The Layers of Learning Podcast with Karen and Michelle is here to help you get your whole family learning together in your homeschool. We are the sisters behind Layers of Learning. We love getting together to chat about homeschooling and this podcast is just a series of our chats. We’re inviting you to listen in on our conversations.

We both have big families, but we teach almost all of our school subjects to everyone at once. We want to help you find the joy in that too, so we talk a lot about family homeschooling. To see all of our episodes, visit our Layers of Learning Podcast Page. Join us as we explore how to have a happy, hands-on, family-style homeschool.

Great stories can be the key to unlocking your kids’ education. Once they fall in love with stories, even if they struggle with reading, they can become invested in what they are learning. Whether the stories are fun and fanciful or true tales from history, they can become learning tools. In this episode, Karen and Michelle offer ideas and tips for how to let stories become a focus of your homeschool and your family. Reading aloud, listening to audiobooks, and always reading the book version before you watch the movie version of a story. Search out the natural interests of your kids so they are content-focused instead of aware of the chore that reading becomes for many kids. Become familiar with your library and learn to navigate it and the Dewey Decimal System.

• Read, read, read aloud to your children. Make it a special time in your families.
  
  
• Introduce audiobooks to your kids so they can listen to stories as well as read them.
  
  
• Make watching the movie version of a story follow your reading of it. It can be a fun reward, but shouldn’t come BEFORE you finish your reading.
  
  
• Find book topics that your kids are naturally interested in – whether non-fiction or fiction, search out topics your kids gravitate towards.
  
  
• Read all kinds of things – quality literature as well as the fluff!
  
  
• Give books as gifts and celebrate holidays by reading. Gifts are more exciting than assignments!
  
  
• We can participate within a common culture of stories as we learn the common stories of our world.
  
  
• We can learn life lessons from stories that will enrich, reward, and teach us.
  
  
• For content reading, read aloud as a family and then make more books and resources available to your kids based on their ages and reading levels.
  
  
• Discussing books, their slants, and their ideas is a powerful way to teach kids critical thinking skills.
  
  
• Picture books are a great tool for content learning within your family.
  
  
• Teach your kids to learn about your library system and how searching the catalog works. The Dewey Decimal System can help you navigate and find all kinds of things within your library.