Reading Aloud Challenge

I keep meaning to link up to this each week and I keep forgetting. However, so far I haven't been forgetting to do our read alouds. I think we've hit a groove and since I'm including it on our schedules, it's happening. I do think my boys would prefer a different locale, but I learned early on in our homeschooling journey that I simply cannot read aloud while sitting in either a comfortable chair or the couch. I will read myself to sleep. It's pretty pathetic I know. It doesn't matter how much sleep I've had, I will zonk out rather quickly I'm afraid. As a result, our read alouds happen at the dining room table with the rest of the school. My boys do play with Legos or draw in notebooks or, as my sixteen-year-old tends to do, just puts their head down on the table and listens. 

So our current read alouds are:

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. We will be finishing this one up on Thursday. I am really enjoying reading this out loud to the boys. I think we'll head straight on to the Lord of the Rings when we are finished.

Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake 1805 by Eric Sloane. This has been a fascinating book (at least for me and hubby). The author found the actual diary of Noah Blake written in the year 1805. There isn't a lot of information from Noah. Most enteries are simple things such as: 22: Day spent in forge barn fashioning trunnels for bridge. Did forty. Mr. Sloane, however, is a historian so he filled in the blanks for us. He added background information on life in 1805, how things are made and even included detailed pencil sketches of many of the items mentioned. It's been a very fun look at life then. We are almost done this book as well.

Hero Tales Volume 1 by Dave & Neta Jackson. If you are not familiar with this series, I recommend it. There are sections written about various missionaries. We've read about Gladys Alyward and the Mr. & Mrs. Booth who started the Salvation Army. Each chapter has a brief bio on the person or persons being mentioned and then three short readings that mention something about their life. This is used to teach a character trait and ends with a few comprehension questions. This is a short read and I include it as part of our Bible time.

I am also reading The Light and the Glory for Children by Peter Marshall & David Manuel with Anna Wilson Fishel to my two younger boys as part of their history. I ended up changing our history mid-year so we are using this for a couple of weeks. We are doing one chapter a day. I have the workbook that goes with it so we are using some of those pages. The workbook is designed for younger kids and has a lot of coloring pages. My nine-year-old still enjoys that but my almost twelve-year-old has no desire to color anything! When we are done with this book, we'll be going back to our old stand-by, Story of the World.

I'm linking this up to the challenge found at Footprints in the Butter.