Talking while reading~what to do?

I’m curious to see answers to this too.  I have found that I have to designate books/times that are okay to talk, and then others that are not.  I make it clear to my 3 and 4 year old that if they want to sit in my lap while I’m reading to their siblings, then they have to listen and not ask questions.  Then I try to read a book separately to them later where it’s their rules(stopping every sentence to count things, look at pictures, etc.). 

I didn’t think you were supposed to do narrations with kiddos that young?  I haven’t been having mine narrate until 6 or so, is that correct? 

For that young, I let them interrupt.  They usually are talking about the story, anyway – asking questions, or inferring something, or found something cool in the picture they need to point out.  If they happen to interrupt with something not about the story, I answer quickly, then focus them back on the book (“That is very neat, sweetie, but let’s read the book now, and we’ll talk about that after we’re done.”).  Usually works pretty well.  I have 4, ages nearly 8, 6 1/2, 4, and 1 1/2.  I think refocusing their attention back on the book is working on their habit of attention.  At least they are paying attention to the book, even if they interrupt with questions about it, right?  At least that’s what I take it to mean.  Perhaps I am wrong on that?

Now, if I’m reading to my older 2 for schoolwork, my 4yo is not allowed to interrupt, but she may ask questions or talk about it after I am finished with them (if she stuck around &/or remembers her question).  She knows this rule, but sometimes forgets and needs to be reminded in the middle of my reading.  🙂  My toddler only interrupts once in a while, with something he found or wants help with, or with whining/crying when I stick him in the Pack-n-Play and he didn’t want to be there.  😛

HTH,

Sara  🙂

Your descriptions reminded me of this passage in Home Education. It sounds like your children are making connections and are eager to talk about those connections. Making mental connections is great; sounds like they just need a little more practice in not blurting out those connections until the proper time.

“You talk to a child about glass––you wish to provoke a proper curiousity as to how glass is made, and what are its uses. Not a bit of it; he wanders off to Cinderella’s glass slipper; then he tells you about his godmother who gave him a boat; then about the ship in which Uncle Harry went to America; then he wonders why you do not wear spectacles, leaving you to guess that Uncle Harry does so. But the child’s ramblings are not whimsical; they follow a law, the law of association of ideas, by which any idea presented to the mind recalls some other idea which has been at any time associated with it––as glass and Cinderella’s slipper; and that, again some idea associated with it. Now this law of association of ideas is a good servant and a bad master. To have this aid in recalling the events of the past, the engagements of the present, is an infinite boon; but to be at the mercy of associations, to have no power to think what we choose when we choose, but only as something ‘puts it into our head,’ is to be no better than an imbecile.

Wandering Attention.––A vigorous effort of will should enable us at any time to fix our thoughts. Yes; but a vigorous self-compelling will is the flower of a developed character; and while the child has no character to speak of, but only natural disposition, who is to keep humming-tops out of a geography lesson, or a doll’s sofa out of a French verb? Here is the secret of the weariness of the home schoolroom––the children are thinking all the time about something else than their lessons; or rather, they are at the mercy of the thousand fancies that flit through their brains, each in the train of the last. ‘Oh, Miss Smith,’ said a little girl to her governess, ‘there are so many things more interesting than lessons to think about!’

Where is the harm? In this: not merely that the children are wasting time, though that is a pity; but that they are forming a desultory habit of mind, and reducing their own capacity for mental effort.

The Habit of Attention to be Cultivated in the Infant.––The help, then, is not the will of the child but in the habit of attention” (Vol. 1, pp. 138, 139).

I wonder if it would be helpful to use a visual cue of some sort to help the children know when it is appropriate to tell their connections along with their narrations. For example, if you had an egg timer, you could start with that visual. While the sand is falling they are to listen closely and silently. When the sand is gone, you will find a suitable stopping place (so they can’t just start blurting as soon as the last grain of sand hits the bottom of the glass) and allow them to share their narrations and connections. Once they have that short time span mastered, bump it incrementally to longer time spans.

If I may piggyback off of Sonya regarding timing to express a connection. My suggestion (at least for the 4 and 3 yr. olds) is at the end of the page that you read, then they are allowed to tell you what they are thinking about the book. 

My children, at 9 and 10, are required to raise their hands when something comes to their minds to prevent themselves from blurting out; they raise it, I shake my head in acknowledgment and then they lower their hand and when I come to a suitable stopping place, I let them talk. That way they know I see them them, but I’m not interrupted and they have to wait.

Rachel