I chose to combine these two topics because the main way to raise a reader is to read to him as a child.  This is the number one and most important factor in encouraging kids to read later on, and it greatly increases their chances of enjoying individual reading.  The benefits of reading aloud to your children can not be overstated.  The US Department of Education Report on the Commission on Reading declared, “The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.” And, “It is a practice that should continue throughout the grades.”

I was thoroughly convinced of this fact after reading Jim Trelease’s influential book, The Read-Aloud Handbook.  This post will go over the main benefits of reading aloud that Trelease outlines in his book; all of the quotes are from this book. If you have a deeper interest in this topic I highly recommend reading the whole book.  It is divided into two parts.  The first section reviews the research and reasons for reading aloud.  The second half is a “treasury” of read aloud book titles, including reading level and a summary of the content.  This list is immensely helpful for choosing books to read to your children.

There are two reasons reading aloud has such an impact on future reading skills: it builds vocabulary and it associates reading with pleasure or happiness.  Listening to books naturally and easily builds a child’s vocabulary.  They hear you speak the words of the book over and over, and those words come to mean something.  But there is another reason reading to children is far superior to speaking for vocabulary building.  There are thousands of words used in books that people do not use in day to day speaking.  The large majority of words used in normal conversation with a child come from the most commonly used 1000 words.  Even adult to adult conversations use only 5,000-10,000 words.  No matter how intelligent a parent is, the vocabulary used in books is much more varied that what he or she speaks to a child.  “Regular family conversations will take care of the basic vocabulary, but when you read to the child, you leap into the rare words that help most when it’s time for school and formal learning.”

Words that children have heard repeatedly will be easier for them to recognize when they start learning to read.  “Inside the ear words collect in a reservoir called the listening vocabulary. Eventually, if you pour enough words into it, the reservoir starts to overflow – pouring words into the speaking vocabulary, reading vocabulary, and writing vocabulary.  All have their origins in the listening vocabulary.”

Furthermore, “Written words are far more structured and complicated than spoken words.  Conversation is imprecise, rambling, often ungrammatical, and less organized than print.  In listening to stories being read aloud, you’re learning the standard English of books, the classroom, and most of the workplace.”  Watching TV or listening to every day conversations is not going to teach your children that type of language.

At the same time you fill your child’s brain with the sounds of words, create the listening vocabulary reservoir, and acquaint her with standard, grammatically correct English, you also connect reading with enjoyment and happiness.  Trelease states, “There are two basic reading facts: 1. Human beings are pleasure centered. 2. Reading is an accrued skill.”  In reading aloud we condition the child’s brain to associate reading with pleasure.  The comfort of having a nightly reading routine, of sitting cozily next to mom or dad, and of listening to the voice of the person they love the most is highly enjoyable to children.  Creating this pleasant experience night after night is a great investment in your child’s future love of reading.  When he gets to the difficult, boring parts of learning to read he will have the happy memory of reading together with mom or dad to sustain him.  He will have the determination to continue trying until reading to himself becomes as pleasurable as listening to his parent read to him.

Hopefully it is clear to you that nothing else you do as a parent has as great an impact on your child’s future reading ability and enjoyment as reading out loud to him does.  It is essential to his education.  It is also a loving, bonding act that can be highly enjoyable for both parent and child.

There are a few other ideas Trelease mentions to “raise a reader.” First, have a variety and a large quantity of printed materials in the home – books, magazines, newspapers.  There are studies that show that fathers reading the nightly newspaper have a large, positive impact on their children’s future reading.  I’m not sure how that will be affected by online newspapers.  Also, take children to the library regularly.  The library is like the reading store.  Going there shows your child the importance of and your commitment to reading.  It gives the child the opportunity to browse and be exposed to a larger variety of books than you could have at home.  Lastly, be an example of a reader.  Parents who read tend to have children who read more and who enjoy reading.  Talk about books with your children – ask them about theirs, tell them about yours.

I can confirm the immense power of reading aloud to children.  My husband and I knew the importance of doing this from the very beginning.  We made sure to read to each child individually each night, usually for 15-30 minutes, in addition to many sessions of reading books during the day.  We read out loud to them until they were in fourth grade.  Obviously they could read to themselves by this time, but we enjoyed this time together and knew the benefits of reading aloud well beyond the time our children learned to read.  Our girls have come to love reading independently and have done very well in school.  It has been a routine we loved doing with and for our daughters and have been grateful to see the ample rewards of our efforts.

To conclude this post I want to list some books that we have enjoyed reading to our children over the years.  These are our favorites that we have made sure we read to each girl.  Many of them might appeal more to girls than boys, so I apologize that I don’t have an equal list for both genders. I’m not including any picture books, although obviously that is what you will be reading to your children from birth through about 1st grade.

