Can you believe it? The Read-Aloud Revival Podcast is ten years old!! That means it’s time for a party! 🥳🥳 Ten years is a long time to have a podcast, but we’re not slowing down anytime soon. We’re having WAY too much fun for that. In honor of this milestone, I’ve got a Casey Kasem-style countdown for you of the top ten episodes from the first ten years of Read Aloud Revival. And as a way to say thank you to YOU for listening, if you leave us a review before April 30, 2024, you’ll be...

When you hear the name Max Lucado, what comes to mind for you? Max Lucado is best known as a pastor, speaker, best-selling inspirational author, and, in many Christian families, he’s a household name. His books are written for everyone—especially those who are hurting, lonely, and discouraged. In his writing, he constantly points his readers back to the truth: that God loves you and you should let Him love you.  Max is also an author of children’s books, several of which are favorites around...

Do you ever find yourself wishing you had more time to read?   Oh, every day? (Yeah, we get that.) We’re pretty confident that every mom wishes she had more time to read.  Carving out a little time to enjoy your own reading life is worthwhile, even in those seasons when you think it’s impossible. (Sarah has six kids, and when three of them were babies age one and under, it definitely felt like an impossible season!) But reading makes us better humans, better mamas, and better women. It...

We all want our kids to read, right? If you’re listening to this podcast, it’s probably safe to say that you want your kids to grow up to read more often than the average adult does. We want them to be lifelong learners and avid readers who read for pleasure. So it’s worth considering how we can cultivate the habits of real adult readers in our kids so that they grow up to be the readers we want them to be. And it turns out some of those skills are actually in direct opposition to how we...

Today, I’m sharing two recent episodes from my weekly coaching podcast, Circle with Sarah, that is available exclusively to members of RAR Premium. I wanted to share them with all of you because I think the message applies to most of us. A lot of us have this funny habit of focusing on getting DONE with the thing we most want to do. Of getting it over with and checking it off the list. It’s maybe more prevalent in our lives than we even realize. And I want to invite you to think about how...

This year at Read Aloud Revival, we’re focusing on reading for joy. It’s so easy for reading to become another thing on your to-do list, but when we make reading a source of joy, of respite from our busy lives, it’s like running into a clear creek on a hot, dusty hike. Nurturing your reading life nurtures you, which in turn helps us be better moms, better homeschoolers, better parents, better women. Today I’m joined by Jennifer Pepito, creator of The Peaceful Press, which offers fabulous...

There is something kind of tragic that happens when our kids become readers of their own right. It doesn’t always happen, of course, and there are ways for us to prevent it. But it’s awfully common. That thing I’m talking about? When reading starts to feel like school. It happens to all of us at one point or another, and it’s very common especially at this time of year when school is well underway. Parents will notice a significant drop in how much their kids are reading for pleasure…if...

🎉 Get FREE SHIPPING at Waxwing Books through 2/22. Use the code FreeShipFeb24 at checkout → What are fairy tales? Why do we love them so much? And why do these stories continue to capture the imaginations of countless generations? To help me answer those questions, I’m welcoming author Sarah Arthur to the podcast. Personally, I fell in love with Sarah’s writing through A Light So Lovely, on the spiritual legacy of Madeleine L’Engle. And when I found out she was working on a young adult...

Today, I’ve got another Best Of RAR episode for you. I wanted to revisit this episode because it feels extra relevant this time of year as we’re thinking about setting goals and resolutions for the year ahead. Personally, I tend to feel a little overwhelmed by it and I bet some of you can relate. And when it comes to books and goals for our reading lives, one of the things we hear at Read Aloud Revival all the time is, “There are so many books and so little time!” There are SO MANY good...

Learn more about Great Homeschool Conventions → Today we’re airing one of my favorite episodes from last year, all about Jolabokaflod, which is a Christmas “book flood,” in the Icelandic tradition. What if I told you this tradition makes your life easier, not harder?  During Jolabokaflod, you gift members of your family with new books, and everyone drinks hot cocoa and spends the whole of Christmas Eve reading. If I didn’t get your attention before, I’ve got it now. There is so much that...

It’s our favorite time of year over at Read-Aloud Revival! It’s time for Christmas School! Most of us have too much on our plates before the busy holiday season begins. Then December hits and we feel behind on … well… everything.  But for homeschoolers, December should be the best month of our entire year. That’s what Christmas School is for. Christmas School is a whole-family curriculum from Read-Aloud Revival that helps your family slow down, savor the season, and wait in joyful...

