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Read to self vs. Read aloud (5YO)
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My daughter is 4, almost 5, and she is an early self-taught reader. I want to keep reading out loud to her for a number of reasons, but she also loves reading to herself. I find that I just can’t keep up with her pace, so I have this pile of chapter books sitting and waiting for us to read aloud together that I don’t let her read to herself (until we’ve had a chance to read them together). Sometimes they end up back at the library before we’ve even had a chance to start them. If I let her read them herself, she’d finish them in no time, I’m sure.
How do other people handle this — the amount of time younger kids have reading to themselves vs. how much you read out loud to them? How do you decide how to handle it with their leisure time reading vs. their reading for narration time? (We haven’t started formal narrations yet because she’s still young, but I’m just trying to work it out in my head.)
I have one of those early readers! There were a few times when I was very excited to read a book aloud together, and then found out that DD (now 7yo) had already read it. I remember being in the middle of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”. It was the scene when the children and the Beavers were hiding and heard bells. I said, in my best suspense-inducing voice “Who do you think that could be? Is it the witch?”. DD (5yo at the time) answered, “No, it’s Father Christmas!” Then, at my astonished look, she continued, with a condescending tone and a slight shake of her head, “I’ve already read this book, Mom.” Ack!
So, our solution now is that any books on the shelf in our school area are off limits. Anything else, she is allowed to read at will. The school shelf is specifically books I plan to use for school time (that will be narrated) or that I want to save for bedtime story time with my younger children as well. Once the ‘school’ books have been read together, the books can go on the general shelf for the kids to read again and again. I make sure to have plenty of good books available for the kids (DS5 is reading now too) to just pick up whenever they want. We also go to the library regularly, and DD knows how to find a book online and put it on hold (I keep an eye on what she is choosing of course.) She has started to choose more non-fiction, science mostly, at the library lately. I don’t take a book out of the library myself that I know I want to read together, unless I know that we will have time before it’s due back. Most of the ‘school’ books we own, either hardcopy or ebook (lots of ebooks!)
DD and DS read in bed for about 45-60 minutes every evening, depending on how quickly we got through the bedtime routine. They will also will pick up a book during the day if there isn’t much going on.
Of course, I’m now having a bit of a struggle in that DD doesn’t want to have to read and narrate books for school. She says “It changes it when it’s a book that I’m FORCED to read. Then it’s not fun.” The same book that I KNOW she would read if I just left it on the shelf, becomes drudgery when it’s a ‘school’ book. So I’m trying to figure out how to overcome that attitude. I don’t think limiting the free reading books is the answer, though. I just thought you should know in advance that it might come up! Ask me again in a while and I’ll tell you what we come up with.
Good luck!
Joanne
I just locked away the ones that were CM recommended books from the spine and let them read the rest to themselves. This way I know what we are reading as a family and I don’t have to worry about reading overload and boring the dc. I also have a child that loves to read. He goes through stages now. He will either read alot or he will look for something else to do. Ex– The other day our front door handle wouldn’t work. It was like this for a couple of days. My dh forgot to bring it when he came home. ds decided he would fix it. He found out what was wrong with it and he couldn’t fix it. Thankfully we changed the locks at our business and he was able to finish it when his father brought a door knob home. He had the door knob off and diagnosed before I knew what was going on. He must have been looking at the fix it book before he tried that one. 🙂
I let my kids read whatever they like on our home library shelves, as often as they want, and anything I know that I am going to use for school work goes in my schooling cabinet or shelf. Those places are off limits. I use this book list to help fill our shelves, either by buying them cheap at library sales or renting them from the library.
http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/celoop/1000.html
Ok, that makes perfect sense (and is so simple) to just put them on a special shelf. We don’t have a “school” shelf yet – I’m planning to do a little school design over the summer. But I can certainly do something like that.
I probably should limit what I get from the library … I just get so excited that I grab everything I can from the CM lists. 🙂 But I’ve been trying to focus more on getting more picture books for her, and science / nonfiction for her, so that she doesn’t run out quite so quickly.
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