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Just for Fun: What have YOU been reading lately?
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Hmmm… A Charlotte Mason Education, Grace Based Parenting, and Mara Daughter of the Nile are books in progress. Just finished The Diaries of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain (seriously amusing!) and The Bookseller of Kabul.
Current lit selection is Mr. Popper’s Penguins, along with the Bible and Letters from Egypt which my 5 year old actually likes. I read her the first chapter from the free download since SCM says younger kids may not be as into it, but when I asked her what she thought she said “Yes! We should read that one again.” Of course, I’ve been letting her play in the sandbox while I read it so she doesn’t have to sit still so long. 😉
Just finishing up Cleaning House A Mom’s Twelve-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement by Kay Wills Wyma and the book of James and Jeremiah for scripture. May start reading The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom next…
Thanks for playing along, y’all. =) ALways love to see what folks are reading.
As to the questions with Uncovering the Logic of English – I only have a minute right now – but to answer your questions it does promote more intensive phonics than CM does. Personally I am fine with that because I think phonics is an important tool for reading and spelling. We used DR for awhile with my dd and I personally wanted to see more actual phonics in it, although I think the method of first learning words in context, and then branching out to form new words with similar sounds is a brilliant and useful method. My ds is getting close to being ready to read, so what I am more or less planning to do with him is to teach him using CM methods such as used in Delightful Reading (although we will use other materials), but when we get to the word building part, rather that just building in word families, we will build words that have the same phonograms or follow the same rule in some way. This is why I was so happy to come across this book, it goes through and explains all of the phonograms and rules and has lots of helpful charts, so I can use it at a reference as we go along. (That and I just found it fascinating to take a closer look at how English is structured, but since we have started studying French intenstively this year in preparation for missions work in W. Africa, I’ve become kind of fascinated with linguistics, yes, I’m a nerd.) I taught my dd to read using a similar method as described above (minus the book since I didn’t have it yet) and she is now a strong reader for her age (6.5 but reading on a 2nd-3rd grade level). The author talks about some statistics where something like 1/3 of the population will learn to read regardless of the method used to teach them but the rest need some kind of more focused phonics instruction, in particular those kids who have the really logical, analytical, black-and-white-and-there-is-no-gray kind of minds…which fits my son to a T! Anyhow, not trying to start a debate about phonics and CM or anything like that, obviously each family needs to do what they feel is the best thing for their situation, just answering what drew me to this book in the first place since I was asked. =)
Happy Friday!
Jen
Linda, you are always such a calming influence on me. ((hugs)) Not sure what I’ll pick yet, but I do think you’re right — a bit of a break would be perfect. 🙂
Thepinkballerina – I’ve been looking at reviews of that book! What did you think? Were there practical things you could take away from it to use with your own children?
I just finished reading A History of the McGuffey Readers by Henry H Vail…it’s free for Kindle on amazon. It was really good – made me dust off our McGuffey Readers and try to find a place for them in our homeschool.
MamaSnow – I recently found the Uncovering the Logic of English site and purchased their cursive workbook. It’s just arrived, but on first glance it looks perfect. I’ll have to look more closely at their other products out of curiosity now. 🙂
I Corinthians
Silas Marner
God’s Missionary (Amy Carmichael)
The Rule of Benadict for Beginners.
Methinks I need some light reading; does Silas Marner count for that?
Family read-alouds:
Mary Poppins
The Fields of Home (Little Britches series)
Blessings,
Aimee
Spelling error. It’s Benedict for Beginners. Phew, I feel much better now. Thanks for starting this list; I just requested some of the books mentioned, through interlibrary loan.
I’m reading The Five Love Languages of Teenagers and Lens on Outdoor Learning. Just finished with Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids, Nonviolent Language: A Language of Life and Change Anything (all great!) so I’ve dropped novels these past couple of months in order to learn some better communication and personal skills.
