Teach Them Tuesday: Bonding Through Books

Reading is a family favorite in our house! When I was growing up, I spent more of my time outside playing and climbing trees than I did inside reading, so I wasn’t a strong reader but now I’ve spent my entire adulthood soaking up all the books I can get my hands on (since climbing trees is out for me now, ha!). And I wanted my kids to be strong readers, so I started reading to them as early as possible…the womb. I had a little basket of baby books in the nursery just waiting for baby, so while pregnant, I’d sit in the rocking chair and read those little books to my bump. Sounds silly, I know!

Read-alouds have probably been our favorite part of homeschooling. In fact, my son says that’s still the part of our school day he looks forward to the most. When my oldest started dual enrollment in high school, she came home so stressed one day and said, “I told my friend I just wanted to go home and listen to my mom read a story.” A sweet comfort.

Now, I’m no expert but just in my experience in our own home, I’ve found that books have created a bond with my children in three ways:

The first is through the physical touch between parent and child because while reading to my little ones, they were snuggled in my lap.

The second way we bonded through books was the adventures we took together! Sometimes we got so caught up in the adventures together, those last sentences of a book were like summitting a mountain together! Sometimes we’d even had a theme meal to celebrate the completion of the book.

And finally, the third way reading fostered our bonding was through our family convictions in how we chose books that would help build character and encourage creativity. Regarding choosing books for your children, Sally Clarkson once said in a podcast, “What you want to see in all the books and themes is how might this book pictures what life is like; how might it teach truth; how might it prepare them for battles. You’re looking for the themes that you’ve already determined you want to teach your children.”

My husband and I would by no means tell other parents what to choose for their children, but we’ve told our kids that there is so much reading material out there, we can afford to be picky and select books we feel our the very best for us. As they get older, they will set their own standards, but they’ll know how.

We have books EVERYWHERE in the house! Each of the kids has a bookshelf in their bedroom, there’s another shelf in the upstairs hall, a large one in my closet, baskets of books here and there, and more shelves and boxes of books are in the attic which get switched out from time to time with the bookshelves around the house. I pulled some books from our “library” to represent some of our favorites from each age. It was SO hard to narrow them down!

When they were babies, we read a lot of Bible stories and nursery rhymes with clapping and hand motions.

As toddlers and little kids, we loved Corduroy, Little Bear, Winnie the Pooh, anything princess (for the girls), and a collection of Golden Books.

Ok, and here is where we took a jump! Our oldest was in preschool and they had a Scholastic book sale. I saw this set of Little House books in the paper and ordered it which the other moms thought was crazy. Kinda was, BUT when we brought them home our little girl asked us to read one. So that night we all sprawled out on her bed together and started reading. She was completely captivated, and so my husband and I read a chapter each night until we had worked our way through the whole set! Then we started them over again and by that time our second tiny girl was on the bed with us absorbing it all and she was hooked too. We later cycled them with our son too. Yes, there’s a lot in Little House for boys too! I can’t even remember how many times we went through this set, but we’ve had to tape several of them back together, so they’re pretty worn!

Other book series enjoyed together were Chronicles of Narnia, Max and Liz (my husband can do all the animal voices), Anne of Green Gables, the historical American Girl books, just to name a few (I don’t like the direction American Girl is going now but their historical books were so good for our girls.). We collected whole sets of these, but the ones pictures are just representing the sets. Our daughters were often inspired by stories of girls from other time periods and then later found inspiration with fantasy fiction by authors such as C.S.Lewis (Narnia) and J.R.R. Tolkein (Lord of the Rings) and mystery books like Nancy Drew and Agatha Chrisite. Our son is highly motivated with historical accounts of boyhood and bravery.

Pictured above are just some of the classics that have shaped our minds and hearts! And Sign of the Beaver an all-time favorite I don’t have pictured here (for that boyhood bravery theme!). Ugh, and so many more!

Above are some read-alouds my son and have enjoyed this school year to go with his history lessons. I can see his heart and mind processing some tough topics such as slavery.

And these (above) are his latest new favorites that he reads independently. He’s loving The Hardy Boys and has read the first 10 in the series, working to collect them all. Great for boys!

And now to address another topic: silliness! As much as we try to keep our book selections ones which will call our kids up, we know they also just need something silly and ridiculous sometimes, and we totally understand that. But we’ve had a time trying to find funny books that aren’t vulgar or disrespectful. We try to be pretty diligent as far as knowing what our kids are reading, however a while back I missed something. I let my son purchase a book from a popular kids’ series one day after I skimmed through it and didn’t find anything alarming. But after he’d been reading it for a few days, my husband and I happened to notice in the middle of the book, some very disrespectful talk and bashing of schoolteachers and other authority figures with not-so-nice choice of words. So, we told him we’d made a mistake by not looking into it more carefully and we bought him a different book. I won’t say what series that is because I don’t want to offend anyone who might think it’s fine and lets their kids read them, but I just explain all that to say, check out what your kids are reading and make sure it aligns with your standards. CatStronaughts, however, has so far been silly but not vulgar. I know, the name alone is ridiculous, lol….he loves it!

When we got to the high school years, I assumed my involvement in my kids’ reading would end, but I was wrong! We worked on their literature readings together, reading the same books separately but then discussing them together. We learned to endure and even appreciate books that weren’t our favorite genre even though they had to be read for their courses (ahem, sci fi) and those which had language difficult to understand (Beowulf). And my daughters now know that Jane Eyre is mom’s favorite of all times!

Book bonding also calls for warm cozy drinks and blankets! In the earlier years with our read-alouds the kids enjoy mugs of hot chocolate (coffee or hot tea for mom) while I read to them. My son still has hot chocolate almost every day with our read-alouds and in the photo above he even lit a candle for us one day (and drew smiley face on the candle, cute).

In her high school years, my younger daughter has gradually switched from hot chocolate to hot tea. Last year we called our book discussion time our “Book Club” and enjoyed a pot of hot tea while working through her lit journals together. Without fail Pumpkin would know we were having book club and would quietly join us, so she became known as “Book Club Kitty”.

My older daughter participated in the Great Books program through her college years and has now definitely passed me with her depth of reading, diving into more philosophical readings, which I greatly admire but can’t keep up with. But my husband read a few of the books she had read in her program, just out of his own interest, not because she needed help, and they’ve had some good discussions. So, I’m realizing now that the book bond will continue with our kids even past their childhood and into their adult years!