5 Reasons Homeschool Families Love Read-Alouds, and You Will Too

I can still see my dad sitting on the side of my bed reading from the hardback Reader's Digest collection of fairy tales, one of my favorite Christmas gifts. At other cherished moments, my mom read with me at the kitchen table or in the rocking chair wrapped in the afghan crocheted by my grandmother and Aunt Alice. Decades later, those read-alouds are some of my favorite childhood memories.

📚 What Montessori says about read-alouds and language development: Maria Montessori placed language at the very heart of her educational philosophy. She believed that rich oral language, storytelling, and literature exposure are the essential foundation for all later reading and writing. Her language curriculum begins with listening and speaking long before any formal reading instruction, because she understood that a child must first love language before learning to decode it. Research on read-alouds (Bus, van IJzendoorn, and Pellegrini, 1995, Psychological Bulletin) found that shared book reading is the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading. A landmark study by Cunningham and Stanovich (1998, American Educator) confirmed that early and frequent reading exposure accounts for up to 34% of the variance in reading comprehension by 11th grade, making it one of the strongest predictors of long-term academic achievement.

5 Reasons Homeschool Families Love Read-Alouds

Read-alouds make for memorable family time while building relationships, reading skills, and a love for literature all at the same time. If you are new to homeschooling, read-alouds are a wonderful way to get started. Here are five benefits that will have you including them in your homeschool every day.

1. Literacy Skills

Read-alouds are one of the most effective ways to advance your child's literacy skills. The best time to start reading to your child is from the very beginning, even as a baby, but it is never too late to start.

Creating a daily family reading habit gives your child a meaningful advantage. If you start at about six months and read just one book per day, your child will have been exposed to about 1,600 books by kindergarten.

Start with cloth books for babies, which hold up to chewing, then board books and picture books for toddlers. As little hands are ready, involve them in page-turning. Once your child is a toddler, move your finger along underneath the words as you read. This helps train eye-tracking from left to right, and both habits help the physical mechanics of reading become second nature by the time your child is ready to learn to read.

Grandmother reading a book for her two grandchildren

2. Build Extended-Family Relationships and Reading Comprehension

Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins can all be included in family reading time, making it a special way to nurture familial bonds. Extended family members can help make reading selections, sharing their interests, history, and even family stories. The love of both literacy and family will blossom together.

Grandpop can send a favorite book from across the country and discuss the story by phone or video call. Grandmom can take the children to the library to choose books, and the children can share about the story on their next visit. These extended family discussions help refine reading comprehension and storytelling skills, and family reading time becomes associated with the warmth of special relationships.

3. Competency and Closure: Organic Recognition of Words

You may have seen some of the writing or workshops that Larry Shiller has done on Lesson Outcomes and Competency and Closure. Closure is when your child is ready to move on from something. ShillerLearning recommends allowing your child to repeat an activity over and over until they have closure on their own terms. Children are always happy to let us know when they are ready to move on to the next thing.

The same principle applies to books. If your child would like you to read the same book to them 300 out of 365 days this year, that is wonderful. Many years ago as a first-time mom, I thought my child was reading by age one. He could recite entire books word for word, page by page. They were books he loved. It turned out he was not yet reading, but he had developed a deep love for reading. Not every child will memorize entire books, but in rereading, they will memorize favorite passages.

Eventually rereading leads to recognizing words, often without even consciously trying. It leads to an understanding of what fluent reading should sound like. Add phonics to that foundation and watch them take off.

Two children reading books together on a park bench

4. Greater Vocabulary Comprehension

Time spent reading together as a family is a long-term investment in vocabulary exposure. The reading selections in ShillerLearning Language Arts Kits A and B were made with this in mind. Family reading time gives children the chance to ask questions about words they do not understand, which leads to more effective reading. This matters for both beginners and experienced readers.

Vocabulary is an important and sometimes overlooked pre-reading skill. Children with limited vocabulary face greater challenges learning to read, because they need to understand most of the words they are trying to decode in order to comprehend the story. Having been exposed to about 1,600 books before kindergarten pays real dividends when building a rich vocabulary.

Get excited when your child discovers an unknown word. Pause in the reading to see if the meaning can be discerned from context clues. If you have multiple children and one knows the definition, encourage them to share their understanding. Then, either during or after reading time, look it up in the dictionary. You may wish to keep a list of new words and their definitions for each book. Literature is one of the best ways for your child to build vocabulary and become proficient in using a broad range of words in both speaking and writing.

Family reading together at a table filled with books

5. Read-Alouds Are for All Ages

Family reading time does not have to stop once your child is an independent reader or even a teenager. Homeschool parents want to help their children develop a lifelong love of learning and reading, and continuing to read aloud furthers that goal even after children read independently.

Try having the children take turns reading paragraphs or chapters with you. As your child moves into middle and high school, family reading selections could focus on lifestyle, faith, or travel. You will find topics the whole family can still enjoy reading and discussing together. You can also move into a book club model as the family grows: pick a book to read independently and meet to read aloud favorite passages, discuss, or do book-related activities.

Family read-aloud time may shorten or become less frequent as children come of age, but do not set it aside entirely. It can be a lifelong way of promoting the love of literacy and family.

We are homeschooling in a wonderful time, with endless options for curriculum, conventions, co-ops, and classes ranging from gym and art to robotics, cooking, woodworking, archery, and more. When the busy season returns, continue to carve out time for reading together.

Do you have a list of your favorite books for the family? Let us know so we can add it to our list.