There have been moments of joy and tears in watching my son Daniel learn to read.  He wanted it so bad and yet it was so hard for him to master.  Finally, last year everything fell into place and he delights in being a ‘book worm’ just like his older brother and sisters.

Over the last few months he has had a growing desire to read God’s Word and to learn from it.  While on holidays we had an opportunity to go to a Christian book store and top of our list was a new Bible for Daniel.  He has been reading that Bible almost every day since.  He treasures it, and he is treasuring the truths and stories in it.

Over the last few months he has also been reading a little book, written for boys, about the Armour of God as a part of his devotional time.  It isn’t a ‘devotional’ book as such, but he reads it, and opens the relevant Scriptures, thinks about it and has been keeping a journal about what he is learning.

Yesterday he talked to me about the Armour of God – he could list the different parts.  I asked him if he could tell me about them and he could.  This was so exciting – for two reasons:

1. He had learnt about the armour of God, and was seeing different times in his day that he needed that armour
2. He had learnt from something that he had read by himself.

This second point is an indicator of developing study skills.  When we initially read it is hard work and we understand what we’ve read but it is more about the skill of reading than gaining anything from it, then we read for pleasure and then we can read for learning.   With each purpose of reading – be it reading aloud, reading for pleasure, reading poetry, reading to learn requires different skill sets.  When our children are at the place where they can learn from their reading the world opens up to them – how exciting and this is exactly where Daniel is at.

Read more about developing study skills