How do I add more reading into the home school day? Here are strategies by grade level.
Here's what you'll learn in this article:
- How to add more reading to your home school day to spark critical thinking and curiosity.
- Strategies by grade level to seamlessly include more reading in your home school day.
- Answers to common questions about adding more reading to your home school day.
- Key takeaways to help you approach reading from different angles to spark your children's interest.
- How to get more resources to help you incorporate additional reading into your children's home school experience.
Reading is Fundamental to Lifelong Learning, So It's Important to Prioritize When Homeschooling
The importance of reading is readily acknowledged, yet children tend to read less as they grow. Similarly, while regularly reading aloud to a child can add millions of words to the child's vocabulary, parents and caregivers also tend to read aloud less as their children begin to age.
Importantly, children who read less and who are below grade level in reading are more likely to experience worse emotional health or stop pursuing their education earlier in life (for more see this article on reading attitudes and behaviors). There isn’t any one cause for changes in children’s reading behaviors. Influences can come from how they’ve learned to read in traditional school, what they see modeled by caregivers, and their access to screens, among other factors.
What can you do?
There is a lot that you can do to shift the reading experience for your child when you homeschool. Maintaining an open, non-judgmental attitude and consistency are key. If your child is less interested in reading, then it is important to alleviate pressure around reading. If your child is already more interested in reading, then it is important to encourage that interest by offering new experiences and challenges with reading.
5 Strategies for Adding More Reading to Your Children's Home School Experience by Grade Level
Here are different strategies by grade level to add more reading to your children's home school experience:
1. Adding More Reading to Your Preschooler’s Home School Experience
Young children are typically eager and ready for new experiences. At this age, critical to introducing new experiences is adding them to a solid foundation where the child isn’t hungry, overtired, or overly energetic. For example, if your library has story time during the hour you know works better for rest, then don’t push the story time. Prioritize meeting your children's basic needs and add reading experiences where they fit in. Your children will be more receptive to new and challenging activities after their basic needs have been met.
To add more reading to your preschooler’s home school experience, ensure a variety of books are available to them in key places in the home, like on the coffee table. Make a trip to the library a part of your regular routine. When you're at the library, let your kids select new books and let them see you selecting books.
Join the library story time if it fits with your children's routine; or, alternatively create your own story time with friends. Find a time of day to regularly read to your child from a variety of books. If maintaining a regular story time is difficult, then simply talking to your child and telling them stories while you are in the car is a great way to keep them engaged with the elements of story.
Tactile books and ways to interact with letters are also great options when your child is feeling more active. Similarly, sound and word games like naming all words you both can think of that go with a particular sound (e.g., all the words that have ‘oo’ like room and loom) are also excellent additions to the day.
2. Adding More Reading to Your Lower Elementary Grades 1-3 Home School Experience
Children begin reading independently at different ages. Being the first in the peer group to read is not the priority. Rather, the priority is to foster reading at a pace that turns reading into a lifelong activity.
At this age, it is especially important to model for your children that they focus on what they can do. Avoid comparing them to other children or pushing them into more difficult reading materials before they've mastered their current reading level. At the same time, if your children want to work with material that is more challenging, don’t discourage this. At this age, you should be agnostic to outcomes and instead focused on creating a habit of interacting with reading materials.
To add more reading to your children's home school in the lower elementary grades 1-3, build from your children's toddler experiences. While your child is actively learning to read, maintain exposure to reading and avoid making your children feel pressured to reach specific achievements. Keep reading a low-pressure activity by having books that you read to them, without asking for them to practice. Keep the stories you read to them more advanced than what they are currently reading. At the library, encourage more autonomy in what your children select to read while you look for books with variety that might appeal to them (e.g., select series or graphic novels). As their attention spans grow, consider adding story podcasts to your routine, especially during any long commutes.
3. Adding More Reading to Your Upper Elementary Grades 4-6 Home School Experience
Reading in the upper elementary grades 4-6 is often when cracks in the foundation of reading start to become more evident, as not reading on grade level will become more evident, and as viewing reading as a chore becomes the norm.
If your child does not view reading as a positive activity, pause and reflect on what is happening during your child's reading experiences. Are they disinterested in what they are being asked to read? Do they not enjoy reading in only certain parts of the house? Talk to your child about what resonates with reading and what doesn’t. Then, try some new approaches that remove pressure and focus on the process of reading, not the outcome of getting to the next level.
