There have been many resources that have been dedicated to learning, but none has been quite as popular as a simple book. Reading textbooks is important, but its even more important to let your homeschool students loose in a library and pick up books on all kinds of different topics.
Encouraging Reading in Toddlers
If you catch them young and convert them into bookworms, they will grow up thinking that reading is as natural as eating and sleeping. The best way to do that is to introduce your young children to age appropriate books. For toddlers it’s a good idea to start with board books that are thick and can be easily handled by less dexterous fingers. They are much less likely to accidentally tear such books. And the thick, laminated pages can withstand a little bit of saliva and chewing.
Stepping Up the Difficulty
As your child grows, they will need some more interaction with the book. Now is a good time to go in for the touch and feel books. Many of them use multiple media in a pop up manner based on the story in the book. Cloth, hair, sand paper, it’s all there to give the extra sensation that the child will relate to the characters in the story. It’s a good time to read out the story and point at the words while doing so to begin building their word identification skills.
Illustrations are Important
Since human beings are essentially extremely visual beings, it makes sense to capture the attention of your early readers by using illustrated books. Your homeschool students will be much more likely to pick up a book to read when it has interesting pictures in it. They may often like to make their own illustrations about events that happened in the book to express themselves. It’s a great idea to encourage these drawings to promote self expression in your homeschool students.
As they grow older, allow them a choice in the genre of books they want to read. Don’t just buy them educational books, sometimes it’s good to read a book simply because you enjoy it.
