Recently my daughter told me she caught herself falling asleep at the wheel. School had been in session for about six weeks. Her family had done well with the transition from summer fun time to school structure and routines. She scheduled an early conference with her third grader’s teacher to be sure things were going well for her visual learner. The teacher had good news and together they problem solved a few areas. Then she mentioned reading logs would be coming home soon. The reading log! The dreaded reading log. They have participated faithfully with daily reading since preschool but for some reason reading had fallen through the cracks of a busy fall start up.

So much good happens from reading 20 minutes a day but if you have a visual kid it may not be the easiest 20 minutes. Remember visual kids love pictures and reading is all about the words. They’ll enjoy their picture book years, but once those pictures disappear, all the words can be intimidating. To help bridge the gap, it’s important to build a love of reading early on so when the ‘struggle’ of early reading comes – reading is such a part of them, they’ll stick with it.

Here are a few goodies we have to help you….

Read. Read. Read – It’s all about reading. Here are 10 ways to improve reading time at home. Mix it up by having them read independently, read out loud to you or you read to them. Just make sure you’re getting in those 20 minutes each day.

Be sure they’re reading the right books – From time to time you need to evaluate the books your kids are reading. As they gain skill, be sure their books are increasing in difficulty and depth of subject matter. Here’s a great resource for picking Just the Right Books.

Reading is everything – The time you spend reading at home has a tremendous impact on your child’s success in the classroom. Here’s a little reminder on how much impact your daily reading has on your child’s future.