Read Aloud Challenge: Bringing Books to Life

Footprints in the Butter

I have a confession to make....we haven't read anything out loud this week. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

::sigh::

However, what we have managed to do is bring a couple of our most recent read louds "to life" so to speak.

As most folks may know, The Hobbit was released to DVD this week. We happen to have DirectTV and we also happen to have been snowbound on Tuesday when the DVD came out. So we called it a family night and ordered the movie to watch without ever having to brave the new 12 inches of new snow that fell. (Where is spring!?!?!)

However, in the spirit of keeping it real, I will confess something else. I had a major mom failure as well. My middle son is very sensitive to what he can watch and I need to be mindful of that. We were having a family movie night and I just figured I would tell them to close their eyes during the scary bits. I forgot how scary Orcs can be and in particular the white Orc in this film. Which leads me to also say, I really wish Peter Jackson had stuck closer to the original story line, but I digress.

I had one very scared little boy going to bed (he's almost 12 so don't tell him I said he was little). I apologized to him and we prayed. We even left a light one. Mommy guilt began to really wrack me so I prayed even more once I went to bed. And thankfully he slept through the night.

The next morning the first thing I did was ask him how he slept and he said "great!" with a big smile. I again apologized and told him he has my permission to tell me "Mom, I don't want to watch this" if ever we put on something else on the scary side.

Learning lessons for both of us.

And today we headed to the local Opera House to see a rendition of Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Eve and it was excellent! I had read a children's version of the play to my boys earlier in the month in preparation for today's performance. I think it helped them keep the story straight as the actor's did talk in Shakespearean English, but added a few "hip" elements as well.

I knew my 16-year-old was hooked when it began with a "Stomp-like" drumming performance as well as a "fight" scene. While the play was designed for older students, I did bring all my boys and even the nine-year-old was able to follow along to some extent and even enjoy it. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

I think one of my favorite parts though was when two of the actors kissed and it was dead quiet in the theater and you heard a boy in the back go, "Ewwww!" Priceless.

So while we haven't read anything, we have enjoyed a few "books to life" moments. We are also listening to a wonderful Lamplighter story, The Robber's Cave. We are doing three field trips this week, thus the lack of reading time, so we'll have lots of time in the vehicle to listen to stories.

Read Aloud Challenge: Limping Through this Week

Footprints in the Butter

I almost didn't join up this week as it's been a very off week in our homeschool. I always have grand plans and really want to focus on getting a good day of school in. Then life happens. And it happened this week for sure!

I didn't manage to complete our together school on Monday. That was certainly my issue. That also means no reading aloud. 

On Tuesday the two younger boys had swim lessons and from there we went to a friend's house. Our friend also homeschools and has four boys. We are attempting to get together once or twice a month for "Share Time." Each boy shares something they like and then they can play. My boys are ages 9, 11, & 16. Hers are (I think) 6, 8, 12, & 14. It's been encouraging for all of them to share. We don't limit them (very much anyway). For example, my middle son loves planes so typically shares some time of model he's made (paper, Lego, model). One of her sons is an amazing artist and once shared some chalk drawings he did that were wonderful. It's a nice confidence booster to all of them I think.

Wednesday was a bust of a school day for a couple of reasons. My oldest spent the night at the above friend's house. Neither of us thinking at the time that it's still a school day - homeschool or not. Her kiddos pushed through but mine were given the day off. No worries though. They will be making it up on (gasp!) Saturday.

Yesterday I did a bit of reading aloud, but the young one I am now watching (7 months) was teething and very unhappy at school time so it was again shelved. Today Mr. T was back to his usual happy baby-self and slept all morning so we had a great together school.

Since I last posted what we were reading, we finished A Midsummer's Night Dream. It was definitely a nice adaption of the story making it easier for children to understand. We will be going to see the play in a couple of weeks but that is also a "school show" so I'm not sure how they will interpret the story line. I think it will be helpful to my boys, especially my nine year old, that we read the story first.

I also finally decided I just did not like A Gathering of Days as a read aloud. I'm not sure what it was, but it just doesn't flow well. I stopped in the midst of reading it a week ago and asked the boys their thoughts. We all agreed to shelve it.

So for now we are continuing on with reading Hero Tales. We are about halfway through that volume, but I own four I think so I plan to continue those as part of our Bible time. I am also assigning missionary biographies to my middle son as part of his school reading so he will be getting a bit more background. 

I am thoroughly enjoying I, Adam and I'm sorely tempted to sneak it at night to see what happens. I think the boys like that one as well. The plot is interesting and, of course, it's Jean Fritz who is a great writer.

Lastly, we are still working on Fellowship of the Ring. I have decided though that I either need to dig out our copy which is in some box in the basement or buy one. I have a library copy out and I've already renewed it once. It's due Tuesday and we just made it to chapter three. 

