Getting Kids to Read: Top Tips for Raising Life Long Readers
June 14, 2022
As we unpack our world travel memories and roadschooling books while we revamp our vintage RV here in Barcelona, we are amazed again at the quality of unschool education our daughter got as books were the key to her world school education and served her well. We've already given many of the books away to her school in Spain & I wrote about my best tips on how to raise a reader and Multilingual Learning - Reading in 3 Languages, but now that she is 21, fully independent & thriving on her own as a trilingual singer/songwriter/actress, we have even more insight on how well this has worked & want to encourage other parents with young children.
(Don't miss this great article about Heavenly Reyna, the voice behind Emma in the America’s Bilingual Century audiobook). Heavenly started college at 14 with 4.0 GPA, but has put that on hold now as she pursues her passions as she is very lucky to be able to make a good living through her talents.
If you wonder how Heavenly Reyna won a High Honors Award from Johns Hopkins University CTY Gifted Program for scoring higher at 13 years old on the SAT test than 97% of high school seniors who take the SAT test, you really just need to look at the books she was devouring since she started reading. I think this shows how important books impact a life and learning. Classics like A Wrinkle in Time, The Phantom Toll Booth, Dracula, Around the World in Eighty Days etc, help vocabulary, understanding different time periods, concepts, places and adventure. Classic books like Tales From the Odyssey, D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths & Art Fraud Detective were loved, read over and over and had deep impact.
The quality of books is important and one of the highest complements I ever got, was from a librarian who thought I had a masters degree in Children's literature, but it is only a passion I have for good books and how they shape a child's life. We parents also had great books to help us homeschool as we were making it up as we traveled.
3 BEST TIPS ON RAISING A READER AND BOOKWORM
1) START EARLY
We started reading to Heavenly in two languages every day when she was in the womb ( and friends read to her in Mandarin and other languages) and we continued reading passionately to her TONS daily from birth on. We each read a book ( Dad's in Spanish) before bed to my pregnant belly, so there was a familiar continuity when she arrived and we continued that pattern and those books. Yes, babies love books! The love of books is contagious passed from parent to child.
2) HAVE LOTS OF BOOKS EVERY WHERE
Our house was filled with quality books and we went to the library and book stores several times a week starting from birth. Even as a travel family, we've managed to have a ton of books and still spent lots of time in libraries and book stores every week.
Books in the bathroom, books in the kitchen, books in every room to grab and peruse. Books in the camper van, books on a bus, books in a purse always, books in knapsack, books for plane rides. Books are like gold, you always want one around to temp you.Great books are good for the brain! Our camper van was filled with books & we would bring many in and make temporary shelves when we rented a home for the winter.
3) PUT EXTREME LIMITS ON ALL SCREEN TIME
Screen time has a negative effect on literacy. Yes, we see babies every where playing on iphones and ipods by themselves as their parents work on theirs texting away, both lost in their digital worlds oblivious to the surroundings and each other, but it is much wiser to hold your baby and bring a real book and read to them. They have plenty of time to learn digital fluency when they are older and the tech will be completely different.
You can see the wide variety Heavenly had to read & we also used historical fiction and found it to be an amazing way to educate and add to our travel, as I explained in 10 Tip for Museums & Travel Tours with Kids. After visiting the UNESCO Melk Abbey by ourselves we did a one hour tour again with a guide in English. The Austrian tour guide was absolutely stunned that our 8 year old knew so much about the history of Austria! All because of the historical fun book she read about Marie Attoinette ( and even I was surprised how much she knew).
Because during our travels, we had home bases in Europe and Asia, Heavenly was influenced also by popular British culture ( more so than most American kids) and related books, like she loved Jacqueline Wilson 's empowering books with strong feminist themes and interesting, fiercely independent female characters dealing with taboo subjects that help young girls understand the world. So she wants to keep this collection forever.
Good classic series like Roald Dahal and Harry Potter were mainstays she loved.
Sometimes in more than one language!
Like many in her generation, Harry Potter was a favorite and she read these over and over and I think we have extra copies in every location ( Asia, USA besides these stored in the camper).
Besides these Harry Potter books she started reading at four, we had the movies we watched often for family entertainment in our camper ( we always tried to have books for popular movies) and we visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter
as well as Hogwarts and locations in the UK, so it became part of our travel life.
Of course, there were other popular series and I don't think she missed any of them whether they were in UK, US. Spanish or Asian.
Be it train, plane, camper, restaurant, whatever, our world tour was in books as much as physical places & we will keep some of these classics to read and re-read again and again. Like me and my mother and father, she is a life long reader and passionate booklover, so I'd say this works!!
