In two previous posts, I extolled the benefits of reading aloud to my children. Clearly, we are book lovers, and we’ve seen many benefits of read-alouds from the time our children were very young, from instilling a love of language to increasing the kids’ confidence in their own ability to read aloud.
But, as my girls have gotten older, I’ve seen another benefit of read-alouds, which adds a whole new dimension to our homeschooling and to our lives. Reading a great deal of literature to my children leads to the most amazing and delightful discussions.
Rather than sending them off with a book and getting a dry book report in return, read-alouds let me be right there with them, “on the scene” as they experience the book for the first time. I can “live” the book with them, share in their reactions, answer their questions and correct any misconceptions. I can expound on a concept or explain an obscure phrase. I can edit, if needed, should we run across something that’s inappropriate for their ages. And, since most children can comprehend stories written far above their own reading level, by reading more advanced books to younger children, we can introduce them to the riches of literature long before they’ve mastered the mechanics of reading it independently. We can laugh together at the humor, and cry at the pathos. By sharing the book through a read-aloud, it becomes a family memory.
In just the last few months of our WWII study, we have had some amazing conversations, sparked by the books we’ve been reading together. As we read Hilda van Stockum’s “The Borrowed House,” for example, my ten year old asked me why God allowed the Holocaust to happen. We had a meaningful, insightful and touching discussion about our faith, free will, and what real love and real choices mean. A similar discussion, bearing even more fruit, occurred when we read van Stockum’s The Winged Watchman.
The riches and rewards of read-alouds can’t always be measured in merely academic terms. Oh, yes, the academic benefits are there, but for me, it’s the moments of shared discovery, lively talk and the resulting deepened understanding of the human condition that elevate a book to an encounter we can’t imagine missing.
But, if I weren’t reading aloud to them, I’d be the one missing it.