Episode 128: Creating or Improving Your Reading Routine
Reading Routine Resources from this episode
- Miranda’s Favorite Book The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
- Savvy Reading Program (use the code MIRANDA for 20% off of 6+month memberships!)
- 100 Picture Book lists on Everyday Reading
- Janssen’s Favorite Audiobook recommendations for young kids
- Tips for Helping Emerging Readers
- Phonics Pathways book
- Four Weeks to Read Set
-
Some Favorite Early Chapter Books
- Raising Readers Free Email Course
Find Janssen at the Everyday Reading blog, and on Instagram
Introduction
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the show. I am Miranda Anderson, your host of Live Free Creative podcast. You’re listening to Episode 128, How To Create Or Improve Your Reading Routine and How To Raise Readers.
I am thrilled to share with you one of my good friends, Janssen Bradshaw from the blog Everyday Reading today. Janssen and I sat down and chatted about reading. And I got so many incredible tidbits and tips and just really great information from Janssen, who’s an absolute expert in the topic.
Janssen began Everyday Reading 14 years ago. She’s an original blogger like myself and her biggest goal is to help everyone find books that help them remember, or discover for the first time, how fun reading can be.
I love that, as a former children’s librarian, Janssen is pretty opinionated about books that she likes and doesn’t like. She has no time for boring books and really wants to connect people to books that they will love. She shares reviews of her favorite books, make suggestions for how to incorporate reading into your family life, and creates incredible lists of the very best books for all different ages and interests.
She has been my go-to for book recommendations for years. And I’m so excited, not only to share some of her recommendations today, but also some tips and tricks for really creating an incredible reading routine at home with your kids in your family, and just cultivating a love of reading.
She’s one of my best blogging friends. We have been friends for a long time. We also spent several years speaking and presenting on topics surrounding blogging at conferences over the years. And so we have gotten to know each other really well.
She’s one of the people that I talk to every single week bounce ideas off of, and I’m super excited to share her with you today.
This episode is I was listening back through and editing it is just so full of great information, both for learning to develop a love of reading in your own home for yourself, and also to really instill that love of reading with your kids, which is I know something that I really hope to do as a mom. And Janssen is just such a fun person to share these ideas with us.
So I hope that you enjoy the interview that I’m going to share with you in this episode. And before I dive right into that, I wanted to share a few quick peaks of the week.
Peaks Of The Week
Favorite Fiction Book
One thing I want to share with you today is my favorite fiction book. I talk about nonfiction books a lot on the show. And I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before. The fiction book that I come back and back to over and over again. I don’t reread fiction books often but this one I feel deeply. It’s called The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister.
The first time I read it, it was about 10 years ago and I just completed my pregnancy with my second child. There is a character in this book. The whole book is set at a cooking school and it goes through, chapter by chapter, each of the people who’s attending this class and gives you a little background story on who they are and what is bringing them to this class.
I really identified, at the time that I read it, with one of the characters named Claire, who is a young mom and she was gifted this class by her husband or her mother-in-law. And didn’t know if she could even leave her young kids at home to go. She feels a little bit out of place. She feels a little bit like she doesn’t really remember what life is like before she was just a Mother.
There’s a particular quote in this book where it talks about her being broken into pieces and that she didn’t know if the pieces would ever come back together again and how she was going to put herself back together. And it just is so beautifully written.
It’s so fun to read because of the cooking class. And I happen to really love food as well. So all of the descriptions of the food and the smells and the tastes and the looks, and just there was such a passion to cooking, especially when someone is passionate about it and every ingredient can tell a story.
And the whole book is just really delightful. I absolutely love it. I have read it many times. I probably read it once a year. It just feels fun to pull it out and kind of lose myself in all of it again.
So if you haven’t checked out The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister, I will link it in the show notes for you. You can check it out. It’s a really fun one.
Savvy Reading
My second peak of the week is Savvy Reading Program (use the code MIRANDA for 20% off of 6+month memberships!). This is a program that actually was designed by my guest today, Jansen Bradshaw, and her husband and another couple. It is a program to help emerging readers and early readers gain confidence and understanding and joy in reading.
The program is–we’re going to talk about it a little bit more in the episode, but I wanted to share it with you just right up front in the show.
Plum has been doing it for about four months. She is an emerging reader. So she’s in first grade this year. She’s really developing those basic skills of putting together words in basic sentences and the phonetics of everything. And she is doing so well, in part because we started Savvy Reading, which is a four day, a week, 30 minutes per day, bonus tutor session.
She does a group class with three other kids in her class, and it just helps to have an outside source give an emerging reader a little bit of a boost, a little bit of support, encouragement, some reinforcement of the skills that Plum is learning in homeschool, or that your emerging reader may be learning in regular school.
That added 20 to 30 minutes a day by someone other than yourself can make a huge impact. So wanted to make sure that I shared that right up front. We’ve absolutely loved it. Plum looks forward to it every day. She’s excited to hop onto the computer and see her fun teacher and the other kids in her class.
There are group lessons. There’s also individual tutoring available if you’re more interested in that. And you can use my affiliate discount code for any of the above. If you’d like to learn more about the program, I’ll put a link in the show notes: Savvy Reading Program (use the code MIRANDA for 20% off of 6+month memberships!)
So they have six month memberships and annual memberships. If you join at six months or longer than you can, at a group rate, have the classes cost less than $10 a piece. So it goes from $179 a month down to less than $150 a month for 16 tutoring sessions throughout the month. That’s less than $10 a class. Iit’s more affordable than any other one-on-one or one on four tutoring or group program that I’ve seen out there by far. And the level of skill of the teacher is a level of sort of entertainment and joy that they bring to it is just off the charts.
I have only incredible things to say about it. So I wanted to share that with you to learn more about savvy reading, head to the show notes and make sure you use my code Miranda for 20% off.
Those, my friends are my peaks of the week.
Interview with Janssen Bradshaw
Okay friends, let’s get into it. Please enjoy my interview with Janssen Bradshaw of Everyday Reading.
M: Hello, Janssen. I’m so happy to have you on the show today. Thank you for being here.
J: I’m so excited. This is such a treat for me.
M: So Fun. Okay. So for those of my audience who aren’t familiar with you and your blog Everyday Reading, why don’t you give us a quick intro about who you are, what you do and what Everyday Reading is all about.
J: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been running my blog Everyday Reading for 14 years, which is like a grandma blog. And my background is I have a master’s degree in library and information studies and I was an elementary school librarian before my first daughter was born. I have four kids now and I run my blog full time.
