What We Are Reading Part 2

Last February I wrote about the chapter books we had been reading to the kids.  You can read that post here: What We Are Reading (part 1)

We just wrapped up Stuart Little, so I thought it would be a good time to post what we have read over the past year and what we plan on reading next.  This helps me keep track of what we have read and might inspire you and your family to grab a few of these titles too!

We went through a rough spell after Contessa was born where we were not reading for several months.  But recently at the suggestion of the mom from Steady Mom, we have started reading at breakfast, lunch or both.  Some days breakfast reading doesn't happen, but lunch has been very consistent for us.  I either eat a bit before hand or I wait and eat afterwards.  We are getting in so much more reading this way and the kids sit and listen much better.  Give it a try.

Last February our goal was to read Never Cry Wolf, Misty of Chincoteague, The Trumpet of the Swan, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and three part history book set.  We read Misty of Chincoteague and The Trumpet of the Swan but then made some adjustments to our other books we had selected.  We got a few chapters into Huckleberry Finn and I realized I needed to read Tom Sawyer first.  The history books were very dry and boring, so we donated them.  And Never Cry Wolf got put back on the shelf for some reason.

We added Sailing to Cytheria, Sarah Plain and Tall, Stuart Little, A Lion to Guard Us, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  The kids and I have loved them all!

When we finished the last of Stuart Little today, I had the kids pick out four books to read next.

The kids selected Never Cry Wolf, Where the Red Fern Grows, James and the Giant Peach and Sea Star, which is the sequel to Misty of Chincoteague.  I am excited to read these to the kids except for Where the Red Fern Grows!  That book made me cry back in 5th grade and I am sure I will not be able to get through it at 33 years old without crying some more!  Oh well!

Nathan sent me a quote from C.S. Lewis the other day that I found so profound.  He said "No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally - and often far more - worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond."

Let C.S. Lewis inspire you and your family to read books that fit that criteria!  Go grab a classic and get reading today!

Can I Keep'em Coming

About 4 weeks ago Layla received the Moody series from my mother.  Each book ranges from about 185 to 195 pages and there is only one picture per chapter.  Layla has already polished off 4 of these books in 4 weeks!  That makes me nervous because I want to keep her reading massive amounts of books, but I am a bit picky about content because she is very sensitive in spirit.  These books are great because they are about a homeschooling family, so Layla gets to see some similarities to her own life!  She is amazing!  I better go read some more to keep up with her!

Ooops!

The other night as I was feeding Contessa, it dawned on me that we never gave the kids their "Big Brother, Big Sister" gift.  So in the morning, two days after Contessa was born, we gave the kids their gift.  When a new baby comes along Nate and I try and have something special for the older kid(s).  For this birth I found some special things at St. Vincent's and Goodwill.  At St. Vincents I found a Thomas the Tank Engine blanket that washed up beautifully, a Black Beauty chapter book, an adorable "I spy" board book and a four Kumon workbooks.  At Goodwill I found four Sesame Street Library books and a Smithsonian book that added to our collections at home.  The kids were so excited and I was happy that we were able to get them such a nice gift for so little money.

Our Reading Program

I have been asked a few times recently what materials we are using for homeschooling.  Because my kids are so young (almost 6, 4 and almost 2) we really haven't pursued much formal learning at this point.  Our main focus has been on reading.  My husband and I really want our children to not only be good readers, but LOVE reading.  I purchased The Great Saltmine and Hifwip program back when Layla was 3 years old.  She already knew her letters, so I started working with her on the Penny Primer portion of this reading program.  For a year, I was frustrated.  She made very slow progress and was not very interested.  By the time she was well over the age of four, and after a summer break of no reading work, I started again.  This time she was easily comprehending the phonic sounds and memorizing them.  She made very fast work of the Penny Primer and we quickly moved on in the phonics program.  What a difference a year made!  I should have taken a hint from my frustration and her lack of progress and interest and backed off.  But, you live and learn.

Layla is now a very fluent reader.  I am amazed at how well she reads, with very little work or credit on my part.  We just walk through each phonics section and stay with that section until she can remember most of the sounds and can easily read all of the words.  Now Layla's face can always be found in a book.  Many times I will send her upstairs to get something and she doesn't come back because she stops by the book shelf and gets lost in reading.

Julius just turned four and I am taking a more relaxed approach with him.  Layla early on learned her alphabet on her own by the age of two.  This past fall, at 3 1/2 Julius didn't know his alphabet.  But with some work this fall and winter, he now knows his letters and is beginning to write his letters (capital and lowercase) and his numbers.  I haven't decided yet when to start the Penny Primer with him.  I may start this spring and see how he does.  If it doesn't go well, then I will wait until next fall to begin to work on phonics with him.