I would love to hear about books you have enjoyed reading to your children – picture books or chapter books!  Leave a comment!

                

FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN (preschool-2nd grade)

(All of these have a series of books)

A to Z Mysteries (Roy)

Magic Tree House (Osborne)

Horrible Harry (Kline)

Cam Jansen (Adler)

B Is for Betsy (Haywood)

Judy Moody Gets Famous (McDonald)

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle (MacDonald)

Trouble according to Humphrey (Birney)

Time Warp Trios (Scieszka).  Similar to Magic Tree House but a slightly higher level. The trio of friends goes back in time and learns about different cultures, etc.

Amazing Days of Abby Hayes (Mazer)

Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo (Krulik)

FOR OLDER CHILDREN (1st-4th grades)

There are a few different ways to find out the level of individual books.  You can look them up in the Trelease book I mentioned.  You can search for them on lexile.com.  Or, some school or public libraries have AR levels or another way to level books.  This can get complicated and difficult, but one easy way is just to start reading the book to your child.  If it holds her interest, it’s the right level!  Try some higher level books occasionally, you might be surprised.  Don’t worry if she doesn’t understand all the words or concepts.  It’s good just to be exposed to them.

Caddie Woodlawn (Brink).  A prairie pioneer story – more interesting and succinct than Laura Ingalls.

Hattie Big Sky (Larson)

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (Konigsburg)

The rest of the books have many books in their series or the author has other great books.

First Farm in the Valley (Pellowski).  A series of four books all set in Wisconsin, about a Polish-Catholic pioneer type family that immigrates to America.  The books are all based on the author’s ancestors, and there is even a family tree in the front cover of one of the books.  The series takes you from the first farmers to almost modern day.

Birchbark House (Louise Erdrich).  A series of three books about the Ojibwe Indians in northern Minnesota.  The stories are so interesting and you learn so much about the Native American culture.

Ballet Shoes (Noel Streatfield).  A series of three books all set in London in the 1940s – about three adopted girls and their experiences in ballet, theater, dance.

All of a Kind Family (Taylor).  A series of five books about a Jewish family with four daughters living in the tenement houses in the upper east side of NYC, around 1910.

Little House on the Prairie (Wilder).  These can be hard to read because she explains how they do everything down to the last detail.  But if your child has the patience for them they are very interesting.

Betsy-Tacy (Lovelace).  Many books in this series, all of them wonderful.  They chronicle the lives of two little girls growing up in a suburb of Minneapolis around the 1920s.

The Saturdays (Enright).  Four-book series about a family in New York City and then the countryside, about 1930s.

Ella Enchanted (Levine)

Ramona (Cleary)

Ginger Pye (Estes)

The Penderwicks (Birdsall)

Princess Academy (Hale)

Mary Poppins (Travers)

Wizard of Oz (Baum)

The Great Brain (Fitzgerald)

Every parent has a different level of cleanliness – the state of the house where we feel comfortable and “done” with cleaning.  And everyone goes through the same cycle: your house gets dirtier and messier and you feel overwhelmed, and then when you get time (and energy) to clean it and get it back into shape, you feel calmer.  There is a range or spectrum of normal cleanliness, and wherever you are on that range is okay.  You know where you feel comfortable and how much energy and time you want to or are capable of putting into it.  Your level of cleanliness comes from the type of house you grew up in and the habits you have developed over the years.  It takes a lot of work and energy to raise your overall level of cleanliness, and I’m not suggesting that is necessary.  There are pros and cons to being super clean.  Your house looks great and you avoid embarrassment when people pop by, but you also can get frazzled about messes and be overly strict with your children about cleanliness. I’m not saying everyone has to be perfectly clean, or that doing so will make you happier.  But I did want to share with you some ideas of how to prevent messes, with the understanding that your housekeeping methods may be different than mine, and that is okay.

I like to be organized and have everything in its place. But I don’t really enjoy cleaning, as in getting out the cleanser, spraying, wiping – deep down cleaning. Therefore, as a parent, one of my main goals is to prevent messes! If I can prevent a mess I will not have to do as much cleaning up afterwards and I will have fewer loads of laundry, which not only saves time but also uses less water, soap, and energy.  My motivations for preventing messes are somewhat selfish, but teaching children to be clean is beneficial to them (creates good lifelong habits), and it can lead to more interaction and time spent with your children.