So Everyday Reading is a place for book recommendations, for ideas for reading with your kids, making more time to read as an adult, and basically all the book goodness you could hope for.
M: All about reading. And you have been one of my good friends for many years, which I am so grateful for your friendship. And I just love you to pieces and so happy that we’re friends.
For years and years, I don’t want to say before we were friends, but right as we started becoming friends and I started following you on Instagram and being familiar with what your work was about and what your blog was about, every time I went to the library, I would open up your Instagram and go to a specific hashtag and use all of your book recommendations to find books at the library to take home that I knew my kids would like, that I knew I would like, because you just have the absolute best recommendations out there. So thank you for that.
J: That’s so nice of you.
M: You’re really great at making reading feel accessible and making it feel meaningful to people. So I’m thrilled to have you here. This month we’re talking about routines and something that I have loved as a routine in my life is reading.
Reading, I’ve loved it since I was a little kid. And I don’t remember how I developed that love. I don’t remember where it came from. I don’t know if it was natural or if it’s something that was somehow incubated by something that my parents did or my teachers did. And it’s something that I really want to cultivate in my family, with my kids as well.
So I wanted to start off by asking you about–well, hopefully this whole episode will be about–how to help cultivate the love of reading and raise readers within our homes. So that’s a big, big ask, but I’m sure you can break it down into some smaller tips for us. But where would you even recommend that someone begins as they want to start cultivating a love of reading in their home?
J: So, you know, you mentioned that we’ve been friends for a long time, so I’ve read probably every post you’ve ever done on your blog. And that question actually reminded me of how you’ve talked about talking about food with your kids. And instead of making it like, “Oh, this is junk food or bad food. And this is good food.” It’s like, “This is what some food is like, this is what some food does for our bodies.”
And I feel like it’s kind of the same thing with books is that you want to make sure that it’s a positive experience, that there’s not like now we’re going to sit down and read and you’re going to like it, you know, that it can be kind of lighthearted. It can be kind of a judgment free zone and you can have create positive family experiences around books. And not feel, as a parent, a ton of pressure to get it right and that every book that you read has to be a classic or meaningful or teach some lesson.
Reading can be really fun. And that, I feel like as a parent, a huge part of my job is to make the reading experience really fun for my kids. And I think it’s very easy as a parent in so many ways to feel so much pressure and stress about something that we kind of suck all the fun out of it for both ourselves and our kids.
So I think that would kind of be my first tip is, the thing that I always try and keep in mind is: Keep it fun. Keep it enjoyable. Help your child have positive associations with reading.
M: Yeah. Okay. So what are some of the ways that we can do that? I know that I felt that pressure, starting when they were little with like, we need to read every single night before bed, all the stack of bedtime books and we’d all better like it.
And then they start actually being able to read. Or when I think they should start recognizing letters and starting to read, it’s like this automatic: How old is your child? How many letters do they know? How many words did they say? When was their first sentence? And all of a sudden, there’s this sort of like the mommy races with reading. And people feel like it’s a badge of honor.
And my kids have been all so different. And I still have an emerging reader and it’s just interesting that there is so much outside pressure or so many outside opinions about the way it’s supposed to be. So how would you suggest to someone who feels some of that pressure so that they may be able to loosen up a little bit and remember that it can be fun? What are some ways to help it be fun and to take some of the pressure off of it?
J: So I think the first foundational thing is that you pick good books and I think that’s really overwhelming. I mean, you go to the library and even a small library is going to have like 10 to 50,000 books in its collection. And a big library is going to have 10 times that. So that’s overwhelming to try and find good books. So I always recommend, follow somebody that you like their tastes.
Maybe that’s me, I have specific kinds of books that I like. I like books that aren’t super text heavy when it comes to picture books. I like books that tend to be a little funny. There’s particular styles of illustrations that I like. So maybe you resonate with the kinds of books I recommend.
Maybe it’s someone else and that’s fine.
But if you can find someone whose recommendations you like, I think that’s really helpful. Every year I put together this list of a hundred picture books that I really like. A mix of old and new fiction and non-fiction, kind of all over the board. And every year I get so many notes from people saying “I downloaded your list, I took it to the library, and out of the a hundred books, like five of them were checked in; my library had 80 or 90 of them, but almost all of them were checked out.”
So that’s why just picking books at random off the shelf is really challenging because the good books tend to get checked out really fast, a lot of the time.
And so I think reading is going to be only as fun as the books you’re reading are. It’s only as good as the books you pick are going to be. So the foundational thing is to be able to pick good books. I actually have a whole post that you can link to if you’d like about some of the places that I look for book recommendations, where you have people who really know a ton about children’s literature recommending the best of the best.
You know, Amazon’s monthly picks are really solid. There’s a lot of book review magazines that pick 10 or 20 best ones every month. And those are really helpful so that when you go to the library or the bookstore, you’re not just surrounded by 10,000 options and no idea where to start.
M: Yeah. So I think that this is so smart. I definitely like lean on you as my resource, my primary resource, for book recommendations. Especially your, what is the hashtag?
J: #JanssensPictureBooks
M: And I’ll link the place on your blog where they can find the a hundred picture book recommendations for the last couple of years is. But also just having that hashtag where I’m like, Oh, I’m at the library. Or maybe I’m sitting down right now. I’m not going into the library because ours are all closed still. So I can sit down, scroll through, and check right there on my computer ahead of time. And of the 20 books that I look for, maybe five are available, and I can put them on hold so that I at least have one line of vetting that it’s not just a totally random book. And it’s something that we’re going to enjoy.
J: Well, and if your kids or anything like mine, I mean, they go up and they pick the worst books on the shelf. Every Lego book or strawberry shortcake, you know? And so I think one really good hack that probably a lot of people now use because so many libraries have been closed and do curbside pickup right now is putting books on hold.
So then even if your child picks 10 of the dumbest books there ever were, at least, you know that you’re taking home some books that are good. And you know, my kids don’t even really actually want to read those when they get home, they pull them off the shelf, they flip through them when we get home, and then they’re kind of done with them. But we have some really good books that are fun for both of us to read.
So a little sub tip is that if you’re reading books with your kids that are fun for you, you’re going to be more likely to sit down and read with them, than if you’re slogging through an 80 page star Wars fan fiction kind of book.
M: Right. So for read aloud books, especially, choose books that you like to read because you’re going to be the one reading and you want to enjoy it. It makes it a lot more fun if you’re reading along.
And you’ve shared a tip before. You don’t feel like all of the reading has to happen right before bed at bedtime, right?