With my older kids (15 and 12) I’m reading The Westing Game and with my younger ones (6yo) I’m reading The Voyages of Dr DoLittle…also both very good.
I’m curious about Cleaning House also… Is it true (I thought I understood from a review) that each child received 30 dollars at the beginning of the month and one was taken away for not doing the work? Is that her main ‘trick’? I fully believe in children working (hard even) but I still find my children are more entitled acting than I like. If you are already a ‘convert’ to teaching children about Family Work, does the book have much else to offer? I don’t much like the money aspect, assuming I understand it correctly, and wonder if there is other inspiration for me in this book.
@llucymypet: I decided to stop giving allowances, now that they are over ten. I realized that I didn’t want to raise socialist-minded children. I set up a purely earnings system. Plus, they have percentages for charity, savings, and tithing taken out and if they earn money from others, some of it comes back to the family to help pay bills, or whatever, to give the a sense of being part of a family and contributing-like the hard-working, contributive children in our nation’s past (remember Laura Ingalls working as a teacher at 15 and sewing before and after specifically to help w/Mary’s blind school expenses and other family expenses?).
Don’t mean to hijack thread…
@botanicalbecky-Frankenstein is one if my all time favorites; I read it when I was 12 or 13.
I just finished reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok, am reading:
Biblical Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
The Two Towers – J.R.R. Tolkein
and others for when I’m in the mood, I just pick where I left off.
Listening to audio of:
Cowards by Glenn Beck
The Jefferon Lies:…by David Barton
Reading These Happy Golden Years as a read-aloud
Next up:
Women’s Wisdom: The Garden of Peace for Women (it’s on it way in the mail!)-Rabbi Shalom Arush
trying to narrow down another fiction type book. I don’t normally read fiction, but The Chosen was so good, I think I’m going to read it’s sequel, The Promise
next.
I have to start reading about Biblical Courtship in order to explain and implement something that I know is the right thing for my dc’s future-but that I have no personal experience with, so I need to read some books on it.
I have such a HUGE personal reading list, sometimes it’s hard to decide what comes next.
A close friend and I attended our local homeschool conference together, after which we looked at each other and laughed, we were so pooped from all of next year’s planning efforts. It seemed it was all we were talking about, even the kids would roll their eyes when they heard us start up again lol! It was then that we made a pact to take turns picking a book that we would read at the same time and would give us something else to think and talk about 🙂 She chose a book called The Kitchen House which was such an amazing story, I was sucked in from the opening page—one of those books you almost stay up all night reading, night after night JUST to finish & then you hate that it’s over! It’s historical fiction, which I normally never read, just goes to show you, right?! 🙂 My choice is the book Kisses From Katie…..I am halfway done and all I can say is …wow! So inspiring! Thank you for sharing your reading lists, I am in awe that so many of you read such intense literature for fun! I guess my brain is not as mature LOL!
Those sound wonderful, MonikaNC. I have to say that I always have great intentions for my reading list, but I struggle with actually getting it read. 😉
Oh, and I have to add a book to my list that I found at the library last week. I really want to get it read before it is due: What the Robin Knows – How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World, by Jon Young. It was on the “New Items” shelves and just reached out and grabbed me. Have any of you seen or read that?
Melissa
I loved reading the list of what others were reading…
Well, I am finishing up “Allergic Girl”, and “The Letter Sweater” I am reading with my husband. THe Letter Sweater was about a murder that happened in our area. It is about the account of events that unfolded to convict the man that killed his wife.
Thumbed through “Scotlands Story” and a few other books. 🙂
Rachel, Chaim Potok’s The Chosen and The Promise are two of our favourite books….so well written.
We also like
It is such a vivid and interesting book and suitable for children 8 years and up.
Silas Marner and Middlemarch are two others all of us have enjoyed, and now I have added a book about bee keeping to my daily reads…not that I can keep bees where I live, but it is a fascinating subject and one day I would like to.
Jen, hope you are relaxing with a good book by now…I am sure you deserve it:)))
Linda
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