Reading With Your Children:

Reading as a Way of Life:

One of the cornerstones in a classical education is good literature. In our home we read, read, read, read and then, we read some more. Mom and Dad read alone, read to each other, read to the kids, the kids read to each other, and the kids read on their own. A large portion of our school day is spent reading aloud or reading alone. Good readers become good thinkers and good thinkers become good writers.

We sprinkle our day with 2-4 read aloud sessions of duration 1/2-1 hour each, depending on the children's ages and attention spans. In the course of a week, we try to touch on every major genre of literature which interests the children: general fiction, historical fiction, mysteries, fantasy, myths and legends (check out section 398.2 on your Dewey library shelves for great stories), make believe picture books, and science fiction as well as the non-fiction; history, science, and always, always biographies of famous people.

We try to avoid "twaddle" which in this family includes mass-produced series of children's fiction, most comics, and books which either glorify evil or just generally portray bad taste.(I hesitate to name any, since there is no accounting for taste, least of all my own). Yes, we do check the children's "finds" but generally we find that they share our "good" taste and for the most part a poor pick is just an unlucky "guess". As a moral guideline we avoid (otherwise well-written) books which globally seem to present an unfavorable view of that which we hold to be true.
[In some homeschooling circles the role of fantasy and myths has been deemed controversial or even undesirable. That discussion is beyond the scope of this article and will hopefully follow in another newsletter as a separate topic.]


For short and long trips in the car, we play audio books on tape. We find most of those in the talking books section of the library. A few months ago the kids asked to take a drive just to finish the story of "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Library strategies:

On the practical side, our family includes 2 preschoolers and 2 grade schoolers, which translates to 40 -70 books per library trip, many of which are short 10 minute picture books as well as easy readers. We bring laundry basket for hauling. It is perched in the front seat of our double stroller and greatly eases our entry and exit maneuvers on the library grounds.

A 3 ring library binder which contains the book list "All Through the Ages" by Christine Miller (check out this extensive book list at All Through the Ages), The 1000 Good Books List, as well as book lists picked up from catalogs and from the Internet (see Internet Resources below) serves as our library binder and accompanies us on every trip. We also keep a weekly library "calendar", a list of books to be picked up during that week's library trip. Many libraries have on-line searching and reserves where you can request the books for you to pick up at the front desk. Our small town library is not on-line, so we do go and stay there for about an hour or two every week. Part of the time the kids play chess while mom searches the computer catalog for this week's and future weeks' library books needed to support our history, science and literature curriculum. Part of the time, we're working on the children's library skills. My 9 year old is required to find all his own books in the stacks. Physically being in the library does have it's advantages. One gets to browse through every book to see if it is appropriate and at times one runs across an unknown "gem" while browsing the stacks.

To cut back on curriculum costs, rather than buy, we try to get our books from the library or through Inter Library Loan. On the average, Inter Library Loan requests require 4-6 weeks' notice in our area, and we have received all but one request this year.

For home storage of our weekly library "treasures", each child has a library basket by his or her bed with books for sustained silent reading. Mostly books are read for pleasure around here with no required assignment following The kids record the "finished book in their reading record which is part of their of their Language Arts folder. For the required "school reading books", the younger children write a sentence or draw a picture for each book finished and the older child writes a short 3 paragraph book report.

Assessing Reading comprehension:

Several moms recommended McCall Crabbs Reading Comprehension booklets from Riggs Institute .
"We started using them last year, and the boys LOVE doing them. So now we use them once a week. There are 8 or so booklets; each booklet has about 50 quizzes. Each quiz is a page long, with a few paragraphs of a reading, and then 8 multiple-choice questions about that reading. You allow 3 minutes for the kids to complete the quiz."

"When you correct them, you compare the number your child answered correctly with a chart at the bottom of the page, which assigns a "reading grade level" to each number. Thus in the Level D booklet, if your child gets 7/8 on one of the quizzes, that might correspond to a 7.2 grade level (two months into 7th grade)."

"I use and like the McCall Crabbs for tracking progress in reading comp. I average the last 10 tests in order to get a more accurate result of progress, because results can vary widely."

"Be sure to get the version originally published in 1926 or you'll end up with the "dumbed down" contemporary version. Back Home Industries sells the old ones. You can find them at Back Home Industries

Or write Back Home Industries, P.O. Box 22495, Milwaukie, OR 97269."

Another way to get a "feel" for reading level is found right at your local library in the

Follett Library Resource Book

The number one book list of The ClassEd and Trivium loops remain The 1000 Good Books List with 1000 wonderful books for your children to read from preschool age through high school and on into adulthood. The books on there are arranged in reading levels, alphabetically by titles.

Another good list of wonderful picture books is The Five In a Row Book List

and the B4 Five In a Row book list for the younger preschool crowd.

The Sonlight Curriculum book choices also come highly recommended, many are included in the 1000 Good books, and the Sonlight catalog has descriptions of each book's plot and content.

In addition, we have found the following URL's useful, use with your own discretion:

Newberry Medal Winners for children's chapter books

Caldecott Medal Winners for picture books

Laura Ingalls Wilder Award Winners

Good Books for Good Readers

Education Reporter: A Child's Reading List

URL for Book It a reading incentive program.

Favorite Resources for Catholic Homeschoolers: Reading Lists

Gifted Children World Reading Lists

Skylark's Book Links

American Juvenile Collection, search for a book.

Best Children's Literature on the Web

The Ultimate Reading List -- Classics That Endure