Graphic Novels Breakthough

My little dude was not a fan of reading. When he'd read aloud to me during school, I could hear him struggling as he slowly read. I must also admit that it was a little tiring for me to sit through the tedious sessions, mainly because I tend to get dozy under the best conditions if I'm listening to someone read aloud, so the slow pace made it even harder. It's a weird flaw, but one I'll admit.

I always hoped that my kids would love reading as much as I did as a kid and still do now. And working in a library added excitement to this desire--I had access to tons of books to share! What could be better? So I went on a mission to find books to ignite his interest and found a graphic novel book called The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future. It was a silly book by the author of Captain Underpants, but little man fell in love. He saw that books could be fun and actually asked for more. So I went on a search for graphic novels. It was summertime, so I could justify unlimited graphic novels for reading material without feeling guilty or like a lazy teacher. It was one of my best decisions ever. My little dude lost his grumbly attitude towards reading to a boy that loved finding books to read. He devoured graphic novel after graphic novel all through the summer. And then the best thing happened when we got back to structured reading. He was much more confident with regular reading and his fluency when he read aloud was night and day.

It has been about two years since the breakthrough summer and now he enjoys reading many different types of books. He still loves a fun graphic novel, but he also is reading chapter books and even will read a book with almost no pictures. That might not seem like much, but he's a big fan of the "flip through a book and look at font size and pictures before knowing what it's about" method of book selection. So for parents out there feeling stuck when teaching reading to their kids, I fully recommend giving the graphic novel method a shot. The joy of homeschooling is that you can be flexible, so taking a break from the text books or reading comprehension worksheets could pay off in unexpected ways over the long run. And if graphic novels don't appeal to your reader, try transition books or fun light books, but give yourself permission to break from formal reading for fun reading.

Weekly Reading Sheet

We do a lot of free reading in our house, but I also like to assign daily reading assignments. This ensures that more than graphic novels are being read. This table has the days of the week, page start, page end, and a place to check off when they are done, and then I put this page in their weekly planner. There is also a list at the bottom with reminders of what the kids should be looking for as they read.

Grab the freebie here .

I ♥ Leapfrog

My oldest son wasn't interested in learning the alphabet. He did learn the letter E very easily since it was the first letter in his name and he loved finding that all important letter everywhere. I tried flash cards, made a cool alphabet book, and tried to introduce letters whenever I could but it just didn't appeal to him. Leapfrog Letter Factory changed all of that. Say what you will about how the video teaches them that B say "buh" instead of the really short B sound, but Tad, Leap, and Lily taught my kiddos both how to read. I loved that my little guy learned phonics at the same time as he learned the alphabet because I think that's what really made it click for him.

After the Letter Factory, we switched to The Talking Words Factory and Talking Words 2-the Code Word Caper. Now, I will admit that I'm one of those awful parents that used the time he watched the videos to clean or catch up on household chores instead of watching with him. So imagine my surprise when he came into the kitchen and started demonstrating how to write silent E words with his fridge magnets. Within a period of two months, he went from not caring about his alphabet to knowing all the letters and reading simple words. And my younger daughter that watched the videos with her big brother is three and a half and reading early readers already.

Leapfrog doesn't work for everyone but I love that these videos are interesting and also tie in well with the fridge magnet sets and other leapfrog toys. You can also check to see if your library has the dvds so you can test them out without risk.

One note here--there are some videos that are similar to the ones that worked very well for us, but they are not quite the same. We watched the Alphabet Adventure video once and i thought it was harder to follow that the older Letter Factory. I also think that they shortened the title of the second Talking Words video to Word Caper