There are three areas of the household you can focus on to prevent messes:  the kitchen (eating), the bathroom, and toys and activities.  Because we eat so often and eating can be so messy, meal times are the main opportunity for avoiding messes.  To help contain the mess and give children structure and order, have rules about where, when and how children eat.  Examples of such rules are: ask before getting any food; only eat in the kitchen area; sit down on a chair at the table to eat; wash hands after eating.  After these ground rules are set you can encourage them to eat as cleanly as possible: take small bites, lean over their plate, use their napkin.  All these skills take years to perfect, of course, and there is a certain amount of messiness inherent in feeding children.  But the point is you have a goal in mind.  You want to encourage and teach these practices all along the way, and eventually they will be natural to your children.

You also have to model these habits yourself. Eat purposefully, which means make your meal, sit down to eat, turn off the TV or other electronics, and enjoy time with your children.  This approach to eating has many benefits. It is better for your health – you end up eating healthier foods and less overall food.  It is calming rather than stress-inducing.  And it creates built in time with your children.  What starts out as a selfish endeavor aimed at having less cleaning and laundry is actually the ideal way to have a meal as a family.

Focusing on preventing eating messes can be a strength and a weakness. It’s important to get children in these good habits, but you don’t want to get too uptight about it.  Children have a developmental need at different ages to play with their food, touch their food, or feed themselves.  These are trying times for a clean parent!  You have to balance your need for clean with their need for exploring their food.  But you have the goal in mind to teach them, over time, the clean way to eat.  When your children are eating, stay close by with a rag or wipe to clean their hands and face before they touch furniture or their clothes.  If they are always seated (and hopefully supervised) while they eat, their clothes have a greater chance of staying clean.  Little by little you teach (but don’t expect) children to not throw their food, to not smear it in their hair, to take smaller bites that fit into their mouth, to not spill food on the floor, etc.

Another place that gets dirty quickly is the bathroom.  Kids + brushing teeth = huge mess!  I didn’t want to be wiping down the bathroom sink all the time, so I taught my kids to be clean when brushing their teeth.  I brush their teeth until they are about six years old, and after that I teach them to not use too much tooth paste, spit close to the drain, and wash down the spit when they are done.  If there are any globs of toothpaste in the sink I have them wipe those down with water and their fingers.  They don’t like doing that and learn quickly how to avoid creating those globs.

We have four girls, so our toilets don’t get very messy.  Some families with lots of boys teach them to grab a wipe and wipe down the toilet seat (one or both, depending on where the pee got) every time they go (once they start standing up to go).  This sounds extreme, but even with my little exposure to boys’ bathroom habits, I think I’d adopt that rule!

Lastly, children can be taught to be cleaner with their toys, activities, and other possessions.  Try to get children into the habit of putting away whatever game or type of toy they were playing with before getting out something else.  Also, teach them to ask you before they do a messy activity like painting or beads.  That way you can supervise them properly.  Another prevention tactic is to keep certain toys out of children’s reach.  Toys with lots of small parts like Legos or Polly Pockets can be kept up high.  The child has to request to play with them, and then you know (try to remember) that they’ll need to be cleaned up and put back up high when she is done playing.  You can see that teaching children these habits requires you to supervise them closely and continually remind them.  Children who are taught to stay out of certain cupboards or drawers will cause fewer messes.  I know this all sounds slightly ridiculous, as if you can just tell a child once to stay out of a cupboard and he’ll never open it again!  But, as I’ve mentioned, I’m just saying you can try.  Improvement in behavior happens over months and years.

When you walk into your child’s bedroom and see a huge mess, often there is part of you that knows you could have prevented this.  You could have checked on them more often instead of being on your computer or phone call.  You could have asked them to clean up the one game before moving on to another.  It’s a trade off: if you are more present and aware during the time they are playing, you’ll have less work to do afterward.  Sometimes it’s worth it to let them make a big mess, but it’s important to know that it is possible to prevent it.

In summary, you don’t have to prevent messes, but if you want to, there are strategies to decrease your time spent cleaning and doing laundry.  Try to help your kids learn clean habits (in a kind and calm way!) and you will reap the benefits.

As I have mentioned, I started off my parenting career frequently irritated, baffled and exasperated.  I did not understand how little brains worked.  I wanted to just say, “Put on your shoes” or “Time for bed” and receive a happy, “Okay!” as a reply.  Of course, this is not how children work.  The more I read about parenting, experimented with different techniques, and sought to understand children’s motivations and needs, the more I realized they respond well to what I call “the song and dance.”

The song and dance is anything you do that is fun, silly, funny, or crazy that motivates children to do what you want them to do.  They get interested in what you are doing and distracted enough to not realize they are obeying.  The thing about kids is, you never know what to expect.  At times they are cooperative and compliant: they will do what you ask without a fuss or complaint.  When this happens, say a quick prayer of thanks and move on with your day!  But there are other times (all too often!) when they don’t follow instructions, and they need a little motivation.

