Welcome to Our Reading Rituals

Welcome, and thanks for signing up to Our Reading Rituals I am so pleased that you are here, sharing my brand new venture.

Our Reading Rituals aims to support parents who want to make read aloud sessions both enjoyable and intentional.

Why ‘Our Reading Rituals’?

When I think about what reading has become in schools, I despair. Joy is sucked right out of the ‘learn to read’ process with regimented phonics lessons and pressure to perform well in reading comprehension tests. Often the pure joy of story is removed in favour of the mechanics of reading.

Whilst I do believe that comprehension is an important skill, I don’t believe that testing everything makes reading very enjoyable. Both of my youngest children have to take a test before they are even allowed to borrow another library book - talk about sucking the wonder out of reading!

So that’s where the idea for ‘Our Reading Rituals’ came from. Fighting against the test-led approach to reading, in favour of something special. Reading should be an event, something full of magic and wonder. And this is exactly what I plan to explore through this blog.

Thanks for reading Our Reading Rituals! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

How this Works

Since this is a new venture, I’m pledging to write one new blog post every week. Free content will include:

  • Advice on how to raise a reader

  • Bookish tours

  • Our favourite read aloud stories

  • Bookish teatime ideas

  • Reading Lists

In addition to this, I will be offering literacy curriculums based on classic stories for home-schoolers or parents looking to infuse magic and wonder back into reading.

Why pay to support Our Reading Rituals?

When you pay to subscribe, you are helping me to dedicate more time to my main mission: helping parents understand the importance of reading aloud throughout childhood.

Whilst I love providing free content to everyone, unfortunately that alone does not pay the bills. The more people who pay to subscribe, the more time I can spend writing about the important topics that matter to you.

Paid Subscribers receive:

  • Access to Dragon Cottage Book Club which includes question prompts and the option to join monthly Q& A sessions - more information coming soon.

  • Access to curriculum overviews that are perfect for home-schoolers and parents looking to enrich their child’s literacy at home.

  • Access to workshops, including ‘How to Raise a Reader’ which will be released in October.

Subscription costs are purposely low to make paid content more accessible. You can find out more by clicking the button below:

About Sian

I’m Siân Thomas, a qualified British primary school teacher, parent educator and founder of This Playful Home. I work with parents from all over the world through online courses, workshops and coaching.

Whilst I originally started out with a large following on Instagram, more recently I have navigated over to Substack and Pinterest where I’ve rediscovered my joy for sharing content.

When I’m not writing articles for this page, I work in the local community helping children with reading in writing. In the Autumn, I will also be launching an online literacy programme for home-schoolers.

When I find spare time, you’ll find me taking hundreds of photos of flowers and the local countryside on my daily walk or planning a read-aloud teatime session with the children.

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How to Raise a Family of Readers

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I talk about play, books, education and life in the English countryside 🌼