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audio books and recovering legalist…
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please forgive me, ladies, but i need someone to tell me it’s okay. i understand that the cm method is founded upon reading great literatudre, makes sense and i can see it in my dd16. i have a ds12 who would prefer not to be tethered to a book. he enjoys being read to and responds well to audio books. it’s not “cheating” to do audio books is it? cm didn’t have this type of technology in her day so she talks a lot about reading great books. if he can narrate back what he’s heard it shouldn’t matter, right?
I don’t see how it is any different than if you read it to him yourself. I think that it is not cheating at all. to a certain degree. Does he read any other books to himself and narrate those as well ?
What about reading books on kindle? I would say that it is fine to use audio some books but that eventually he needs to learn to digest most of his material for himself.
HTH!
The one main issues it not seeing the spelling, punctuation, etc.
We make use of a lot of audiobooks….
I think that, as long as you make certain that he is not lacking in spelling, grammar, vocabulary, composition skills, etc., it would not be a problem to make use of audiobooks and/or read to him some of the time.
You could even do some shared reading to periodically check his reading fluency by setting up a system of “you read 5 paragraphs, then I read 5 paragraphs….” or however you want to set that up. I’ve done that with my daughter for general science, but that’s mostly because she is a slow reader and sometimes is lacking in comprehension because her vocabulary is not extensive. When I do some of the reading (and have her read some of it aloud as well), she grasps more of the content, plus there is the added benefit of improving her reading fluency over time.
I use audio books for a lot of different subjects and do not feel that they are “cheating”.
My dd has a processing issue and I have discovered that if she is reading along with the narration, she is still seeing the words, etc without the stress of seeing so much on a page and losing her place and gets the advantage of hearing correct pronunciations. They help with our time spent on school as well since I can’t read everything outloud. She reads the scriptures this way for her personal study, and then at night when we are doing family scriptures I have noticed a marked difference in her abililty to read and pronounce hard words without help from me. This also applies to school books. She has plenty of reading time without audio as well.
As for literature, she loves to listen and draw and I know that she is having the advantage of knowing and hearing the original stories instead of twaddly re-writes. 😉
We use audio books a LOT for my DS11 and DS9.5 and I feel it’s a great enhancement to our homeschool. I will say, though, that the ONLY way I use an audio book is to give my child a printed copy of the book (whether paper or kindle) and have them follow along as the audio book reads to them. To me, this is the best of ALL worlds: they are hearing it properly read, with (usually) excellent pacing and expression of voice, while at the same time, seeing every word, sentence structure element and punctuation mark as written. We love it!
As Sonya has said before – The Charlotte Mason police won’t show up on your door if you do something different than Charlotte did.
In other words, teach the child, not the curriculum.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we follow the audio books in our printed versions for many subjects as we use them for scriptures, history, science, Shakespeare, geography, literature, and more. However – I often allow my children to color and draw quietly during our literature read alouds because it allows them to enjoy the story and gives my dd a chance to process the information, sort it, organize it and present it in a way that she remembers the story best, which is also called drawn narration. It doesn’t make sense for me to force her to struggle to learn with a page of words swimming around when she can hear it as well! Learning is learning, whatever the method needed/used.
We also listen to literature books as a family once a week while doing puzzles together. We have listened to most of the Narnia books – we are almost done with the last one. I think that we will do The Lord of the Rings series next. My dh loves being a part of this time. Tristan’s family listens to them during quiet time and before bed!
And like she posted above, there are no CM police. It really is okay to make your “things” work for your family and teach your children the way THEY learn and enjoy. Let the pressure of conformation to what is “normal” go and embrace the freedom to enjoy life while learning. =) It’s FUN!
This is good. Use audio books. But they need to understand that one day they may end up in a college class or a work training and there is no audiobook to go with the text. 🙁 Think ahead also. It is just a fact that in today’s world, we need to get information from reading. Everyone should be ABLE to do this. There will not always be an audiobook. There are of course true disabilities that you can work around, but just be forewarned—if your child does not have a diagnosis of a disability, they aren’t going to be able to get, say, the SAT read to them. They need to READ it. “Not wanting to be tethered to a book” isn’t going to to sway a lot of future bosses or college profs.
I was going to chime in, but Bookworm took the words right out of my mouth. Again. Michele, I appreciate your wisdom!
We love listening to audiobooks around here too. My husband commutes hours and hours each week and has listened to a hundred (truly, we have 100 classic audiobooks through audible.com, and he’s read or listened to all of them). My ds10 was a late bloomer as far as reading, but he has listened to a lot of classic literature through audiobooks. A couple of months ago, he went from nonreading to reading The Hobbit in a matter of several weeks. It’s like he has always been a strong reader. I believe it’s because he kept pace with typical classic literature for his age using audiobooks. He’s listened to things like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, Captains Courageous, The Jungle Book, Swallows and Amazons (and the rest of Arthur Ransome’s series), Wind in the Willows, Watership Down, The Phantom Tollbooth, Chronicles of Narnia, Shackleton’s South, Great Expectations, The Teaching Company’s Egyptian Course, The Word of Promise (Bible), and I could go on and on.
I suggest that you have your son listen to an audiobook for several chapters to get into the story, and then have him finish the rest by reading it himself…provided you stop at a cliffhanger. 😉 And, yes, have him narrate and discuss what he listens to.
Audiobooks are wonderful tools that will definitely prepare students for high school and college because they train the ear to listen with full attention and surround them with rich language. Words heard and words read, together, will feed the child’s heart and head.
Re-reading my original post, I can see I gave the wrong impressionn. My son is finishing “Around the World in 80 Days” and is is having a great time with one of a series of “Knights” books by Chuck Black. He is not really interested in reading the older classics. “Around the World” was somewhat interesting for him, but it is not the sort of thing he prefers. There is a lot to be learned from classics so I thought I would just do those via audio.
I have enjoyed all the different points of view and am glad to see others liberally using audio books in their homes also. Hearing these books and the rich language is helping to improve his vocabulary immensely! Another bonus!
Thank you everyone for your input, it is always appreciated.
Cheryl, definitely use audiobooks for classics. The more he hears, the more your son will develop a taste for them…think brussel sprouts and spinach. Maybe have him listen to something crazy like The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle or The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton. Maybe he would like something adventurous like Ben Hur by Lew Wallace or In Freedom’s Cause by G.A. Henty? Like I mentioned earlier, we use Audible through Amazon and get great deals on audiobooks (for $1 or 2) when we purchase the free kindle versions (whispersync deals).
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