Milk and Honey
Shared reading experiences bind a family together.
By: crystal heyland, Perimeter School Mom
Are you beginning to make summer plans? I am sure that camps, swim team, sports, and vacations are all on your mind. I would like for you to take just a couple of minutes and read this blog by one of our Perimeter parents that will inspire you to add to your summer plans a few great books to read to your children. Reading to our children (no matter the age) is invaluable and is an activity that our school will always promote as a top priority. As my children are now grown, I would cherish one more summer to feed them rich honey. So, don’t miss out!
- Rebecca Little, Lower Elementary Principal
MILK AND HONEY
Children need both milk and honey from their parents … milk being the care for their basic needs and honey being that special sweetness of life. Good books are rich in honey!
As we seek to disciple and shepherd our children’s hearts as Deuteronomy 6 instructs us, reading great books can help us teach them God’s truths as well as bind us to them in close relationship. Shared reading experiences bind a family together. Each story or chapter provides a connection point between family members.
We know the importance of reading to babies and toddlers for their neurodevelopment. Providing pleasurable reading experiences helps them associate reading with something positive while also building their understanding of language, phonics, and increasing their vocabulary.
But reading aloud to children who have already begun reading independently is still important. It allows them to hear and discuss subjects and ideas they would not be able to read on their own while giving parents a chance to connect with them and impart godly values.
A HERITAGE
As believers, the most important message we have to communicate to our children is who God is and what He has done. To do this, we read the Bible and devotion books with them. We can also instruct them using great literature. If we want to impart to our children a biblical worldview, we must expose them to great truth and discuss it with them.
We are giving our children a heritage; we decide what it will be. It helps me to picture my child’s heart as a treasure chest. I want to fill it with treasures like great stories that build character, memorized Bible verses, and memories to cherish.
TIMELESS TREASURES
How can we fill our children’s hearts with timeless treasures that will be a well for them to draw from in the future? Shared reading is a great way to pour into our children and influence them while they are in our homes.
We can use the time we have been given with them to share books we’ve chosen that teach great truths. We can choose stories that instill values like honesty and hard work, autobiographies of faithful Christians who served God, and stories of others who are different from us. We can laugh with our children, travel through adventures with them, and grieve losses through reading … all the while creating ties that bind us together.
“Education is a life. That life is sustained on ideas. Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so that we get them chiefly as we convey them one to another, whether by word of mouth, written page, Scripture … we must sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with food.”
- Charlotte Mason
“You may have tangible wealth untold; caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be. I had a mother (or father) who read to me.”
- Strickland Gillilan
God shows up in our messy places and transforms ordinary moments into holy ones.