How to get your kids excited about learning

How in the world do you get your kids excited about learning? I know a secret to doing this! I got interested in history when I started reading aloud to my kids when I was teaching them. What was the difference between reading paragraphs from a textbook and reading real stories from picture and chapter books? Quite simply, reading stories aloud. People and their stories are captivating when told in a well written book. Suddenly, history came to life with the fascinating, wonderful, and terrible adventures of people throughout the ages. I was hooked. When teaching my kids at home, I could see the benefits of reading aloud because of the way my own children were soaking up and remembering the stories--and often begging for more time reading.

Reading aloud can integrate so well with several areas of learning at once, even when you aren’t consciously trying to teach anything beyond enjoying a good story. Language arts is all about reading, writing, talking, and listening. Think of how you can be teaching all those skills to your children with just one picture book. Taking learning a step further isn’t too hard-linking art, music, and history to language arts is effortless when bound up with a story.

Peeking behind the scenes of what countless educators do, (and into my own thought process as I teach children,) let me show you what I mean with an example from celebrating Black History month. Let’s say you want your kids to learn about the Underground Railroad. You can easily accomplish this with reading a picture book aloud. There are many great ones, but I love the book Moses, a story about Harriet Tubman by Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson, so that’s the example I’ll use to illustrate my point. Speaking of illustrations, Nelson won the Caldecott Honor award for his illustrations for this beautiful book. 

But what exactly do you do to use one book to teach so many things?

Start with the story: Read it aloud, talk about any parts that seem to raise questions or that you’d like to highlight. Remember-one skill that you want to foster in your kids is listening and speaking. Reading to them and discussing a book encourages both of these skills. Then leave the book lying around where they can look at it and, if able, read it to themselves. This encourages their own reading skills. Both reading aloud and encouraging them to reread it afterward also strengthens and develops their vocabulary comprehension.  

That sounds easy enough. But wait...what about art?

Add an art experience: I like the illustrations in this book because they evoke so much emotion. It’s a story of adventure, courage, and faith. How does Kadir Nelson draw us into the emotion Harriet Tubman felt? Look how he uses background color and her facial expressions as well as lights and darks to help the readers feel the emotions of those perilous journeys.

I also love the way the book’s text demonstrates that God is speaking to Harriet by writing words in curvy, wavy lines. It's an interesting and fun way for kids to incorporate words into their own artwork, if they want to add words. Try these ideas:

1. Encourage your child to draw a face showing different emotions that Harriet Tubman might have felt.
2. Have your kids draw a picture of a forest using all warm colors (reds, oranges, yellows) or all cool colors (blues, greens, and violets) How does the use of color change the mood of the picture? Does the forest feel more scary, or more hopeful?
3. Have your kids draw a picture of something in nature. Then ask them to write words in a circle or wavy line.

What else can you add to their learning?

Sing a song:  In this book, several African American Spirituals are referenced, and it just takes a quick YouTube search to find out how they are sung. “Go Down, Moses,” specifically refers to Harriet Tubman, (whose nickname was Moses, hence the title for the book.) Spirituals were used as codes to help enslaved people know where to meet or when to run away. Teach your kids a Spiritual to enrich their understanding of the Underground railroad and of the quotes in the picture book.

Bonus idea: read the story of Moses from the the book of Exodus in the Bible and compare the story of the Israelite slaves escaping from Egypt to the African American slaves escaping from their enslavers.

Reading a great picture book to kids opens up a world of learning and is an easy way to incorporate art (and history and music, in this case!) into their lives. Check out the book Moses and read it aloud with your kids today, then challenge them with one of the art ideas. You will increase their comprehension, retention, empathy, and engagement in their own learning.

If you are interested in tying good books to art experiences, check out my online picture book-based art classes for elementary aged kids! Check it out here.  Every lesson will help them learn to draw, and every lesson has a booklist attached to connect the learning. Win-win!