill will be an excellent experience for them. It shows that you, as an adult, are still willing to learn new things.
You can also read ahead before your next family reading time. Doing so lets you check how to pronounce unfamiliar words and choose the right pace and inflections for specific portions of text. Also, you might find a section that isn’t appropriate or too boring or complicated that you may want to skip.
If you lack the time to read ahead and run into some questionable passage, discuss it “on the fly.” I have occasionally stopped to ask my kids if they understood a segment or explained something they might not understand.
Because my husband is a dramatic reader, he would often read ahead for our next family reading time. While we read through a series set in Scotland, he used a brogue voice when certain characters spoke. We loved it, but it was a workout for him as the reader!
What about wiggle worms? Our son had a hard time sitting still as a youngster. I’d let him play with a quiet toy. Both my daughter and I would color or draw while my husband read. Sonlight offers 25 Ways to Satisfy the Wiggle Worm Urge During Read-Alouds” that’s worth reading.
Promote the joy of reading. Check your bookshelf or local library for a great read, and give a regular family read-aloud time a try this summer.
This is my final blog post for Academy Northwest. Now that both of my children have completed high school, I’ve decided to hand over this blog to someone who is currently homeschooling.
Lorinda K. F. Newton homeschooled her children from 2004 to 2023, and her family joined Academy Northwest in 2014. Her family lives on beautiful Whidbey Island north of Seattle, Washington. She writes about faith and culture from a biblical worldview on Substack, where she also publishes the “Newton Library Update” about her home library. Her older posts can be found at Lorinda’s Ponderings. ©2023 by Lorinda K. F. Newton.
