Hi fellow Edders,
Today I wanted to appreciate taking a different strategy to helping my son read!
Enjoyable Reading Strategy
Every now and then, as a parent, we get to adapt to the things that we need to do for our kids, and thoroughly enjoy it!
There are lots of times over the past decade or so, where I've thought back to how much I used to read when I was younger. Not read stuff online, but read actual books. I LOVE to read books, but unfortunately I simply do not have the time with my busy and hectic schedule. Over the last year though, I've been able to really make strides in getting to be able to do this!
What am I reading though? Kids books, to my son! Granted, it's not the normal stuff that I like to read, but I've been reading to my son every night for years now at this point, and just the other day I realized that it's for sure one of my favorite things to do because I get to read books now, where otherwise I don't have time to do that.
Just recently, since school is out, one of the things that got assigned as you would expect is summer reading. There were a choice of books and my son chose the 3 that he liked so we made a deal. As part of his home schooling duties to keep up with the progress we've made, he would read to me several pages out of the 2 books that are assigned to him, and I would read to him out of the book that was a bit older, but still a topic and theme that he really enjoyed. We kill two birds with one stone doing it this way!
This was a great compromise for me, because as my son is getting older and reading more, he is flexing those muscles in his brain to fold those neurons into the right spot so that he reads more and reads fluently. Of course, as a kid on the middle of the age side, he is naturally going to struggle but the important thing is that I am not discouraging him when he makes mistakes, but helping to correct him in a way that he doesn't feel is me talking down to him.
This has been a pretty great way to spend some time in the evening with the little dude, because I know that if I wasn't reading to him for as long as I have, he would have struggled to read more than he is now. One of the things that I recently learned is that one of the important things kids do to try and figure out how words are pronounced and said, is they listen closely, closer than we realize, when we are reading to them. I am not the best at keeping myself in check.. but I have tried to slow down my reading so that I pronounce each word clearly. This has really helped, among other things, with his vocabulary. We get comments frequently about how he talks so much older than his actual age, which is great! It will serve him well for sure.
With the reading we have been doing lately, one of the nice things is that he's been getting into older books, and some fantasy books! I've really liked that as fantasy books are one of my favorite ones to read. Sure I loved the Jason Bourne books, as many others did, but I also really love to read authors that focus more on the fantasy stuff like dragons, magic and shit. They are a lot of fun!
It was funny, we plowed through the bigger book on his summer reading list because I read it to him, and he was loving it. Thankfully the book ended up being a bit of a series so we snatched up the whole stack of 'em! We are 2 books down, and just entering the 3rd but going back to my love for reading? I've been having a LOT of fun reading these types of books to my son! Sure we read really educational books like the Tuttle Twins series, and that is one of the favorites for sure.. but switching it up and chugging through some really cool fantasy books has been a lot of fun for both the little man and I. I've already got plans to snap up one of the series I LOVED as a kid, but couldn't remember the name until I remembered a specific part about the book and found it in a few minutes. I'm for sure going to buy that series for the little man and I to read as well!
What about you, what are you reading with the kiddos lately? Let me know in the comments!
-CmplXty. Real human written content, never AI. All pictures are mine unless otherwise stated
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