Read-Aloud Revival Jumpstart Challenge

17 Pages·2014·4.31 MB·English

by  Pam Barnhill

The Read-Aloud Revival
Jumpstart Challenge
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Build a Reading Habit in
5 Minutes a Day
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by Sarah Mackenzie
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Text & images copyright © 2014 Sarah Mackenzie
All Rights Reserved
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Design by Pam Barnhill
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Get free access to all of the Read-Aloud
Revival Jumpstart Challenge materials at

readaloudrevival.com
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“The greatest gift you can bestow upon
your children is your time and undivided
attention. As the years advance, you may
reflect upon your life and see that in
some areas, you have regrets about what
you took to be a priority. No one will
ever say, no matter how good a parent
he was, “I think I spent too much time
with my children when they were young.”
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— Jim Brozina,
The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared
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Welcome to the Read-Aloud
Revival Jumpstart Challenge
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You know the importance of reading aloud. You believe in it. No one has
to convince you that reading to your children every day will strengthen
your relationship, form happy family memories, improve your child’s
ability to communicate, and make a lasting difference in his life.
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But just knowing doesn’t make the doing any easier.!
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If you’re struggling to make reading aloud the priority that you know it is,
you are not alone.
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We are all so busy! There are a million other tasks crowding our days
and vying for our attention. Adding anything to our to-do list seems like
a recipe for disaster- surely it will just be another thing we “should” do,
but can’t manage to make time for. We worry that it will be another
source of guilt, and who needs that?
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What if I told you that five minutes of reading to your children each
day would be enough to change their life (and yours)? What if I told
you that five minutes is all it takes to build a family culture that you will
lean on and love for years to come?
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Eliminate Decision!
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“Once started, a reading streak can be a hard thing to stop.”
-Jim Brozina, The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared
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A habit is a regular practice that is hard to give up. When something is a
habit, we don’t have to decide to do it. Thank goodness, because
deciding takes a lot of energy, and if we have to decide to start each
day, we won’t have the time or energy to follow through, especially
when the kids are crabby, the house is a mess, and you have no idea
what to make for dinner.
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The first task in forming a read-aloud habit is taking decision out of the
process completely. Don’t spend your precious time and energy
deciding to read aloud. Have it already decided.
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When pumping on a swing, the first few pumps are the hardest. Once
you get going, you can expend less energy and use your momentum to
help you go even higher. The same goes for reading aloud.
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The first step to forming any habit is the heaviest. Regardless of whether
you are trying to exercise more, get up earlier in the morning, or read
aloud to your kids every day, getting started is the hardest.
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When we’re tired, weary, or just overspent, our willpower fades. Having
the decision made- that is, having a well-formed habit- fixes that. You
don’t stand there at night trying to decide if you really should brush your
teeth before you go to bed, do you? No, you just pick up your
toothbrush and do it. Every day.
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Five Minutes is All
You Need
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Stephen Guise teaches a simple and
incredibly effective way to make
powerful change in your life. In his
book Mini Habits: Smaller Habits,
Bigger Results. He claims that the key
to building successful habits in your
life is to break each goal down into
the teeniest chunks possible. Every
journey starts with a single step, so the key to forming a habit is breaking
your own goals down into those very small, very manageable steps.
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Making the steps “stupid small” is the key to Guise’s habit formation
plan. Guise himself wanted to get fit and work out on a regular basis. His
stupid small goal? A single push-up.
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A single-push up? It’s such a small goal, Guise didn’t have to play mind
games to convince himself to head to the gym or lace up his running
shoes and go for a 30 minute jog. In fact, his goal was so “stupid and
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small,” it would have taken more energy to talk himself out of doing the
push-up than it would have to just hit the floor and do it.
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The real kicker, of course, is that once the original resistance is broken
through, momentum kicks in. Since Guise was already down on the floor,
doing his one push-up, it didn’t seem all that hard to do a few more.
Remember- starting is the hardest part! Once he had done a single push-
up, he was able to continue with more push-ups without having to invest
much more will-power.
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Harness Momentum
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The Read-Aloud Revival Jumpstart Challenge is simple: read aloud to
your kids for five minutes every day. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you
go on to read for half an hour or if you slam the cover closed at five
minutes flat and then rush off to your other commitments. Five minutes
is all it takes.
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Guise says that for most people, breaking through the initial resistance
to start will be the toughest part. If you can minify your goal to the
smallest possible increment, you won’t have to work so hard to break
through that resistance. Then, momentum kicks in. Once you’ve cleared
the first five minutes, reading for another five doesn’t seem so hard- you
may even do so without realizing it. In addition, your children will likely
place natural pressure on you to read “just a little bit more, pleeeease!”
and there you have it- the chances that you’ll read more than five
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minutes a day by only
committing to five minutes a
day are pretty darn good.
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But it doesn’t matter if you go
beyond those five minutes or
not. Let me show you why.
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Reading aloud for just five
minutes a day (and not a
minute more!) would equal 30
hours of reading aloud over
the course of a year. That’s a
lot of reading aloud! In that
amount of time, you could
read the entire Chronicles of
Narnia, all of David
Copperfield, the whole
collection of Mrs. Piggle
Wiggle, or over a hundred
picture books.
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Five minutes a day every day, is enough to make a lasting difference in
your home. In fact, doing just a little bit every single day is far more
effective than an hour once per week.
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Why Less is More
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Doing a little bit every day has a greater impact than doing a lot, more
infrequently. How much greater? Profoundly so, because doing a little
bit every day grows into a habit. Something you do every day, even for a
short period of time, begins to shape your rituals and regular
practices.Your day feels incomplete if you fail to brush your teeth, right?
Or how about brewing that morning cup of coffee- do you ever forget to
do that?
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The reason you don’t- the reason your day feels “off” if you don’t brush
your teeth- is because it’s a habit. It’s a regular practice that is hard to
break. Forming a read-aloud habit has the potential to make lasting
change in your life and the lives of your children.
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Reading a little every day is better than
reading a lot once in a while for a few simple
reasons:
1. Things we do every day shape our person. When we incorporate a
habit, it helps to form us and becomes an important part of our
identity.
2. It’s easier. We’re tired and busy mothers- we need easy!
3. It’s a built-in time and place for you to connect with your kids every
day. I don’t know about you, but I can go for days at a time without
making an opportunity to look into any one of my children’s eyes
and really make a lasting connection. Read-Aloud time allows this to
happen naturally. It’s like adding a little dot of superglue between
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