It isn’t uncommon in U.S. culture to make abrupt shifts in expectations of children. For example, there are story times that make reading a socially enjoyable event for toddlers and preschoolers; but, by upper elementary, these outlets for reading are largely non-existent. Continuing to read to your older child is an excellent way to expose them to more complex materials and topics. It also deepens your bond with your children and gives you both an opportunity to talk about unfamiliar topics. Similarly, this is a great time to expand into long-form audiobooks.
Having variety at this age helps keep the pressure off your children's efforts to read and keeps reading an overall enjoyable experience. If your children have a book they are reading on their own, an advanced book or educational magazine that you are reading to them, or an audiobook in a favorite or wildcard topic, these can all help to spur your children's interest in reading and improve their reading ability.
4. Adding More Reading to Your Middle Schooler's Home School Experience
There is a lot of developmental transition in middle school. Reading in these grades can be an outlet to understand some of the new feelings and changes that your children are experiencing. Reading topics can also shift into areas that are more fraught (e.g., reinforcing unhelpful stereotypes). As a result, it may become necessary to be more open with your child about selecting material and what is a fit for home school reading vs. reading for pleasure. Ideally, you should keep encouraging their autonomy in reading selections to maintain their interest.
Reading in middle school affords more opportunity for experiencing the many benefits of life long reading because the uses of being a skilled reader become even more apparent across the subjects (e.g., reading more complicated math problems or researching science and history topics). Adding independent reading across subjects is a key addition to the home school experience. Work with your child to identify online resources in favorite subjects.
This is also a great stage to build in more debate about reading materials. Do your kids agree with the word choices and plot twists? Middle school reading experiences that build autonomy and promote critical thinking are key for lifelong learning from reading.
5. Adding More Reading to Your High Schooler’s Home School Experience
High school is an excellent time to reap the benefits of a well-rounded approach to reading. A high school-level reader is equipped with skills to drive their learning. They can exercise their skills to explore and pursue topics of interest, while identifying paths for their future learning. If they are confident readers, then your role can focus on guiding their critical thinking. If they are less confident readers at this point in their education, then you can regroup to bolster their skills.
Adding reading experiences that enable other life goals is especially valuable at this stage. For example, researching careers, participating in a book club with discussion, or reading to enhance their vocabulary for essays and interviews are all approaches to using the process of reading to achieve what they want. With a solid foundation in reading as a lifelong process, it enables the use of reading to achieve outcomes.
FAQs: Adding More Reading Experiences to Home School Means Trying and Adapting Different Activities
What if My Homeschooler is Struggling to Learn to Read?
Learning to read is using the act of reading to achieve a goal. When first starting to read, your child is only just beginning with the process of reading. It is critical to keep the goal of learning to read separate from the process of reading.
As a caregiver-educator, you can do this by keeping reading practice activities as one part of school, and using all sorts of other non-pressured reading activities during other home school and at home activities. For example, when you read to your child, don’t pressure them to “help” you. If they help on their own, that's great. Acknowledge their effort and get back to reading.
What if My Child was in Traditional School and Is Now Behind in Reading?
If your child wasn’t getting what they needed in traditional school, then homeschooling is a great option to meet their learning needs. Learning to read in traditional school can be particularly challenging because common curriculums have known limitations. If your child was being taught with a less effective method, then it might be a straightforward fix to work with them on phonics.
If they don’t show interest in books, it might be about confidence, topics, or social pressure. Can you give your child space to read simpler books to a younger sibling or relative? Can you write simple plays to encourage your child to read and act out scenes with you? What about taking trips to the library to experiment with different book formats (e.g., larger print, graphic novels) or genres (e.g., series, mysteries, or fantasies)?
Key Takeaways
- Reading experiences promote learning. Adding reading experiences to your home school day is a great way to encourage critical thinking and creativity.
- Focus on providing preschoolers with exposure and tactile reading experiences. Preschoolers crave interaction, so use reading experiences as a way to engage with them.
- Keep reading low-pressure for lower elementary grades 1-3. To instill reading as a lifelong practice, avoid focusing on the outcomes like book levels in the early years.
- Maintain your involvement in upper elementary grades 4-6. Once a child learns to read, don’t stop guiding and exposing them to new reading experiences and materials.
- Help middle schoolers see what they can achieve with reading. Middle school is a great time to empower your child's independence with reading through research and goal-directed pursuits.
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High schoolers are ready to direct their own reading experiences. Encourage your high schoolers to pursue what is important to them, whether researching certain topics or preparing for adult pursuits.
Where to Learn More
If you would like more tips for improving your children's home school experience, consider becoming a member of Crush Home School. With our membership plan, you get monthly guidance delivered to your inbox with downloadable resources and much more. Learn more about becoming a Crush Home School member.