I love The Great Saltmine and Hifwip because it is a vertical phonics program.  Rather than teaching a child just the main phonic sound of a letter first, vertical phonics teaches the child all of the phonic sounds for each letter or letter grouping.  That way you don't have to come back and teach the child other phonic sounds later.  I think this difference helped Layla become an excellent reader in such a short period of time.  Now, even if you have no plans of homeschooling, I would recommend looking into the program.  It was actually designed to teach kids to read before they were in school full-time to ensure a certain level of reading confidence before being in a classroom setting all day.

I was very overwhelmed when I first received the program.  I had no idea how or where to begin, but the program includes a DVD that walks you through all the steps of the program.  Once I watched that I felt so much better and more confident about using it to teach my kids.  Best of all, if you really get confused or stumble on a problem, the creator of the program is available by phone!  That is unheard of nowadays!  This has been our first main purchase of homeschooling material, and I have been very pleased.  It was worth the small investment and I look forward to teaching Julius, Gunnar and the new baby how to read in the future.

What We've Been Reading

Anne of Green Gables, Charlotte's Web

Last year I started reading chapter books aloud to the kids.  We only made it through these two books.

The Courage of Sarah Noble, Because of Winn Dixie, Ruby Holler, Oliver Twist, Peter Pan, Gulliver's Travels, Sprout and the Dogsitter, Old Charlie

This year we have been doing much better.  Chapter reading has been much more consistent, so we have gotten through many more books in a shorter period of time.  Layla now can sit and comprehend the story, even if there are no pictures.  Julius is getting better at sitting, but he is not yet at the stage of enjoying being read to from a chapter book.  He still prefers lots of pictures!  Now we are starting to tackle this stack.  We are about halfway through The Trumpet of the Swan and enjoying it.  I think I may be removing the history books, as I have looked through them and the writing is not very enjoyable.  I need to find some history storybooks that would be much more fun to read, for me and the kids!  I have heard some great things about Story of the World series.  I want to first check our book exchange store because their prices are awesome.

Never Cry Wolf, The Trumpet of the Swan, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Misty of Chincoteague, History of the United States 1-3

First Real Bibles

Layla, Julius and Gunnar all received their first "real" Bibles this Christmas.  Nate has been leading us in daily family worship and the kids wanted their own Bibles to read along with Mommy and Daddy.  Not familiar with what family worship consists of, then grab a few of these books/ CDs to find out (there are many more resources besides these).

What's This?

I came into the living room the other day to find this.  Layla and Julius reading in train formation and a very tired Gunnar playing with Julius' hair.  Weird.

Sit Down!

So this is what Gunnar did the other morning.  He grabbed my Bible and put it on the couch, grabbed his things, too(Goodnight Moon and sippy cup) and told me several times to "Sit Down."  You're right, buddy!  Mommy definitely needs to sit down and read her Bible.  Great idea!  Thanks for reminding me!

Can I Get 'Er Done?

As I continue to work my way through a small mountain of bins, I have a bit of doubt in the back of my mind.  Can I really get this all taken care of before tomorrow?  We will see.  Let's take a look at the list.

• Get back to daily school work 
• Finish "Ruby Holler" chapter book with the kids - we had more left than I realized.  We are on page 253 and need to get to 310 to finish, lots of reading today!
• Wash all the dirty towels and sheets
• clean both bathrooms
• clean off fan blades in our bedroom (it's gross!)
  
• Use up any remaining food in the fridge and grocery shop 
  
• Sort through clothing bins and store away clothing that is too small - more bins done, but as you can see above, lots more work to do!
• Find good dinner roll recipe for Thanksgiving - I am going with these Buttermilk-Onion Pull Apart Rolls
• finish Christmas gift ideas for our kids - one gift ordered online, three gifts purchased this weekend from store, just need to finish ordering a few more gifts online  

This year I don't have much Thanksgiving cooking to do, so I thought I put a little more effort into the rolls I was assigned (pun intended :).  So today I need to work on the dinner rolls and work on finishing this list.  I am super excited because I don't have to cook dinner tonight.  I purchased a voucher online that will get me 4 sub sandwiches for only $10 from a local sub shop downtown.  Whoohoo!  I thought that was a pretty good deal and Lenny's makes some tasty subs.

Best wishes to everyone as they prepare for tomorrow's Thanksgiving.  Remember to try your best to be "hushed and not rushed" this holiday season, just as Mrs. June Fuentes recommends. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Getting Back On Track

With the events of the past week and a half, we just set aside our normal daily activities to focus on higher priorities.  But now, out-of-town family have returned home and regular life must resume.  The kids haven't even glanced at schoolwork during this time.  I have only done just enough laundry to keep clean underwear and fresh towels available.  Add to all this that Thanksgiving is only 10 days away, and it makes it very apparent that there is lots of work to do!  So my goals for the next few days are:

• Get back to daily school work 
• Finish "Ruby Holler" chapter book with the kids
• Wash all the dirty towels and sheets
• clean both bathrooms
• clean off fan blades in our bedroom (it's gross!)
• Use up any remaining food in the fridge and grocery shop 
• Sort through clothing bins and store away clothing that is too small
• Find good dinner roll recipe for Thanksgiving
• finish Christmas gift ideas for our kids

What things to you want to get done before Thanksgiving?

