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Best Read Alouds? (ages 8 & 11)
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We just finished our first year homeschooling and two of our favorite books were:
Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat
Boy of the Pyramids by Ruth Fosdick Jones (these were nice and short, I like this length of book for right now)I often visit the SCM Bookfinder and use Honey for a Child’s Heart but I’m looking for some “real life” suggestions. I read Guerber’s Ancient History at breakfast and a read aloud at lunch. My children love comics but I want to help move them into some better reading on their personal time, too.
What are YOUR favorite read alouds for this age? We also read Caddie Woodlawn which they loved, too! I’mlooking for a list of about 20 awesome books that I can draw from to read at lunchtime over the next few months.
Our two favorites about a year or so ago (when mine were 9, 10, & 11) were Rascal by Sterling North and The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit.
After we finished Rascal (which we read during our lunchtimes), we planned a “Rascal Luncheon” to celebrate. We found coloring pages online that we decorated and made into placemats, we searched online and took a virtual tour of the original Sterling North house (it’s a childhood memoir), and we talked about our favorite parts of the book while we ate.
The Railway Children was made into a movie and we watched and enjoyed that after finishing the book. (I think we saw the 1970 BBC version, but I’m not sure–there was a version made in 2000.)
My boys are 5 and 9 and we just finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. They loved that.
(My 5YO really enjoys adventure and danger, so it was a nice choice for him).
I second Rascal; my mom introduced us to that book as a favorite from her childhood, and it is what got us started with family read alounds several years ago when my oldest was 5, turning 6. Our whole family liked it. Also, have you considered Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder? Jo’s Boys, by Louisa May Alcott might be another good one for you. Henry and Ribsy by Beverly Cleary, Mountain Born by Elizabeth Yates, Homer Price by Robert McLcoskey (nice, short stories as chapters, kind of like you described above) and The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill have all been hits at my house. And I have to also second any of the Narnia books-we’ve been through almost all of them together, and I read them personally every year. They’re especially condusive to drawing while listening-my 7yo’s drawing of the Dawn Treader was awesome-CS Lewis is so descriptive and engaging.
Boy, you’ve really come to the right place for book suggestions, we’re all bibliophiles here!!
BTW, I have girls; I missed if you have boys or girls or both, but these all appealed to both of them, and my husband ;o)
LillyLou
If you liked Caddie, don’t forget the sequel, Magical Melons. It’s a lot of fun too, and you see Cadde get to “grow” a lot. If you liked Owls in the Family, you might consider Mowat’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be. I think it might need a little amount of editing, but it was so funny we often had to stop to allow the reader to recover. I dare anyone to try and make it through the opening description of the dog without cracking up! You certainly can’t go wrong with a Narnia, Little House or any of the others mentioned. Other favorites of ours at that age–Swallows and Amazons; Ginger Pye and Pinky Pye by Eleanor Estes; The Peterkin Papers by Lucretia Hale. If you enjoyed Owls in the Family, perhaps you’d like Jean Craighead George’s There’s an Owl in My Shower and The Tarantula in My Purse. We also loved Edith Nesbit–The Railway Children, Five Children and It, The Treasure Seekers.
So many books, so little time! LOL
I’m so happy to read of so many suggestions. I’m always afraid we’re going to run out of great books to read. I have 2 5yos homeschooling this year and I have a list of classics/must reads for them but it averages to only 2 books a week. I’m pulling the list from: Sonlight, Books That Build Character, and Beautiful Feet’s Teaching Character Through Literature (along with some CM and TJEd lists). Try looking at those lists to get other suggestions.
One specific one I’ll suggest is the Little Britches series by Ralph Moody. They are sort of a Little House equal except the author/main character is a boy. They are wonderful for family read alouds. I am currently on the fifth in the series (of 7 I think) for outloud reading to my 14yo son, but younger children would definitely enjoy it just as much.
shannon
By “2 books a week,” do you mean you read to them out of 2 different books in a given week? Or do you mean you read 2 entire books in a week? You can certainly read aloud much longer, more complicated books than they are capable of reading to themselves. Such books would usually take several weeks to complete, even if we read from them daily. (It took us most of the summer to finish The Railway Children, and we read it 20-30 minutes at bedtime nearly every night.)
My problem is that I look at a list of suggestions or recommendations and think that I can’t possibly leave out any one of those books! Then, as happened recently while reading posts on a thread about module 6 history books, I realized that I don’t have to read all 3 Patricia MacLachlan books (Sarah Plain and Tall, Skylark, Caleb’s Story) back-to-back….I can save one or two of them for later….and the world will not cease to exsist!
I don’t know why I get so requisite about book lists!I do the same thing, Sue, and since we are in Mod 6 this year, I’m thinking of doing the same thing. Not that they aren’t good books but there’s bound to be a day (or two) that we can get to those books in the future. I am really having to modify our list for history this year (or just make it last longer, maybe bleed into next “school year”) not because I don’t have the books but because there are so many good ones and not near enough time. So, I’m just going to have to be OK with it and turn some into “family” read alouds.
Oh, I was going to mention that we started Rascal today and my kids love it already. We’ll read 1-2 chapters a week (I’d like to savor it a bit). This book is so descriptive you can visualize everything
.Sue, many of the books recommended for 5yos are short books you’d read in one sitting (picture books) or short chapter books. Some are longer (Little House, Boxcar Children) and part of a series. I just worry we’ll run out… Additionally I do find it hard to keep reading time short when we’re in a great book. I almost understand the idea of reading only a little at time for processing, but we’ve never actually done it. 🙂
shannon
Oh, now I understand. I also had a similar problem last year when my son (who was reading at about a 2nd grade level) seemed to be “running out” of books that he could read independently. (He is 12yo and autistic, so it’s taken him a while to learn to read.) But I will rack my brain and see if I can remember some of the earlier books we read.
I don’t know why I get so requisite about book lists!
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