Love of Learning (#33)

One thing I've discovered in homeschooling my own children is that there are many things that children love to learn about when they are introduced to it in a gentle way, without pressure or expectations and at a surprisingly young age.

A great example of this is poetry. Poetry with beautiful, expressive language has a great power to delight children years before they will understand it - particularly when it's read aloud.

Andrew Pudewa has explained that appreciation for and even memorization of poetry helps children develop a sense of language that is an excellent preparation for writing later on.

Here are a few authors to get your started: Robert Louis Stevenson, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Longer poems - like Longfellow's Evangeline - are fun to read aloud as a family. Shorter ones - like those in A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson - are great choices for children to memorize for a special recitation.