Homeshool Readings

Since the start of school, we have read and enjoyed both Gulliver's Travels and Peter Pan. These are adaptations of the original books for younger readers. I am not always a fan of reading a non-original version, but the reality is that I am reading to a 5 and 3 year-old. I read Ann of Green Gables to them last year in it's original form, and they seemed to struggle with the overall length of the story and the mature text. These books are targeted for elementary school aged children and have many pictures throughout the chapters. The kids, especially Layla, are loving them. Julius has a harder time following an audible story. Layla wants to read Oliver Twist, next. I have tried to warn her that it is not necessarily a "happy" story. We will see what she thinks!

I was recently asked how and what we choose for our homeschooling curriculum. I will try and get around to that, soon, even though there is not much to discuss, as we currently take a very relaxed approach to schooling.

First Day of School

We had our first day of school today, along with all the other local kids. We watched the buses whiz by our house as we sat at the dining room table to do our work. We kept things pretty light and easy today, like we always tend to do. We will save the hard core studies for when they are older. Julius worked on some letters sounds and tracing over letters. He also did a bit with shapes. Layla stuck with some basic addition. She was having a hard time concentrating with Julius at the table. She is not used to having another student around! She kept wanting to help him with what he was doing, but she needed to focus on her own work. The baby was getting a bit frustrated that he was not at the table, so I set him up with some crayons and a coloring book. After just a bit of work it was back to all play. In the afternoon we read the first two chapters of Gulliver's Travels. Layla was not excited at first, but after just a few pages she was very in tune to the story. She even wanted to discuss the book at dinner. She was curious why those little people tied Gulliver up and took him as their prisoner. All in all a great start to the school year!

Sleeping Beauty

A Hot Summer Evening

The boys cool off during an evening bath while Layla devours a book.

Score!

The weather has been gorgeous here the past few days, but it's been a bit too cool for swimming at the lake. We have kept ourselves occupied with yard work, a visit to Nate's grandparents, an afternoon of hittin' garage sales and some playing at the park. Garage sales are tricky and humorous things. Another man's junk is another man's treasure (did I phrase that right?). And sometimes another man's junk should really just end up in the trash. Sometimes they really should be call garbage sales instead of garage sales. And then there are always those people who stuff is really not that bad, but their prices rival that of a department store. I learned well from my mother-in-law to price stuff cheap and it will fly out of your garage. Not that I have ever had a garage sale myself, but if I did, everything would be cheap! LOL!

Enough rambling about garage sales. We did score some pretty good stuff for pretty cheap. We got the kids a book shelf for their room for $2. Which was good because we ended up buying 60 books for just $6. That was my favorite score of the day. Ten books for a dollar. Whooohooooo! And I dug through to make sure they were all good books. No garbage or twaddle books allowed. And plenty of easy-readers since I can't keep Layla's face out of a book. The kids were in heaven tonight at bedtime going through their new books picking out ones for Nate and I to read and ones for them to take to bed.

We also picked up two little kids chairs for a buck a piece, a few more books from other garage sales, snow pants and some clothes for Layla, a big box of wood blocks, a wood truck and a larger dump truck all for a few bucks. I was even able to get a little kid's snow shovel for free. So next winter, Layla and Julius will be on snow removal duty. Oh yeah, we got a huge chalkboard for a dollar, too. Nate's former school was closing it's doors and they were selling everything cheap. It was too big to fit in the van with all of us, so he has to go get it tomorrow once he takes the seats out.

All in all, it was pretty good shopping. Nate was bummed at the lack of tools. He was hoping to find some hedge trimmers and maybe a saw. Maybe next time, babe.

Lone Survivor

So I was rather tired today. I must admit I stayed up until the wee hours finishing a good book. Our good friend, Bregger, recommended this book to us a few months ago. So when Nate's coworker had a copy and offered for us to borrow it, Nate, brought home Marcus Luttrell's Lone Survivor. Now this book will not fit everyone's taste, but for me, I very much appreciated not only the eye witness account of the worst SEALs disaster in history, but I also enjoyed getting an inside view on what one must go through to even become a SEAL.

I had been enjoying the first part of the book for the past week, reading here or there as I got time. But last night I hit the part of the book that outlines the disaster and Marcus' miraculous survival. So I couldn't stop reading. I pretty much knew the real story and I still couldn't stop reading. But, looking back, it seems fitting that I lost several precious hours of sleep on Memorial Day reading about some amazingly courageous men. If you like that kind of stuff, grab the book. I always appreciate real stories of war, because lets face it, I am too chicken to do the stuff that others willingly volunteer to do. Its just amazing to read what a human body and mind can take and still keep on task, following orders. Kind of puts things in my life in a different perspective, ya know?