J: Yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, if you’re talking about routines, everybody’s routine is so different. Some people have kids who wake up super early, you know, so for awhile, I actually didn’t read to my kids at night before bed. I read to them before my oldest daughter went to school. My kids were a little younger and they woke up earlier. And so we had some time before they went to school and that was kind of like a nice start to our day.
Now my kids sleep in a little more. I have more kids going to school that we couldn’t really make that happen now. But you know, if you look at your own schedule and think when would work for me, maybe you read to them during snack time, or while they eat lunch or, you know, right after dinner. And before you do the dishes while you’re all sitting there and they’re finishing up.
Whatever works for your schedule is the right time to read. Even if that doesn’t look like anyone else’s schedule.
M: Yeah. I love that. It was really helpful for me because I tend to be really tired at night and now that my kids are a little bit older and they can, you know, in a lot of ways put themselves to bed, that’s not when I want to sit and read and read and read. And so I’d prefer to read at different times of the day, read in the afternoon when we kind of are having just like a low time that we might be doing something else, or they’d want to just get on screens, like take a little bit of time to read.
And I’ve noticed that it’s so interesting. Even as my kids get older and can read to themselves, they still like me reading to them. They still like listening to the story. It’s not only reserved for toddlers.
J: Yes. And I think so many parents really miss out by stopping reading to their kids as soon as their child can read independently.
M: Yeah, we sort of think like, okay, good. You can handle this on your own now. But it can be a family experience, a connective experience. It’s something that, especially this year, as we’ve read so many more diverse books and really tried to expand our library and focus on some social justice books and things like that as well, I’m learning along with them. Like I want to read the books with them because we’re all learning together. It becomes a jumping off point then for other types of discussions and learning in our family. And it doesn’t necessarily happen at bedtime and it doesn’t only happen with my youngest. It’s with the whole family.
So it’s a good reminder that like that reading can happen anytime of day, whenever works for you. And it can happen with your kids of all ages.
J: Yes. And I think, just jumping off on that also, it doesn’t have to be every single day. To be worthwhile, you know, if you read three or four days a week, that’s fantastic. If you read two days a week, that’s great too. It doesn’t have to be, you know, it’s not like zero or seven days a week are your only options.
M: Yeah. Yeah. We get so sucked into the all or nothing thinking. Or even that it’s not worth it to just read one book, like maybe you only have time or stamina to read one book every other day or every couple of days, but you feel like, gosh, if I can’t read three or four, then it’s not worth it. But yeah, I would think, and I’m guessing you agree, that anything, when it comes to doing some reading at home, is better than nothing.
J: Absolutely. I remember hearing a long time ago, this is about exercise, but that the biggest health difference is between doing anything and nothing. It’s not like you need to be running a marathon every weekend to be in great shape, you know? The biggest change you can make is just getting off your couch and walking around the block instead of never getting off the couch at all.
And I think it’s the same way with reading. Even if you read one picture book a week, that’s way better than none ever.
M: Right. Right. For the things that you learn and just for the creating space to have it sort of send the message in your family, in the culture of your home, that reading is a wonderful thing. And it’s something that can be a really positive experience, like you mentioned at the beginning. The whole hope is to cultivate a love and an enjoyment of reading, however that looks for your family and that will probably look different from child to child. And it will probably look different from family to family.
So I have a selfish question about the actual process. So I’ve read to my kids from the time they were little and still do. My older boys can read, they learned to read somewhere along the way. Actually, I remember, because of this pressure of like the mommy races, I bought a book when Milo was probably four and he was showing some interest in letters and he went to preschool.
And so I was like, okay, it’s time to start teaching him to read. I wanted him to learn before kindergarten. Like that was my goal that he would learn to read before he entered kindergarten. That was a totally arbitrary, probably unrealistic goal for him. And so we bought this book and we started to do this lesson, a reading lesson every single day. And he liked it some days and he didn’t other days.
But long story short, he didn’t learn to read before kindergarten. He got a little more comfortable probably with some of the pieces of reading because we were focusing on every single day, but then somewhere between kindergarten and first grade–anyway, he’s 11 now and can read. So we know that it worked. Learning to read happened in his life.
And same thing with my second, who naturally was a little bit more interested in books. He would pick them up and flip through them himself. And again, we did some lessons every day at some point, lo and behold, he went to school and sometime in there he learned to read.
Now Plum is home and she’s homeschooled. So this was my big–she did kindergarten until March. And then everything ended and the magical fairy dust of send your child to school and then they come home reading one day is not happening for her because she isn’t going to school anymore. So I know that you have a lot of tips and resources for actually helping a child, an emerging reader, whether that’s four or five or six or seven, like Plum, actually develop some of the skills that are necessary to learn to read and to learn to love learning to read.
Can you share some tips for helping a beginner or emerging reader?
J: Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the things that’s really overwhelming for a parent is that, if you’re not a teacher, you’ve probably never taught anyone to read. I love to read. I’m a, I’d like to think, a very competent, good reader, but when my oldest daughter was four or five, I’m like, I’ve never taught anyone to read. It’s been so long since I learned to read, I don’t even remember any rules about vowels or, you know, how any of those things work.
So I think a book that kind of walks you through step-by-step is really helpful. I like, Phonics Pathways is one that I’ve found that works.
I know some parents love Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons. That one doesn’t really work with the way that my brain works. I find that Phonics Pathways works better. It just is easier for me to use with my child. So I really liked that one.
I also liked the Four Weeks To Read set. So I think those are both, you know, really good to kind of just give you an overview of like how those building blocks of learning to read phonetically work for a child.
M: Yeah. And those are both resources we can link in the show notes and they’re both things that are meant for a parent to use at home. Is that the purpose of them?
J: Yes. They don’t expect you to be a teacher with an elementary education degree or a specialty in reading.
M: Okay. So those are accessible resources for a parent. That’s funny because we used that, the book that we got was the Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons. I think someone recommended on Instagram and I was like, Oh, that looks good. And I mean, we like to do okay. But like I said, it wasn’t like a hundred days later I had like a fluent reader, you know?
J: Yeah. Well you know, a lot of people love that book. And so I’m not saying it’s not a great book, but I think it is important to recognize that every parent and every reader is going to have their own style of things that work for them and things that don’t. I think one of the things that’s also really helpful to recognize is that a lot of kids, we hate for this to be true for as a parent, but a lot of kids really do better with someone other than a parent.
I mean, learning to read is a lot of work. It is not, you know, nobody’s going to learn to read almost in like a week. You know, it’s a sustained effort over a long period of time. It’s just so much work for a kid to learn to read. And as a parent, there’s so much pressure to make sure your child learns to read. So, recognizing that many kids are going to do better with a person that’s not their parent, which is why a lot of kids learn to read so much more easily at school because there’s just something about that.
