How many living books per day

Depending on your children’s ages and abilities, many of the living books assigned would be read independently.

For our children, group reading time includes Bible study every morning, and History, Science, and Literature every afternoon. In addition to this, we rotate living books on composers, artists, poets, geography, etc… as group readings.

Also, I do not have my children narrate every single thing, every single day. We take turns with narration, and since I have some older kids doing written narrations, this works well for us.

As soon as my children are independent readers, they are also assigned books to read for themselves. We don’t keep seperate ‘living books’ for school – we are a twaddle-free house! Ideally, everything the children read should be a ‘living book’ ;0)

It sounds like you have a good beginning! Keep up the good reading!

Every child is different, of course, but for reference here is what has worked so far for us.  DD8 will be in year 3 and DS6 in year 1 this year, so I can’t speak to the higher levels.

For year one and two, we usually have about 10 readings spread over 4 days, read aloud with narration.  Those include history, geography, literature and science. If the chapters for a book are particularily short, such as Aesop, one ‘reading’ might be 2 chapters, but usually just one.  Then my DS reads one short passage aloud to practice fluency, plus 15 minutes of ‘free reading’ (no narration, but from my list of books).

My DD8 this year will have about 14 readings, (4 read aloud, 10 independent) over 4 days per week.  Those will all be narrated, and the chapters tend to be longer than the year 1 and 2 chapters were.  Then 30 minutes of free reading daily, which will include some of the extra history and literature and science books that relate to our topics.  These don’t have to be narrated, but DD will usually come to tell me about what she read.

Other subjects, such as composer study, might add in a book occasionally, but usually not every week, and I usually don’t ask for much narration for those.  We just discuss things together.

We also do one chapter for Bedtime Reading, alternating between two books.  On the days Dad is home in the evening, he reads from one book, on the other days, I read from a different one.  Bedtime also includes reading scripture together.   

Then the kids can read anything they choose before bed (subject to parental approval of course).  DD8 often re-reads books that we have already done for school.

Joanne

Hi Marie –

In answer to your question: I read a few of the kids’ independent reading selections, but mostly they educate me on their readings :). I work the kids into this gradually. I have read most of the books that my younder kids are assigned, and I follow the chapter with their narration. By the time they are in 4-5th grade, mine narrate fluently from their independent readings.

Remember, Charlotte’s recommendation:

“From their earliest days they should get the habit of reading literature which they should take hold of for themselves, much or little, in their own way” (Vol. 6, p. 191).

The idea is to enable your children to love reading, to love getting in touch with great minds and their thoughts and acquiring knowledge for themselves. Your job is not to monitor every step of that process – it is to spread the feast of knowledge and then get out of their way :).

Blessings!