Hey Mama Monday: Mama, Does Great Literature Make Great Readers

My husband has a story. He was a struggling reader through his preteens. He was excruciatingly slow. But in his teens, he started building radio-controlled airplanes and flying them. He had such a great desire to learn about this hobby that he purchased a magazine and read everything he could on the subject. This is where he says he began to really read and understand.

His passion led his progress!

I have had children who have been very early readers and very late readers and everywhere in between. And all have had opportunities to read everything they have been delighted in, whether it was poetry books, animal training, how to build things or sell things, how to raise fish or mount insects, jewelry making, or breeding finches.

Books about people and places and every subject that caught their eye at the library. Even things like Peterson Field Guides for nature studies could ignite the desire to read and keep reading.

At the same time, I had them read great literature, classics, missionary biographies, and I would also read aloud the books I thought were important for them.

My advice in making great readers: try a little of everything! Try every subject, every style of writing, and books for every age group. It all helps. Try quiet times with books, one classic book per semester, books written by experts in their fields, real life history stories, and literature textbooks. Try creative play while listening to an audio book series or watching the movie after you have read the book.

The best true-life stories and life changing applications are found in their own Bibles. Reading the Bible should be a daily event in the life of each child (and parents set the example). This is the main reason to teach our children to read so that they would know the mind of God, know how to live this life in righteousness, and glorify the One Who made them. It is all about the good news in written form to be lived out in each child.

This is all possible because you have this amazing intellectual, academic, and spiritual freedom as you keep them Home Where They Belong.

Great Books! Summer Reads for Your Preschooler and You by Kendra Fletcher

Reading Aloud: A Stairway to Academic Gains by Anna R. Buck

Classic Literature: A Gentle Introduction by Marla A. Schultz

17 Ways to Connect with Literature by Melissa Culver

Deborah Wuehler is the Senior Editor and Director of Production here at The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine. She would say she is a very ordinary homeschool mom–with one exception: she has an extra-ordinary God Who provides all she needs for life and homeschooling. She has eight children aged 11 to 29. Deborah’s mission is this: to point other homeschoolers to the Lord in all they do, think, and feel—and to confirm that they, too, can find everything they need for life, godliness–and homeschooling–in their knowledge of Him (2 Peter 1:3, 4).