My second daughter really struggled with learning to read. And when she was really starting to fall behind in first grade, her teacher in parent teacher conferences was like, I think she could really benefit from having a tutor. And this was actually right as the whole world was shutting down. So it was all online, but she did about 20 minutes a day with this reading tutor and she, you know, it was so interesting for me to sit in and watch some of this from a distance because she didn’t want me to watch.
But I’d be in the kitchen and she’d be in the living room so I could overhear it. The kinds of things that I know that would make her crazy for me to say, Oh, that wasn’t the right word. Try that again. Or let’s practice these 20 sight words in a row. She would never do for me. She did for this teacher with no complaints, and was really enthusiastic that she never complained about practicing.
And I think it makes a big difference. We actually, after this experience with our daughter, my husband and I with another couple started a company called Savvy Reading that provides exactly that, because I asked on Instagram and 95 or 96% of parents said their kid would work better with a different adult that was not them. And I actually had so many teachers send me messages saying I am a first grade teacher. I have taught literally hundreds of children to read. I could not teach my own kids to read. They just would not respond to me in a way they would for another teacher.
Sometimes you just need to think, is there an option for another adult to help my child with this? And we’ve seen that with our savvy reading students. So many of them parents send note saying, you know, my child has made so much progress. They don’t complain about it like they did when I asked them to practice. So that can make a big difference too.
I think also making reading time not super long makes a big difference. I think sometimes, just like we’ve talked about, we feel it has to be all or nothing. We feel like if we’re going to practice reading, it has to be an hour a day or something. But ten minutes a day, five minutes a day is way better than nothing. If you did five minutes, five days a week is much more useful than doing 30 minutes once a week.
And so I think you can make it not overwhelming.
M: Yeah. I love that. It’s been interesting to watch having Plum home. Definitely doing short daily practice has been really helpful for her. We’re using the Hooked on Phonics program, which I had to kind of like cringe and laugh when I decided to buy that program because I have such terrible memories of the marketing commercials. Everything about it was so weird, right? Those hooked on phonics worked for me. Weren’t they weird commercials?
J: Very memorable.
M: Yeah. Very memorable. But it’s been interesting that just having a little bit of guidance, and I like that it has like a workbook and then it has these flimsy little early readers has been nice that she feels like she’s reading a book that’s not in the workbook itself. So that’s been helpful and we’ve just done one little lesson a day and this kind of short short practices.
And I have to overcome the urge to say, let’s do another one. We’re home all day. Let’s just keep doing reading lessons until you know how to read tonight. Which is totally not the way that it works. Like you said, it’s small effort over a sustained long periods of time. And that’s why it feels like magic dust to send your kid to school and by the end of the year, they know how to read because they’ve been doing reading in small practice every single day for like nine months.
And we’ve been really excited about Savvy Reading. I just have to touch back and give my own review of savvy reading. Plum has done it now for almost two and a half months. And all of the reasons that you started Savvy Reading, that you wanted to offer accessible, supplemental help for learning to read with trained teachers who are not the parent, make it a fun environment, and also Plum’s in a group class.
I know that Savvy Reading has the option for personal instruction and personal tutoring, but Plum is part of a group. So there’s three other students in her class. And she looks forward to it every day. It’s Monday through Thursday, just for a half hour. And it feels like a little bit of a social opportunity for her because she gets to see her other classmates and they interact with each other during the lesson.
Her teacher in savvy reading. And I said this on Instagram for whoever has watched that story, but I crack up because again, she doesn’t want me to sit right next to her, so I don’t, but I will be in the other room or I’ll like walk by on my way to take the laundry to the laundry room. And her teacher will be like singing a song. She’s doing like poems with claps. Plum is standing up and like moving around. It is so interactive and so fun for her that she wants to be there. I’m a very hands-on learner. Like I I’ve always been like a write it down or draw a picture of it, or mold it out of clay.
I like to be involved in my learning. And I think that for Plum, savvy reading has done that where she’s not just sitting with me looking at more sight words, but she’s feeling like it’s touching on a lot of different–it’s rhyming, it’s poetry, it’s sensory, they do some sign language. It’s been really fascinating to watch how much she’s enjoyed it and how she feels like it’s such a good reinforcement of the things that mom’s making her do every day, that she’s getting to practice that way as well. So we’re super grateful for it.
J: We’re happy to hear that.
M: Yeah. For any moms who feel like you have an emerging reader. What is it? Kindergarten through second grade?
J: Yeah. Those were the reading levels. So we have kids in the second grade level who are more like fourth or fifth graders if they are struggling. So, you might have kids in the same class if you’re in group that are not all exactly in the same grade at school, but are all reading at the same level. So yeah. K through second reading levels.
M: Yeah. So, so smart too, to do it by reading level, because you could have a child who, like you said, is struggling a little bit and needs some additional reinforcement at a level that they might not be getting in their classroom at school, or if they’re doing homeschool and you may have someone who wants to, you know, blast off and move through the first grade or second grade level, even though they’re a kindergartener and that’s something that they can do within Savvy Reading.
So I’ll make sure that we link to all of the information for Savvy Reading as a really great option for parents who could use a little bit of additional help. And it’s so affordable. I have to just mention that I was shocked when you launched it because it’s four days a week. So it’s a lot of classes per month. 16 classes a month. Way less than the cost of what you would pay for a tutor. You know, it ends up being like around $10 or less per class in most cases, which is just incredible.
So huge resource there for helping your emerging readers kind of get the hang of things. And I’m so happy that you created that.
J: Yeah, it’s been really, really fun and so gratifying to see so many kids really take off with it since we launched it.
M: Yeah. It also is interesting for me to hear that you have a child who was struggling with reading because in my head, I mean, this is just like silly because of course we know that people have all different struggles and things like that, but to grow up with a mom who’s education is reading, whose livelihood, your whole focus of your blog and your work. And you you read at home, you read with your kids, you do audiobooks.
I would think that all of your kids would just be budding readers from the time they–yeah–learn to read in the womb. And it’s just a good reminder that all of the different stages that people progress through are okay. And if your child is learning to read at a little bit of a modified pace from what a textbook might say, that doesn’t mean that you didn’t do a good job introducing them to books.
J: Absolutely. And one of the things that I tried as it became more and more apparent that reading was not going to come as easily to her as it has for some of my other kids, my big goal was to make sure, you know, I thought we will make sure she learns to read. I mean, she’s not going to grow up and not be illiterate, but my goal is to make sure that she still loves books and reading through this, that the struggle of this does not kill her love of books and reading.