🎄 Join us for Christmas School → I know that if you’re an RAR Family, you are raising kids who love to read, because that’s what we do around here! And with a love of reading often comes the inspiration to write. And those young writers will come to you looking for feedback on their stories. But what if we, as parents, don’t see ourselves as experts or writers and feel like we don’t have much to offer in the way of feedback? It happens for a lot of homeschoolers. We know that homeschools...

🎄 Join us for Christmas School → I want to introduce you to one of my new favorite authors. She's younger than most published authors. In fact, she says she decided to publish her first book at nine years old. When she was 10, she attended her first writing conference. When she was 13, she self published her first book. She was homeschooled. You probably could have already guessed that. And she has been on a roll ever since. Now she's 20 and she's making books I know your families are going...

🎄 Join us for Christmas School → On today’s Best of Read Aloud Revival episode, I’m replaying one of our most popular episodes. Without fail, at every homeschool conference, at least one person comes up to me and says, “Dyslexia was not even on my radar until I listened to the episode with Marianne Sunderland.” And that’s because most of us don’t understand what dyslexia really is and the signals to look for in our kids. And we don’t know what to do when they do show signs of having a...

By far the most popular episode we’ve ever done here on Read Aloud Revival is the episode with my oldest daughter, Audrey, when we looked back together on homeschooling from her vantage point as a sophomore in college. We discussed what worked, what didn’t, and about our homeschool experience in general. And last spring, at the Great Homeschool Conventions, you all kept asking me when Audrey would be back on the podcast. She’s now about to start her senior year at Franciscan University, so...

Order While Everyone is Sleeping from Waxwing Books. There is one question that plagues us, that we all ask, and that we ask all the time: Am I doing enough? When we constantly ask ourselves if we’re doing enough in our homeschool, it makes it difficult to stay present and engaged and actually enjoy it. Whether you’re relatively new to homeschooling or a seasoned veteran, we all wonder. Today, I'm sharing the last of my sessions from The GHC Conferences 2023. This one is all about taking...

Order While Everyone is Sleeping from Waxwing Books. Today, I’m sharing another session from the Great Homeschool Conventions in 2023 all about homeschooling with babies and toddlers. If you are homeschooling with babies and toddlers underfoot, this one's for you. Or if you have a friend who is homeschool with babies and toddlers, this one's for her, so please share it! Full disclosure: My favorite part about going to the Great Homeschool Conventions is all the babies I get to snuggle and...

Are you struggling with how to tackle reading in your homeschool? Maybe you have a child who’s a later reader or is having a tough time connecting with reading. Or maybe you have a kid who’s an advanced reader and they’re outpacing books that fit their emotional and social development. Either way, it can be hard to know what to do to help your child build a strong relationship with reading that they’ll carry with them throughout their lives. Today, I’m sharing a session from the Great...

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Check out the 2023-2024 RAR Premium Calendar here.  During my hardest year of homeschooling, I had a 12, 10, 8, and 1 year old, and twin newborns. Life was… a little chaotic. One week, a friend of mine who had homeschooled all three of her kids asked, “So how's homeschooling going?” And naturally, I burst into tears. I’m not sure she saw that coming. But then, maybe she did.  Anyway, she asked me how I was keeping the kids on track for their schoolwork and how much they could do when I...

Check out the 2023-2024 RAR Premium Calendar here.  Imagine that your child is grown up, and his or her reading life looks a lot like yours does right now. How do you feel about that?  Is your reading life something you want your kids to emulate when they’re adults?  What if we built for ourselves the kind of reading life that we’d be delighted for our own kids to imitate?  Novelist Katherine Paterson once wrote that “a fondness for books is catching.” I think she’s right. It’s much...

Learn more about the Circle with Sarah Retreat happening this August Today, in this Best Of Read Aloud Revival episode, we’re revisiting a conversation about a series I absolutely adore: The Penderwicks, by Jeanne Birdsall. The Penderwicks follows the escapades of four spirited sisters, Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty. The books are a modern nod to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and they’ve won tons of awards including the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, several ALA...

Learn more about the Circle with Sarah Retreat happening this August In this episode, I’m answering more of your questions. You’ve sent in some fabulous messages and I’m going to tackle them rapid-fire for you and answer as many as possible today.  Today I’m sharing about when to use Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) or teach composition, when and how to start using the library, and what to do when a teenager doesn’t enjoy reading. In this episode, you’ll hear:  Why you don’t need...

Learn more about the Circle with Sarah Retreat happening this August Full show notes can be found here: You Don't Need to Make the Most of Your SummerGet RAR Premium HERE>> Learn more about the Circle with Sarah Retreat happening this August