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The Value of Reading Aloud

  • Reading aloud increases your child's vocabulary and listening skills
  • Reading aloud is true quality time that deepens your bond with your child
  • Reading aloud sparks your child's imagination, creativity and curiosity
  • Reading aloud expands your child's interests and tastes, as well as building their knowledge base
  • Reading aloud is an activity that is free and enjoyable for both parent and child
  • Reading aloud creates a passion for reading and an appreciation of lifelong learning

For thousands of years, before there were books to read, we taught our children orally, by passing on the stories of our culture. Some of the fairy tales, folk tales, tall tales and legends we read to our children today are based the oral stories passed down for generations. Our children crave hearing our culture's stories, as well as stories from other cultures. They are thirsty for this knowledge and they absorb and retain it amazingly well because they are genuinely interested in it (perhaps because there is no TV to competing with it in our home).

For our family, reading aloud is a successful example of child-led learning, a key part of our home education. It is a powerful form of education, done in our most comfortable love seat, snuggling all together, bonding as a family. Personally, I love finding stories that spark (and follow) our children's interest, books that are of good quality, stories that impress the values and ideals that our family holds dear. Thankfully, almost all of them are available to be ordered through our library system completely free of charge. Childhood is the time to build the foundation of character and the books that we read play a big part in that. Our family has created this website as a resource, so that you may read along with us.

Enjoy!