And so when your child is struggling with reading, it’s so tempting for any reading to want to be like let’s practice, or what does this word say?
M: We kind of transfer the pressure that you feel to like, get them to learn to read onto them, to like, okay, you better learn.
J: Yeah. Well, kids are not dumb. They know when they’re behind. One of the first weeks of first grade, my daughter came home with, our school calls them baggy books, where they send home these little soft books for them to read, practice reading at night. And you know, she was like a level four, which of course meant nothing to me. I said, Oh, that’s so fun that you’re a level four. And she was like, Oh, Matthew who sits at my table as a level 16.
I mean, you know, they’re so tuned in to, if they’re behind, if they’re ahead. How Susie is doing. How John is doing. So I think as a parent, you want to make sure you’re not putting that extra pressure on them because they already know if they’re struggling. And so, you know, I felt like we still read a ton of picture books, just totally for fun. She listened to tons of audio books. We did our family read-alouds that it didn’t feel like all reading had now narrowed down into, we need to work on phonics and sight words.
M: Yeah, yeah. Again, like, I feel like going back to the theme of the whole purpose, like it loses any value if it’s not enjoyable.
J: Absolutely.
M: The whole purpose is for it to be fun and interesting and feel connected and creative. And as soon as you take that away, then you might as well, not even do it.
J: Correct.
M: Just make it enjoyable. One of the pieces of advice that my mom gave me because, between my boys, I have a bookworm who would spend all of his free time reading. In fact, he does spend all of his free time reading. He carries books around with him. If we’re going like on a drive to the grocery store, he’ll bring three books just to get in the car. Just, yeah, just cause he wants options and like he might finish one on the way there and it’s so interesting and it’s so fun and I’m thrilled for him.
And his brother likes books okay. But almost because the bookworm is so into it and he’s kind of formed some identity around that. The brother pulls back on it and has a little bit of like, I’m not really into it. And a piece of advice that I love my mom gave me when I was talking to her about this was to just let my older son read whatever he wants. I mean, within reason, he’s not reading inappropriate books, but to not censor the like, well, you probably should be reading at a little bit higher level, or maybe you should have grown out of graphic novels or something like that.
Just let him read whatever seems fun and whatever is interesting to him. And when he feels like he gets to own it, his own experience, then that feels more fun. And that’s been interesting to actually take him to a bookstore or to the library and say, no, I don’t have any, I have no agenda. So like, whatever you want, whatever looks interesting to you, even if it’s another graphic novel about underwear. If that’s what you want to read, then I just want you to enjoy the process and we’ve read lots of Captain Underpants.
J: Your mom is very wise.
M: Yeah. I mean, I’ve heard you say that as well. What would you tell parents who feel like they don’t like the books that their kids are reading? Not for appropriateness level, but just that they feel like they want them to read books that are a little bit more academic or to challenge themselves? So they want to swap out the book for something that’s on a Caldicot book, or I don’t even know if that’s probably a picture book award.
So what would you say to a parent to kind of ease that idea that they should dictate what their child is reading?
J: Yeah. So, you know, I have a couple of things to say about this. I have a couple of things to say about most things as you well know. I think one, when your child grows up, they’re going to pick their own books or they’re going to pick not to read it all, you know, and if reading has always been something that’s like very dictated, then you’re going to end up probably as one of those adults who hasn’t read a book in 20 years.
And you know, and if that’s your goal as a parent is like my child read all the important things while they were in my home and then they never read again, then great. You’re on a great path for that. If you want them to keep reading as an adult, to feel like reading is part of their identity, something they enjoy. Then I think giving them, not a hundred percent freedom, but a good amount of freedom to pick the books that are interesting to them. I think that goes a long way.
I think also if there’s books you really want your child to read that they’re not interested in on their own, I think reading them with your kids is really great. Those make great read aloud books.
Also, I read a lot and I still think the first chapter to of any new book is almost always a little challenging because you’re like, I don’t know who these characters are. I don’t know what the setting is. I don’t really have a good feel for what the plot is. It takes you a little bit to orient to that. So I think even just reading the first chapter aloud with your child or listening to the audio book version together, really can help them bridge that gap and start to feel kind of like, okay, I know who that is. Or if it’s a series, you read the first book in the series together, and then they can go off and running the rest of the series on their own, because now they know who the characters are, they kind of understand the language of this book or kind of how the plot works. That’s really helpful.
Again, like we’ve said before, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It’s not like my child reads entirely on their own, or I read it with them. You can have a good mix in there that can be really helpful.
M: That is one of my favorite pieces of advice that you’ve given. You’ve shared at some point over the last couple of months on Instagram, about this idea of like reading the first chapter aloud, because it takes some time to get into the book. And I have done that with my oldest. There were a couple of books that I read and I thought he would love this. It’s fast paced. They’re young adult, kind of like spy novels that I just think that he would really love. But they’re not graphic novels. They’re not things that he would naturally be comfortable picking up. A little bit thicker books, you know, a little bit smaller type. Things that are on his reading level, but just maybe not his reading interest.
I read to him sometimes at night as we usually have a chapter book going, I’ll sit on his bed and read to him at night. Even though I don’t do the picture books with the other kids. Usually I will read a book with him mostly because I want to kind of help foster this with him. And he likes the one-on-one time. And so I did that. I grabbed one of these books and read the first couple of chapters. And then I just said, okay, I’m going to stop here tonight. But if you want to keep reading, you can. I’ve already read the book. So I know what happened. So don’t feel bad reading it without me. If you want to keep reading, you can, or we can just pick it up tomorrow.
And I think after, after a day or two, he was into the story enough that I left the room and he kept reading, and then we kind of went on and off, you know, for over the next week or two, I would read a chapter with him, but we were skipping through the book because he was reading enough of it on his own. And he would come up in the morning and say, Mom, you will never believe what happened. And like recount, what had happened in the chapters that he read before he fell asleep. And he was so excited.
And when the book ended, I was in the kitchen making dinner and he was sitting on the couch reading and he slammed it down on the couch and said no way and came running into the kitchen and told me all about the ending. And it was so fun because all of the feelings that I feel when I’m so lost in a book that I just love and just want more than anything for my kids to have that ability to like really escape into a book.
He was there. He was in it. He never would have gotten there if I would have just kept saying no, you’ll really like it. You should read it. No, go ahead. I think you’ll really like this one.