How about you? Are you raising a reader or want to? Or were you raised to be a reader? Any tips?
As we unpack our world travel memories and roadschooling books while we revamp our vintage RV here in Barcelona, we are amazed again at the quality of unschool education our daughter got as books were the key to her world school education and served her well. We've already given many of the books away to her school in Spain & I wrote about my best tips on how to raise a reader and Multilingual Learning - Reading in 3 Languages, but now that she is 21, fully independent & thriving on her own as a trilingual singer/songwriter/actress, we have even more insight on how well this has worked & want to encourage other parents with young children.
(Don't miss this great article about Heavenly Reyna, the voice behind Emma in the America’s Bilingual Century audiobook). Heavenly started college at 14 with 4.0 GPA, but has put that on hold now as she pursues her passions as she is very lucky to be able to make a good living through her talents.
If you wonder how Heavenly Reyna won a High Honors Award from Johns Hopkins University CTY Gifted Program for scoring higher at 13 years old on the SAT test than 97% of high school seniors who take the SAT test, you really just need to look at the books she was devouring since she started reading. I think this shows how important books impact a life and learning. Classics like A Wrinkle in Time, The Phantom Toll Booth, Dracula, Around the World in Eighty Days etc, help vocabulary, understanding different time periods, concepts, places and adventure. Classic books like Tales From the Odyssey, D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths & Art Fraud Detective were loved, read over and over and had deep impact.
The quality of books is important and one of the highest complements I ever got, was from a librarian who thought I had a masters degree in Children's literature, but it is only a passion I have for good books and how they shape a child's life. We parents also had great books to help us homeschool as we were making it up as we traveled.
3 BEST TIPS ON RAISING A READER AND BOOKWORM
1) START EARLY
We started reading to Heavenly in two languages every day when she was in the womb ( and friends read to her in Mandarin and other languages) and we continued reading passionately to her TONS daily from birth on. We each read a book ( Dad's in Spanish) before bed to my pregnant belly, so there was a familiar continuity when she arrived and we continued that pattern and those books. Yes, babies love books! The love of books is contagious passed from parent to child.
2) HAVE LOTS OF BOOKS EVERY WHERE
Our house was filled with quality books and we went to the library and book stores several times a week starting from birth. Even as a travel family, we've managed to have a ton of books and still spent lots of time in libraries and book stores every week.
Books in the bathroom, books in the kitchen, books in every room to grab and peruse. Books in the camper van, books on a bus, books in a purse always, books in knapsack, books for plane rides. Books are like gold, you always want one around to temp you.Great books are good for the brain! Our camper van was filled with books & we would bring many in and make temporary shelves when we rented a home for the winter.
3) PUT EXTREME LIMITS ON ALL SCREEN TIME
Screen time has a negative effect on literacy. Yes, we see babies every where playing on iphones and ipods by themselves as their parents work on theirs texting away, both lost in their digital worlds oblivious to the surroundings and each other, but it is much wiser to hold your baby and bring a real book and read to them. They have plenty of time to learn digital fluency when they are older and the tech will be completely different.
You can see the wide variety Heavenly had to read & we also used historical fiction and found it to be an amazing way to educate and add to our travel, as I explained in 10 Tip for Museums & Travel Tours with Kids. After visiting the UNESCO Melk Abbey by ourselves we did a one hour tour again with a guide in English. The Austrian tour guide was absolutely stunned that our 8 year old knew so much about the history of Austria! All because of the historical fun book she read about Marie Attoinette ( and even I was surprised how much she knew).
Because during our travels, we had home bases in Europe and Asia, Heavenly was influenced also by popular British culture ( more so than most American kids) and related books, like she loved Jacqueline Wilson 's empowering books with strong feminist themes and interesting, fiercely independent female characters dealing with taboo subjects that help young girls understand the world. So she wants to keep this collection forever.
Good classic series like Roald Dahal and Harry Potter were mainstays she loved.
Sometimes in more than one language!
Like many in her generation, Harry Potter was a favorite and she read these over and over and I think we have extra copies in every location ( Asia, USA besides these stored in the camper).
Besides these Harry Potter books she started reading at four, we had the movies we watched often for family entertainment in our camper ( we always tried to have books for popular movies) and we visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter
as well as Hogwarts and locations in the UK, so it became part of our travel life.
Of course, there were other popular series and I don't think she missed any of them whether they were in UK, US. Spanish or Asian.
Be it train, plane, camper, restaurant, whatever, our world tour was in books as much as physical places & we will keep some of these classics to read and re-read again and again. Like me and my mother and father, she is a life long reader and passionate booklover, so I'd say this works!!
How about you? Are you raising a reader or want to? Or were you raised to be a reader? Any tips?
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