As I have mentioned, I try to avoid any type of bribery to motivate kids for chores or other activities that have to be done on a continual basis.  Getting dressed, eating meals, completing chores, and other daily or weekly tasks need to be done without external prizes or motivators.  But what else are you to do?  What other tools do you have?  You say, “Get dressed,” and they don’t – what choices do parents have besides saying it louder (yelling), giving a lecture about obedience, or bribing them into it?  This is where the song and dance comes in!  You can find creative, fun ways to encourage compliance.

I’m not saying you have to do this.  If you are not up for the song and dance, the other option is to continue to guide the child, direct them with what to do, and stay calm and kind.  This is difficult because your patience can wear thin and frustrations mount as you stay with your child and observe them disobeying.  But, consider it a challenge to stay calm (see Practice Patience for some tips), and stay with or close by the child until the task is completed.

On the other hand, the song and dance can be a great way to motivate, and at the end of the task everyone is usually in a good mood!  It’s hard, though, because the song and dance takes emotional energy.  It requires you to rise above the melancholy and grumpy atmosphere your child is creating.  Their ornery, defiant attitude can bring the whole house down.  But think of yourself as the sun, rising above those dark clouds, shining so brightly that you can dispel any grouchiness!

The idea is to make the task fun and create a situation where they want to comply. Here are some examples:

“You pick up the blue blocks; I’ll get the red ones.”

“Let’s each pick up ten things.”

“You get two points for every stuffed animal that makes it in the toy box!”

“Can you be faster than Superman?!”

“Should we hop like a bunny or tip toe like a mouse to the bathroom?”

“Let’s be the clean-up fairies and then tell dad we don’t know who cleaned this room!”

When the child is unloading the dishwasher, she can create a king’s palace with the dishes.

When she is helping you make dinner, you can be stirring a witch’s brew.

You can pretend the spots on the mirror and bathroom counter are the bad guys, and you need to wipe them away to save the town.

Children love to pretend, so any pretend scenario you can come up with will help them get going.  The more elaborate the better!  Or try to create a way that the task can be made into a game.

Another wonderful tool to encourage compliance is teaching the child about something in their world.  There are teaching moments all around: How does the oven work?  How do our bodies heal from hurts? How did these rocks get here?  Where does the fabric for our shirts come from?  Most explanations to these questions are simple and on their level, but you can still teach them something about how things work, and get them to cooperate along the way.

One time my daughter didn’t want to buckle her seatbelt.  While I did it for her, I asked, “Have you ever heard of crash test dummies?” She hadn’t.  I said, “When companies make cars they want them to be safe, so they test them out by crashing them into walls!  They can’t have people in them, of course, so they created crash test dummies. . .”  I continued to talk about how the dummies fared when buckled in and not buckled in.  I didn’t say this in a scary way, to frighten her into staying buckled, but more in an informative way, to keep her interested and distracted while I buckled her, and also to teach her the benefits of seat belts.  I love that magical moment when I find something to teach my children that grabs their attention and helps them comply with my instructions.  They love it, too – they are enraptured with this new information!   It has to be age-appropriate, of course, so I tweak the story depending on the child. It is a wonderful way to avoid contention (she obeyed while listening to my story), connect with her, and teach her something new!

To get children out of their uncooperative mood sometimes I try story-telling.  I’m envious of parents who can come up with their own stories.  This is such an amazing skill with so many great benefits: you can entertain and distract your children, bond with them in an enjoyable activity that is available anytime, and help their creativity blossom.  I’m not very good at creating stories, so I usually think of movies or books and tell my kids those stories. For example, if kids haven’t seen Mary Poppins or The Jungle Book, those are terrific stories to tell!  Bible stories are also very fascinating to kids.  I happen to know a lot of Old Testament stories by heart, and my kids love to hear these. Children are immensely interested in stories where the characters’ lives are different from their own.  Even adult movies that have a good story can be adapted to kids’ level.

Again, I’m not saying this is easy.  It can be very frustrating because sometimes you just want the kid to do the task and not require the song and dance to obey.  It takes energy to do the song and dance, and sometimes you are just not up to it.  However, using these tricks will help you have a better attitude.  It will lift your spirits as well as motivate the children.  If you can rise above the gloom and try to get the job done with a little bit of fun, you will bring energy and happiness into the home. I try to view it as a personal challenge – to find the magic “key” that will turn the mood of the house around and get everyone going. It’s easy to see that these techniques might not be the fastest way to get things done.  Household tasks would be much more efficient if children would just do what we told them to.  These techniques might take a little longer, but everyone will be happier in the end, including you!