I had to actually like kind of parallel with him through it. And in the end, he was so invested in it and it was really fulfilling. So I love that advice. I think that that will take people really far. Even if they just end up reading the whole thing with them.
J: Then you’ve had a great experience together.
M: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think that that’s so great. Being able to just kind of reinforce this connection and the ability to just love a fun story. So such great advice.
You also have alot to say about audio books. I know that people, some people ask me even still. They’ll say, do you count audio books as reading? What do you think about that? And I totally do.
Tell me about that. And specifically regarding kids, because I know that you have done some research about the way the audio books further their reading process. So tell us a little bit about that.
J: I am a huge audio book fan. I definitely count them. I always think it’s funny when people say, do you count them? I was like, there’s no book police. No one’s coming to audit how many books you read. “Are you sure you really read a hundred books? Was it really 80 books and 20 audio books?”
But I love audio books for kids because I feel like they’re like such a secret weapon because the audio books of today are not the audio books of 20 or 30 years ago. I mean, they’re legit productions now. I mean, they often have multiple narrators or really amazing narrators or music or sound effects, and they’re just really well done and really fun to listen to.
And my kids love for me to read to them and they can listen to way more than I could ever read to them. So audio books really fill in that gap nicely. And you talked about those studies, let me pull those up really fast. Because they really are so beneficial. One of the studies that I really liked that was done in a San Francisco school district and they had second and third graders in the afterschool program. And so they had half of them that listened to audio books for 20 minutes, five times a week. So this is not like hours and hours of audio book listening. And in 10 weeks of doing that, and now these kids were not following along with the book. They weren’t taking notes. There was no quiz afterwards.
M: Just listening for fun.
J: Totally. So the students that listened, in 10 weeks, they saw 58% of the annual gain. So what you would expect a kid to get in 52 weeks in 10 weeks, they got more than half of that. And then they had three times isn’t that crazy. And then they had four times the reading comprehension, seven times the second grade vocabulary, and four times the reading motivation.
So, I mean, those are just staggering stats and just listening to a book for fun, no quizzes, no worksheets, just a really enjoyable experience. And I saw that my girls love to listen to audio books when they go to bed. So they probably listen usually for like an hour, almost every night after we turn off the lights and they get into bed. And I saw that big time with my second daughter who struggled to learn to read because she had such a great vocabulary and she really understood how a sentence should work.
It was really interesting to see when she would read aloud to me, she was such a good self corrector, because she was so used to hearing what a sentence should sound like that if she read it and it didn’t make sense, she would catch it every time. I mean, I almost never had to correct her because she’d be like, “Ah, that’s not right. I think I, what does this word say? I didn’t get that right.”
And and then her comprehension is sky high. So I’m a massive audio book proponent for kids, because I think they’re just so useful. Is listening to an audio book and a teacher child how to decode words? No, but it’s going to give them building blocks that really help as they learn those skills that work together so well to make learning to read much more fluid and easy than it would be otherwise.
The other thing that I think is that audio books give kids an opportunity to really feel like a reader. So if you have a child that’s struggling reader. Your third grader is not gonna be able to read Harry Potter on their own if they’re barely getting through like kindergarten level reading, And all their friends are reading it and you can really feel left out. But they can listen to it and then be part of those conversations and not feel like I’m the one over here reading baby books while all my friends are reading these things that I can’t read on my own.
And an audio book gives them a path to that. Or, you know, if your child has a reading disability, they can still feel like a reader and feel like “I love books, I’m reading the same kind of books that my other friends have had.” And have those reader experiences, even if they can’t yet read on their own.
M: Yeah. I love it. So give me a couple simple like starters. I listen to audio books on my own and my kids listen to podcasts a lot, but we haven’t done a lot of audio books for my kids, mostly because of the logistics of it. We could do it in the car, but how do your kids listen at night? And then how do you choose which books you want them to listen to?
J: So they, my big girls all have a Echo Dot in their room. And so then with Audible+ or Audible you can just add anything to the library and then they can just voice command it. And that’s nice cause there’s no screens to deal with or I can connect any library books on my phone through Libby, Overdrive, or Hoopla, I can just connect my phone to their Echo Dot device and they can listen that way.
I also really love an old school CD player. All my girls have CD players and our library has a good collection of books on CD. So, you know, that’s super low tech and very easy. And all my girls have started using those when they were about three. You know, you teach them like this is the play button and this is the stop button and it’s not complicated.
M: I did that with the remote control. I’m like, don’t wake me up in the morning, go press power and press Netflix and press Mickey Mouse.
J: Great life skill too.
M: And the microwave button for their instant oatmeal. Just make yourself breakfast and after you’ve eaten breakfast and watched a show, then you can come wake up Mommy.
J: That’s perfect. I love it.
M: Okay, so this is good. The CD player or the–we have Google home minis in their rooms–but I’ve never tried to hook it up to Audible. So I’ll have to do a little research and see how I can get that going. Or CD players seem like an easy accessible thing as well.
J: I think it helps to start with a book they’ve already read because I think for kids it’s not as much of a different skill as it is for an adult. You know, if you start listening to audio books at 25, it’s probably been awhile since you’ve listened to somebody read aloud for any period of time. For a kid, they’re used to listening aloud. So I think it’s not as challenging for them to make that jump. As an adult, we kind of put our own feelings about like, Oh, I don’t know if they can pay attention.
If they can pay attention to you reading a book to them, they can handle an audio book.
The other thing that I think is really helpful is to let them do something while they listen, I might be playing with Legos or building something with Play-Doh or coloring or crocheting or painting or, you know, whatever your child enjoys doing. It’s not just like sitting there perfectly still listening to this audio book.
Most people concentrate better and retain more when they’re doing something physical, which is why a lot of adults like to listen to an audio book while they’re walking or driving or cooking or folding laundry. While your body’s engaged, your mind can be engaged too. And it’s same thing with kids. So give them a couple of things to do while they listen. And I think you’ll be surprised how many kids really enjoy that experience.
M: Yeah. And then I’m sure that you have a list somewhere on your blog with your favorite audio books for different age groups that we could link in the show notes.
J: Yeah.
M: I would love that to start with some of that for me. I tried one on a recent road trip and my kids could not handle it because it was was a British accent, which I love. I like will love to listen. I’ll listen longer to an audio book if it has a British accent. And my kids were so unfamiliar with listening to that accent that they were like, we don’t really understand the words as well, you know, so they weren’t as interested.
So I need some good recommendations that are not British accents or hopefully any other kind of accent, at least for the first, just to kind of warm them up, you know?
