Sep 5, 20233 min read

Homeschool Help: Unmotivated Reader?

These Activities Could Be The Ticket!

Reading Ready.

As parents we are eager to get our children cracking open books, and getting those bright eyes reading. For absolute good reason too! Reading is a power tool when it comes to learning, and for laying the foundation for a love of learning.

With that said though, I would like to take a moment, and share in my own experience with my youngest daughter. Busy, bright, and eager to learn, I was thrilled to start "formally" homeschooling her. She picked up on concepts so quickly, didn't resist learning new things, but embraced them. Where I hit a speed bump with her though, was when it came to her reading. She could recognize words, and her ability to sound out each letter in the word was spot on. When faced with a book though, she wanted nothing to do with it. Naturally a bit discouraging for me at times, as I had hoped she would take to reading books with excitement. Alas, whenever it came time to practice and spend time reading, she was unmotivated and met it with dread.

There were times her disinterest in reading raised my eyebrows-

Was I doing something wrong?

How could I get her more inclined to read?

Did she need more support?

Before working myself up with worry, I instead took a deep breath and waited.

I had to be patient. She had the tools she needed, she just was going to warm up to it on her own time, which I knew to respect.

I would love to encourage those in similar situations, and gently remind you to be patient and wait, because by allowing them to move along at their own speed, will only benefit you both. Less frustration, less worry, less pressure.

Once I accepted that her terms for reading books were going to look different and gave her space with it, her interest did grow. Also finding her style of books greatly assisted her motivation to keep her reading skills growing. It took her maturing a bit more, and being ready and willing to relax with time spent in a book. With her new found interest in bloom, I wanted to provide an incentive to keep her invested in books.

I worked up some reading challenges to keep her, and my son, active readers with a sweet reward at the end for all their awesome reading.

If you have a young learner like mine, who may be ready, but just needs a little incentive, then these activities could benefit. If you have a learner who may be ready, but still would rather spend time with their hands in the dirt, trust me, that's really great too!

Either way, keep these activities in your learning tools arsenal for when your child is ready to read, to keep their reading rolling!

While we can recognize that reading, in and of itself is reward enough, I wanted to entice my little readers even more, and because I loved the fun of it. I started with a monthly goal sheet that both my kids enjoyed. They set their monthly goal of the number of books they were going to try and read, and tallied them in the chart each night. At the end of each month, we counted up the total books that they had read, and compared the number to their original goal. They both enjoyed the challenge of meeting their set goals, and typically exceeded their personal goals. If they did reach their goal, their reward was to pick a prize from our prize box- something I always loved and had fond memories of myself as a kid!

* Grab this FREE

reading goal sheet *HERE!

With this first method having remarkable results, I wanted to try another type of reward system, only this time more playful with specific challenges. Our Reading Rocks! Activity sheet met my young readers with time challenges, genres, and quantities of books. Once they had completed a challenge, they colored in the box of the achieved challenge. After they had completed their challenges, and had all the boxes colored in, they were then rewarded with a prize. What I loved about this bingo style sheet, was that it made them more aware of which type of book they were reading, and being more of a game, kept the challenge interactive for them. I also was able to reuse the sheet by inserting it into a plastic sleeve and by having them color using a dry erase marker.