Good reading skills are essential in our world today and therefore teaching reading skills is a large component of any successful homeschool program. As a homeschooling mother, I found it difficult to consistently come up with reading assignments and ideas to keep the children engaged and motivated. I wrote this article to help homeschooling parents like me find new and interesting ways to keep their kids reading.

Helping your child to take on reading as a hobby is a great first step, but you must also ensure that your child develops good reading comprehension. To do this, you can give your child some fun reading assignments to do. When you homeschool, you have the opportunity to tailor these reading assignments to your child. For example, if your child loves to act, you can ask him/her to create a play based on the story they just read. If your child loves art, you can ask him/her to draw portraits of the characters as they imagined them in their minds and write small descriptions for each character.

Below are some specific homeschool reading assignments for you and your child to explore:

The Book Report
One of the most important types of reading assignments is the book report. Homeschooling parents must teach their children how to write a good book report. Book reports are one of the best ways to evaluate your child’s reading comprehension. To start, book reports should include a short plot summary, character descriptions, a paragraph or two about setting and your child’s opinions and feelings about the story. You can also ask your child to draw an illustration of their favourite scene in the book.

Creating a Play
Creating a play from a favourite book is a wonderful reading assignment for your little homeschooler. Most kids love to play pretend or act and so they will not view this reading assignment as work but rather fun. Although creating a play can be lots of fun it is also very educational. Working on this reading assignment will help develop your child’s comprehension, analytical, organizational and artistic skills.

If the story your child chooses is too long, you can pick a favourite scene from the story and focus on that. Begin by making sure your child has good comprehension of the story’s events and themes. Then allow your child’s imagination to soar as they decide on how they will portray the setting, make the costumes and set the stage. If you have more than one child or are a part of a homeschooling group invite other children to help create and implement this fun filled reading assignment.

Keeping a Reading Log
Ask your child to keep a reading log of all the books he/she reads. This is one reading assignment that your child may complain about at first but will quickly learn to love as they watch their list of books they’ve read grow longer and longer. The longer the list grows, the better they feel about themselves.

Create a goal for your child to reach, such as ten or twenty books depending on their age and reading level and agree upon a reward to be handed out once your child reaches his/her goal. This reading assignment will also help build your child’s confidence when he/she sees the large number of books they’ve read at the end of the month or at the end of the year.

It’s a good idea to also ask your child to write a short summary of each book they add to their reading log. The summary could simply be one or two paragraphs. This will help ensure they read and understood the book before they added it to their reading log. Writing the summaries will also help improve their reading comprehension.

These activities are a great place to start when you’re trying to help your child with reading skills and comprehension but remember that with a bit of brainstorming and a dash of creativity your can come up with many more of your own homeschool reading assignments.