Homeschooling Hands On: Enhancing Reading Program

Out of my five children, I have two children that love to read, and it is very difficult to keep good books in their hands. A few years ago it got to the point that going to the library was a long, drawn out process! Not that I don’t like going to the library with my children, but when you try to look for good books for one child and have a screaming infant or an impatient toddler disrupting your concentration — all while everyone around you is staring at you…well, it makes for a rough visit!  

BOOK LISTS

After a few times of that lengthy production at the library, I finally took the time to do some research for websites that had a list of good books. I found several websites that have book lists for different age levels. Each year from those lists, I make a reading list for my children and this has helped a lot in streamlining our trip to the library to get books every two weeks.

ONLINE RESOURCES

While the book lists have helped to streamline our time at the library, I also found websites that have helped us to get more out of our books other than just reading them. Here are some of the websites that I use either with my kids or for my resource on a weekly basis.

• Book Adventure is a FREE reading motivation program for children in grades K-8. Children create their own book lists from over 7,000 recommended titles, take multiple choice quizzes on the books they’ve read, and earn points and prizes for their literary successes. Book Adventure was created by and is maintained by Sylvan Learning.
• Book unit studies has a list of books that are “kid-friendly,” enjoyable books. Each of the books has a link that takes you to a lesson plan around that book, and there are comprehension questions, vocabulary, and activities to go along with each book.
• The Children’s Literature Web Guide is an internet resource related to books for children and young adults. There are links to resources on authors, stories online, book discussion groups and more.
• Carol Hurst’s Children’s Literature Site is a collection of reviews of great books for kids, ideas for ways to use them in the classroom, and collections of books and activities about particular subjects, curriculum areas, themes, and professional topics.
• The Best Kids’ Book Site is a fun and interactive site where books, crafts, and web resources come together to give you a great resource. I love using this to find book titles about the holidays, seasons, or countries to go along with our unit studies that we do for history. I used this site to come up with crafts for my kindergartner as we made our way through the alphabet.
• The Read Aloud Handbook is actually a book, but the author has set up a website with all the same information that is in the book, plus new reviews of books that are not in the latest edition of his book. He has a lot of different information on this site regarding reading and books.

Whether you homeschool or not, make reading something more than just reading a book. It’s really worked for us! Happy Reading!

**this post was originally published as one of my contributing articles at Happy to be at Home!