Blogging Through the Alphabet: L is for Learning through Literature

We are on Week 12 of Blogging Through the Alphabet, and this week, L is for Learning through Literature {I have two "L"s in there!}

I love good books, and I love to see my kids reading good books. Personally, I think all your children need to have to learn anything is good literature. Books can open up so many doors, so many opportunities for learning, so much imagination!

When your children are babies and toddlers, board books are wonderful. I love textured and interactive board books that teach the alphabet, numbers, animals sounds, and shapes and colors. Allowing your children free access to books at this young age will help to instill a lifelong love of books.

At the pre-school and pre-reading age, read to your children all the time! Invest in good books, ask for books instead of toys for birthdays and Christmas, and allow your child to pick out their own books from the library. When you read, point out things in the books and ask your child questions: "What season is it in this story? How do you know?" "What kind of animal is this? What does it eat?" "Do you know what this plant is?" "Point out the squares on this page." "Count the stars." You can even take a book and make an entire day {or week} of learning from it.

Once your child is an emergent reader, have them read a book to you. Ask them to point out all of the verbs on a certain page, or find as many adjectives as they can in a certain amount of time. If the book takes place in a different country or time period, make a craft or cook a meal from that time or place. Have your child draw a 3 part summary of the book - what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story. If there is an animal in the book, your child could do a little research to find out what the animal eats, where it lives, and other interesting facts. You could even give them their own notebook to keep an animal journal - every time they read about an animal, they can draw it and write a few things about it.

When children are upper elementary, you can have them read a chapter or two a day from a book. Ask them to write down 3 unfamiliar or uncommon words and define them. Have them do further research into a topic in the book. If there is a handicraft or life skill mentioned, your child can learn how to do it, too {whittling, starting a fire, sewing a pillow case, baking bread, training a dog}. Copy work from classic literature is a great way for your child to learn how to correctly form sentences and paragraphs, capitalize words, and use punctuation.

Biographies are a great way for middle schoolers and high schoolers to learn. Many biographies are written in a story-like form, which makes them fun to read. You could have your child look for Godly character traits, and compare and contrast them to Biblical figures. If your child is reading a historical book, have them research that time period. Have them find examples of compound or complex sentences in the book, or a list of similes, or even diagram a sentence from the book. Have them do a presentation on the book - a movie poster, a cereal box, or video a commercial.

The ideas are endless!

**If you are looking for a curriculum that does all of this for us, I suggest Five in a Row. There are 3 different levels {Before FIAR, FIAR, and Beyond FIAR} with the ideas and lessons planned for you.

Linking up with Meg and Cristi at Blogging Through the Alphabet.