J: And I would say start with something that you’ve already read with them or that they’ve read on their own, because that really helps bridge that gap for the first couple of times when you’re like, okay, I already know the storyline. I already know these characters. It’s fun to revisit in this new format.
M: Yeah. Okay, great. I’m super excited about that. That’s something that I want to incorporate into our routine as soon as possible. Because I think that it would be good for them. It’d be fun for me. And I love getting through stories and having a couple books that I’m working on. One on my nightstand, one in my purse, one usually on audible. And I like just having something to look forward to, a story that I’m returning to. So I think that they’ll enjoy that too once we can kind of get it set up for them.
J: Yeah. And a series is really great too. I mean, my girls love to listen to a series, you know, for the same reason that as an adult, we like watching a television show versus a movie or a sequel to a movie. It’s easy to get into it because we already know a little bit what’s going on.
M: Yeah. You already know and like everyone, you’re interested in the characters, you’re invested in them. So yeah, I think that’s a great idea. I’m looking forward to that.
Okay. So to kind of wrap up, I want to ask–I feel like a lot of my listeners are readers. I mean, I talk about books on the show sometimes. And and in my podcast plus group there’s a book club. And so I’m reading with a group of women every single month.
Anyway, there’s a lot of moms though. And women working women, single, working women. I mean, there’s a lot of people out there who feel like they want to read. They think they like reading. And they just don’t know where people are fitting it into their schedules into their day. So what tips do you have for the adults listening who want to read more than they currently are about making space for that in their lives as part of their regular routine?
J: So my number one tip is to pick something fun to read. None of us watch Netflix shows that we’re not enjoying. We’re not like, Oh, I accidentally just watched three hours of something I couldn’t stand. And it was pretty boring. We don’t have to because it’s fun. And you know, you’re like, I’m so busy and then you suddenly were able to fit in like a whole season of something in like a week, you know?
So we’re all really good at finding time for things that we’re enjoying. And so if it’s a book you’re really enjoying, it’s gonna be a lot easier to be like, I’m going to just get in bed 10 minutes earlier so I can read a little more of that. Or I’m not going to look at Instagram right now; I’m going to read this book because I’m really to a good part right now.
And I think a lot of the time as adults, we feel like we should be reading War and Peace, you know, or I should be reading some big, best, something that’s won a ton of awards and is really a hefty. And I mean, for some people, that’s great. I think for most of us, we want reading to be fun. And so when we pick those books, then War and Peace just sits collecting dust on your bedside table for like three years, you know?
Then if you pick something fun, you’re like, I just blew through that in three days because it was so fun. And I get those messages all the time from people who are like, I haven’t read a book in 10 years. And then I picked up this book that you recommended that you said it was really fun. And I just read it in three days and I haven’t done that since I was 15.
And you know, that makes me so happy because reading should be fun. And I think it’s great when you pick books that you’re going to want to read and that are really fun and help you remember why you want to read in the first place. So that’d be my number one tip is to pick something fun.
Going right along with that is I think you should absolutely quit books that you’re not enjoying.
Like I said before, there’s no book police, no one coming to say you returned that book to the library unread, unfinished. You know, so if it’s, if it’s not doing it for you, then ditch it and pick something else.
M: Yeah. I love both of those pieces of advice. I think that it’s really easy to get the idea that there’s like a hierarchy of books out there. There’s books that the smartest, most interesting people read. And then there’s books that that are too frivolous or kind of silly people read, you know? And I mean, I read a lot and I sometimes feel like, Oh, should I be reading that book that everyone keeps talking about? I tried and I didn’t really like it, but it seems like I should like it. Like there’s something wrong with me if I only want to read lighthearted beach fiction, spy novels, or whatever.
J: We all need some escape literature.
M: That has been so interesting because I normally read pretty balanced. I like fiction and I like lighthearted fiction and I also really like self-development books and I’ve been surprised how often this year, the self-development books have felt like more than I could handle. I don’t need to know how to have better habits right now. I don’t want to hear more about goal setting. What I really want is just to go on that yacht with that cute young couple and see what happens, you know? It’s been really interesting to feel like I can get a couple chapters into a book and feel whether it’s, how it’s uplifting me.
I’m using books to escape and to have fun, like you said, to enjoy, to create some entertainment and enjoyment rather than–one of my big, I think in the past, one of the big reasons that I read a lot of books is to learn a lot. And while I love learning, this really hasn’t been the year that I just really wanted to like dig into learning. I needed entertainment more than I needed to feel like I was learning a whole lot.
And I think both are great. And so I would echo the read books that you like and also don’t feel bad if the books you like are different than other. If the books you like are different, that’s perfect for you. There isn’t this unspoken hierarchy of books and whatever you enjoy are the ones that you should be reading.
J: Right. And I think what normally happens is you feel like, Oh, you know, this book is not it’s beneath me, or I shouldn’t be reading this. So then you read nothing which is that really the outcome you’re looking for? I think for me reading something and enjoying it is way more important than having a really important book collecting dust on my bedside table that I never actually read.
M: Yeah. Yeah. It’s so true. And this is again where like great book recommendations will be a helpful jumping off point. So you like try it out, even like read the back cover, read a review and see if you’re even a little bit intrigued by it. And if not, then move on to the next one on the list. You don’t need to read straight through someone’s full list. There there’s no right or wrong way to do this.
J: There’s no gold stars.
M: Yeah. Yeah, so that’s great. So once someone has a book chosen that they’re interested in, that they’re enjoying, do you think that that is the biggest piece that like, if you’re enjoying it, you will keep doing it, or do you have any specific tips for creating space where there might not otherwise have been space for reading?
J: So one of the things that I’ve found really works for me well is to read first thing–not in the morning, but for me, like after my kids are in bed is really easy for me to be like, okay, it’s 8:00 or 8:30 and I don’t go to bed till 10:30. So I have two hours.
So I’ll read from 9:45 until 10:30.
But first I’m going to check my email and do the dishes and you know, all the things. And then suddenly it’s like 10:25. I guess I didn’t get to read tonight.
Whereas if I say, I’m going to just read for 10 minutes first, and then I can squeeze in Instagram or email or whatever, just making that happen first, then if I’m really into something, I’m going to read for 20 or 30 minutes and not spend my whole night on my computer or phone. So switching those instead of having reading be the thing that fits in at the end, it’s having it as the first thing you fit in, that everything else can kind of fit around. That that works really well for me.
A big one for me is leaving my phone in another room because it usually takes me at least 5 to 10 minutes to kind of get into my reading group. So if my phone is right there, I read like one paragraph and I’m like, Oh, I’m just going to look at Instagram. Really quick, you know. Whereas if it’s not there, I have enough focus to actually get into my book and then I’m not distracted easily because I’m into it.
