At the start of summer, I always like to give a few blogposts focused on making it a great one. Last week, we looked at how to set up some Best Plans for the Summer. Click here to read it.
Let’s add to those plans this week with what I consider a KEY ingredient to a great summer. Reading!
But then I’ve always been a “Voracious Veronica” (as Author Media has dubbed her) when it comes to reading books. When I was growing up, one of my favorite summer activities was to take my current library book, go across the street to the park, climb up into an evergreen tree (had to watch the sap!) and sit up in that tree reading for hours. I guess I had my grandmother’s genes – she literally operated a library out of her house!
If you do a Google Search for “Fun ways to keep kids learning all summer long” – lots of lists pop up. At the top of nearly every list is “Read Every Day”. I’m sure you already know the immense value and the many benefits of a child reading their way through their summer break:
- It keeps their mind sharp and learning
- It grows synapses in their brain
- It prevents the “summer lapse” (ask any teacher for a full discussion of this challenge)
- It gives them a great start to their next school year
When our children were young, we found both Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook (now in its 8th Edition!) and Honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt (in its 5th Edition!). These are both anthologies of excellent books to share together. Were we in for a fabulous treat!! We started taking these two books with us to the library, checking out what they highly recommended, then reading those stories together.
The result? As Gladys Hunt puts it in one of her chapters entitled “The Pleasure of a Shared Adventure”:
“Reading aloud as a family has bound us together, as sharing an adventure always does. We know the same people. We have gone through emotional crises together as we felt anger, sadness, fear, gladness and tenderness in the world of the book we were reading. Something happens to us which is better experienced than described- a kind of enlarging of heart- when we encounter passages full of grand language and nobility of thought.
Much of our secret family idioms come from the books we have read together. You need to have shared the book to know what the phrase means.”
In our home, if a family member was being very negative or looking at the absolute worst possible scenario, all we had to say was, “Our very own true Narnian Marshwiggle!” Because we had shared The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis together (multiple times!), we all knew exactly what that description meant.
Or with younger children, it is delightful fun to start a familiar phrase from a favorite book, such as the often-quoted line from Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hatches the Egg: “I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent.” Just start the first few words and see if your children pick up on it and can finish the line. It also leads to an opportunity to talk about what “faithfulness” looks like.
In the same vein, reading together gives you the opportunity to talk over ideas, difficult issues, or different personalities and how they acted and reacted in the story. This broadens your child’s understanding of people and gives them a foundation of awareness.
So I encourage you to make Storytime or Reading Aloud as a Family a regular part of your summer activity plan. You will get to know each other better, have the “pleasure of a shared adventure” and forever after, share special phrases that have meaning for your family.
QUESTION: What are your thoughts, experiences or observations about reading aloud together as a family? Please share in the comment section below.
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