On Reading Aloud

My favorite parenting book, hands down, is The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease.

Since reading it, I give the book to all new parents in my life and include it with baby shower gifts. If you have yet to read The Read Aloud Handbook, please do so. I dare any parent to read the introduction and not finish the rest of the book. If every parent and every teacher in this world read this book, amazing things would happen!

Parents tend to place the sole responsibility for reading development on our teachers and schools but, as stated in The Read Aloud Handbook, our children spend only 900 hours per year in school whereas they spend 7,800 hours per year outside of school. Those numbers are striking; they are mentioned repeatedly throughout the book and are burned into my brain forevermore. Put simply, reading is a skill. Like any skill, one must practice the skill and work to become better at it. One needs to be motivated to work hard at something. Children need to want to read. What motivates children to read? Living in a home that values the written word, where print is readily available in various forms, where parents are seen reading often, and where children are frequently read to. It is important to read aloud to children even when they can read on their own. It is important to keep reading to them until they leave for college. Reading aloud to children every single day is arguably the best thing you can do to help your children later in life. It also helps to have teachers who read aloud, in addition to providing SSR time daily (sustained silent reading), but one has to wonder how many teachers are able to pull that off in this age of teaching to the test.

I don’t know about you guys, but I can vividly remember being read to. One of my favorite memories from childhood was my mother reading The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear to my brothers and I; we would always giggle when we got to the page with the strawberry in disguise, and at the end we would pretend to gobble up the strawberry half that the mouse offered to us. Years later, I’m now reading the book to my children and they are the ones giggling at the disguise and gobbling the berry! I can recall, with fondness, the teachers I had who read aloud frequently: Miss Nancy (1st grade), Mrs. Hemeon (2nd grade), and Mrs. Poulin (5th grade). I can still remember the titles of the books they read aloud to us, so many years ago. Reading aloud creates positive memories and fosters a lifelong love of reading.

If you know us in real life, or if you have read this silly little blog for any length of time, you know that we are avid readers over here. We have book baskets in almost every room of our home, we visit the library at least twice a week, we are fortunate to have several magazine subscriptions, and my children have access to a bin filled with audiobooks. In addition to all of this, I make sure that I read aloud to my little poppies every single day, even on the days that feel overscheduled and frazzled (I’m looking at YOU, Tuesday!). I read picture books, poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and chapter books. I read aloud from our chapter book during breakfast (which, let me tell you is a fantastic way to combat those breakfast behavior woes!), I squeeze in picture books throughout the day, and Schizz reads bedtime stories every night (it is so important for fathers to read to their children, and especially to their sons). On long car rides, we often enjoy audiobooks borrowed from the library. And, do you know what? Schizz and I are already seeing the fruits of our labor; we witness it every evening when we turn off our kids’ bedroom lights and find them sound asleep, surrounded by books. We are growing readers.

Parents and children today are busier than ever, but we make time for things that we value. I’d love to know when you guys squeeze in time for reading. Do you have a special memory of a book from childhood or a teacher who read aloud? What are some of your favorite read aloud books? Share memories and recommendations here!

Are you looking to take your family’s read alouds to the next level? Join the {virtual} Family Book Club at My Little Poppies:

All of the books (and more!) from the {virtual} Family Book Club at My Little Poppies can be found here:

 

All of the lessons, crafts, and activities based on each book can be found here, listed by title and author:

Visit Cait Fitz @ My Little Poppies’s profile on Pinterest.

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This is not a book about teaching a child how to read; it’s about teaching a child to want to read. There’s an education adage that goes, “What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we make them learn.” The fact is that some children learn to read sooner than others, while some learn better than others. There is a difference. For the parent who thinks that sooner is better, who has an eighteen-month-old child barking at flash cards, my response is: sooner is not better. Are the dinner guests who arrive an hour early better guests than those who arrive on time? Of course not.

~Jim Trelease, The Read Aloud Handbook

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