My Five Most Invaluable Items to use in homeschooling: #2 Books & Audio Books

My Five Most Invaluable Items to use in homeschooling: #2 Books & Audio Books

I’m sure I’ve mentioned that we’re book people. The only thing to equal books in our household are the kind that someone else, with a good narration style, reads to you in the form of an audio book. This is invaluably helpful for me in one particular way. I have become a sap for redemption stories – the kind that cause my throat to catch, requiring a deep breath to try to keep from sobbing. This doesn’t make for good reading aloud of a story. In fact, my children watch and wait for me to not be able to continue in my reading, by which point I often hand the book over to someone else while I gather myself together. It often doesn’t last!

Reading is so very, very important. You can’t start reading to your child too early in their young life. Read to them, a lot, and let them read to you. Even the young ones will have favorite stories you have read to them. To check on them in a fun way, you can change up the words periodically and if they’re listening, you’ll hear them say, “No, it says …” I used to do that with Ferdinand. “Once upon a time in Spain,” are the opening words. I would say, “Once upon a time in England.” “No. Spain,” was the answer they interjected.

One rule I have always lived by when reading a book with my children is that I never look ahead when the night’s reading is over. If we’re going on an adventure, contained between the covers of a book, we’re going on it together, and therefore I keep myself from reading ahead so that we make discoveries simultaneously. Sometimes we read a book together that one of my youngsters has already read, and then I get the head’s up that the next chapter I will not be able to read aloud, so I abdicate my narration and let someone else do so, while tears well up in my eyes.

When we think of books to read aloud, we tend to think of fiction. But there are some great non-fiction books to read or listen to as well, some even told as a story. One we really enjoyed listening to was James Herriot’s All Things Bright and Beautiful. He was a Yorkshire veterinary surgeon, and he narrated his own book of stories of the animals and people he interacted with in his work. It was gripping and amusing, and made easier to follow by hearing it told in the accent of the area.

Also remember that books, whether read aloud or individually, lengthen attention spans, and are a great way to introduce new places or characters in history. Some of our favorite history books are biographies written for children. The Landmark series and the Childhood of Famous Americans series  are 2 series that we have greatly enjoyed, and we pick them up whenever we encounter them at yard sales or thrift stores. There are also many novels that take place in a particular time of history. These are just a few.

  • Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
  • Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt
  • The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
  • Sam the Minuteman by Nathaniel Benchley
  • The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
  • The Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester
  • Ben Hur by Lew Wallace

Spend some time in this blog and you will find I can’t overstate the importance of books. Read to your child, listen to them read. Spend the time with them. It is well worth it.

Start Somewhere. You never know where it will lead you!