But I need that couple of minutes to actually get in without any distractions.
M: It’s so true. Just allow yourself to–I mean, it’s just very real that we are so conditioned to, if anything is like straining the brain a tiny bit, we’re like, Oh, well, Instagram will solve that problem. Then I don’t have to think at all. So that’s good advice.
And I’ve heard you say that for a lot of things. I was actually talking to someone earlier today about bedtime routines. And I mentioned that you years ago mentioned that you get ready for bed at the same time, your kids get them ready for bed, put on your pajamas, wash your face, so even though you’re not going to actually go to sleep until a couple hours later, you are ready for bed. And that means that you’re actually going to be ready for bed that you don’t skip washing your face, or putting on cozy pajamas.
And it’s the same thing with reading, like get ready for bed and put some intention behind it, do your routine when you’re awake enough to do it. And then if you want to go pick up the house and finish the dishes and go on the computer or whatever, or watch a show, you’ve already done some of the things that felt more meaningful to you. And then you can kind of have the slide into being too tired for whatever comes next.
And I noticed that with audio books in particular, if I’m reading, if I’m listening to an audio book that I like, I generally listen to audio books when I’m on walks or runs and, I don’t know why, I don’t really listen to him at home when I’m like doing–maybe I don’t do a lot of laundry or dishes, so I don’t listen to them. But I mostly listen to them on walks and runs. And it has been so funny that I will I’ll get into it. I’ll get into it enough. And all of a sudden, my walk is two hours long. And I’ll call Dave and say, I’m just going to do another loop. And I’ve got the dog with and I’m like, Quincy, you’re getting a great walk today because I’m really into this right now.
And it is true that if you open up the door and say five minutes or ten minutes, that gives you the space to get into it enough that then you allow more time for it. But if you don’t create–if you don’t crack the cover, it’s unlikely that you’re going to…
J: It’s not just going to land in your lap.
M: Yeah. Yeah. So I think that it’s nice advice to just say, give yourself a few minutes. Don’t feel like you have to read for an hour. I’m gonna read for 10 minutes or I’m gonna read a couple pages and that gives you an opportunity to to actually get into it enough.
Another thing that I’ve seen that I want you to talk for a little bit about is that you will read in the middle of the day when your kids are around either reading aloud or sometimes just reading by yourself, but you don’t expect that everything has to be done and perfect in order for you to have some reading time. It’s okay for your kids to be around while you’re reading and you don’t feel like you’re ignoring them because you’re in the middle of a book.
J: Yeah. And of course, you know, my kids are getting a little older. My youngest is almost four and then six, eight and ten. So, you know, I’m not working with like tiny babies anymore.
It looks different now than it did a few years ago, but I think it’s so good for kids to see parents reading for fun. You know, that reading is not just something you have to do for school. And the minute you’re done with school, never have to read it again. You know, I want my kids to see reading is something that I love to do, and that’s part of a normal adult life.
I would way rather them see me reading than being on my phone. And I say that as someone who struggles like everyone and maybe more than the average person with being on my phone. So, you know, I feel like if I can pick up a book instead of my phone, that feels like a big win for me.
M: For me, the whole culture in the home is that this is something that we celebrate. It’s something that we make time and space for. It’s something we do together. It’s something we do on our own and reading is just that joyful, interesting, important experience all around and can be incorporated into all different parts of life in all different ways.
J: Exactly.
M: You are a great example of that. We have lots of resources. So the show notes for this episode are going to be hefty. The listeners can go to livefreecreative.co/podcast and find this episode and I’ll have all of the resources linked right at the top. So you won’t have to sort through the whole transcript to find them.
I’ll make sure they’re all close to the top, including Everyday Reading and your Instagram.
And your newsletter is fantastic. You have a free newsletter course that’s about raising readers and you give some great tips in a daily email. It’s a five-day email course where people can get some more tips if they’ve enjoyed this episode and want just a little bit more on that.
And then you are sharing reading tips, book recommendations daily at everyday reading. And so just an absolutely phenomenal resource for cultivating a love of reading in your homes. And I’m thrilled that you were able to share so many of your great tips with us today. And I hope that everyone continues to follow along with you and build a love of learning into their families.
J: Well, that’s so nice of you. I loved chatting with you about books. This is so fun for me.
Conclusion
A huge, huge, thank you to Janssen for joining me for this interview today. There were so many good bits in there. Can you handle? I felt like I needed to take notes and lucky for you. I do have a full transcript of the show available for you livefreecreative.co/podcast. Look for episode 128, you will find the entire transcript from the show.
If you want to go back and review anything, it’s all there outlined for you.
I’m going to put all of the resources and links for this episode up at the top. So you don’t have to scroll through the whole thing in order to find that incredible list of a hundred picture books that Janssen recommends every single year or for her recommended audio books for how to get your young ones started listening to audio books.
I also am going to include the link to Savvy Reading as well as that 20% discount code and the link to Janssen’s free five-day email course on raising readers. So many incredible things in there to help you improve or begin your reading routine as a family.
I hope that you loved the show. You can follow along with Jansen at EverydayReading on Instagram. That’s where you can find that hashtag for her favorite picture books, as well as looking up her blog everydayreading.com, where you will find all of the ins and outs to develop a love of reading, as well as some other solutions for book loving families right there on the internet.
So have a wonderful week, my friends, I hope that you’re enjoying this series on routines as we head into a new year. I’m just feeling good and pumped and excited about all of the different, small ways that we can make big improvements in our lives.
Make sure you tune in next week to hear a little bit of a new take on an old favorite topic, developing a fitness routine that works for your lifestyle.
I can’t wait to dive in and share some thoughts about that.
In the meantime, if you haven’t shared about the show, why don’t you take a minute and do a screenshot, post it on your Instagram story, and let your friends and family know that you are enjoying listening to Live Free Creative podcast. Also, I would love to invite you to subscribe if you’re a new listener, so you don’t miss an episode. They go live every Thursday morning at 6:00 AM Eastern.
And finally, it’s really simple to leave a review on iTunes. If you haven’t yet taken a second–it probably takes actually 60 to 90 seconds–to leave a five-star and written review on the iTunes app. I would really appreciate it. Those reviews go a long way in letting other people know how great the show is.
I hope that you’ve been enjoying it. I can’t wait to continue sharing goodness with you throughout this year and in years to come have a wonderful one.
I’ll chat with you later. Bye bye.
