Provide Online Resources. While we love our World Book Encyclopedia, there is no substitute today for online learning and research resources. Our secondary aged children spend a fair amount of time online working on homework. Additionally, our high school now requires many assignments to be completed and submitted online, so Internet access at home has become mandatory. More of our kids’ reading for school is now on a computer screen and less on books.
Reading the Same Books. Now that our kids are older, we have taken to reading some of the same books with them that we read. In our home, we all enjoy American history, so we are now reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. We have colored bookmarks in the book, one for each of us. Seeing where others are tends to be a motivator to "catch up" and we have some great discussions about what we have read.
Reading Magazines and the Newspaper. We also find that as our children hit the secondary years, they become more interested in current events. So we subscribe to the local newspaper and have a number of magazines of interest to them. Our boys are into Scouting, so Boys Life is a mainstay at home. They also love National Geographic and news magazines. And this reading also helps them with homework in several classes at school.