I almost forget, I did add back in The Light and the Glory for Children. I am using this for history with my two younger boys. I misplaced the book so they had some time off. We are about halfway through and then switching to Story of the World Volume 3 for the rest of the year.

All in all I am very happy with the progress we are making and my decision to read out loud to all my boys every day.

Read Aloud Challenge

hosted by Footprints in the Butter

This week we didn't make as much progress as I would have liked in our book stack. Considering two of them are library books, I need get further in to them or we may be better off buying a copy! Actually, the sad thing is, we own copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, since the move, I can't find some of the more adult-level books so it was easier to just borrow a copy from the library than move crates of boxes to find our copy. I already warned the librarian we may have to renew this....a lot!

The book on top is called A Midsummer's Night Dream for Kids. It's a retelling done in rhyme at a child's level. I love the illustrations - all done by children - as well and I am very much enjoying this book. While it could easily be read in one long sitting, I've been breaking it up a bit since we have so many read aloud books going at the moment. At the end of next month, we will be heading to a local theater to see a production of this play so I wanted the boys to be familiar with the story ahead of time.

Next we are going through A Gathering of Days. Honestly, I'm not enjoying this one. We just finished a journal style book from a boy's perspective in the early 1800's so I thought this would be a nice contrast. It isn't. I'm going to keep pushing through, but I don't like it very much at the moment. I hope it gets better.

I am a huge fan of Jean Fritz books so when I spied I, Adam at a book sale I had to snatch it up. I happen to love old library bindings so that is a plus for me as well. This is a great story so far and I think it will be good for my boys to hear. It's again set in the 1800's (can you tell we are studying this time period in history?) and the main character is a young boy of 15 who is embarking on a new adventure. I'm sure there will be lots of adventures, but we are only a few chapters in so the characters and plot have been setting up. I am enjoying this one and I think my boys are as well.

Of course next is the The Fellowship of the Ring. I have to admit to never having read this series. I attempted it after the movies had been out and I had seen all of them. As is often the case, the books and the movies are vastly different and I simply couldn't get the movie out of my head enough to enjoy the books so I abandoned them. I even joked about this with the librarian who admitted to the same issue. While that made me feel better, I am jumping back in with both feet as I read these out loud to the boys. I will freely admit that I skipped half the prologue as it was simply utterly boring. I hit the highlights and moved on to the story. So far so good....

The book on the bottom of the pile is the Hero Tales Volume 1 book I broke out again. It's been awhile since I've used this particular volume and none of the boys remember it. They are short snippets of stories about missionaries. I have my two older boys read a "devotional" type book or a biography of a missionary as part of their regular school day. For example, my middle son is reading a book about John Bunyan at the moment. I have some missionary biographies I'll be adding in as well. The Hero Tales book, however, is a nice introduction to various missionaries.

While this seems like a lot of reading, and it is, I don't actually sit down with that stack and read for hours straight. We do "together school" each day and I break up the other things we do with the reading. For example, I may read a few pages from A Midsummer's Night Dream and then the boys will do math drill. Then we complete our Draw Through the Psalms assignment together while listening to our current hymn we are learning. I will then read from Hero Tales. From there I read a few pages in A Gathering of Days. We then work on our writing assignment for a bit and I end with a chapter each from I, Adam and The Fellowship of the Ring.

I'm also starting to try reading to the boys during lunchtime. The only thing I'm still working on is how I get to eat at the same time. I know many homeschooling moms read during lunch. Care to share how you make it work?

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.

Reading Aloud

I have been making it a goal to do more reading aloud this year for school. It's really something I've gotten away from. I'm also trying to be held more accountable in terms of our school. So I'm going to attempt to link up to Debra's weekly link up over at Footprints in the Butter to share what we have been reading.

Each Tuesday we do a lot of driving. It's our day out of the house day and we are in the car at least two hours. Driving time is when I try to have some sort of audio book going. I have a captive audience and it helps make the drive time go by that much faster.

Today we listened to Ben-Hur. This wasn't a word-for-word audio book, but rather an audio drama from Focus on the Family.  It was excellent!!!  I had only heard "Ben-Hur and chariot race," but no more information than that before listening to the story today. We were all captivated by it and, of course, hearing it as an audio drama with various actors and sound effects made it all the better. I do see us reading this one at some point though. Just like watching a movie based on a book, they can only cover so much and I'm sure much was left out of the drama.

I am also working through The Treasure Seekers by Edith Nesbit. We are about half-way through this one. I read anywhere from 2-3 chapters daily to the boys - depending on how antsy they are getting. I sometimes think I enjoy these books far more than they do.

We also recently listened to Edith Nesbit's book, The Railway Children while driving. I was able to download that from LibriVox.org. The woman that read it had a lovely British accent and did a wonderful job with it. If you aren't familiar with it, LibriVox is a free place to download audio books. They are all books in the public domain (i.e. the copyright has expired) and read by volunteers. This past fall we also listened to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer from here as well. All very well done.

I have found that while I want my children to be exposed to the classics, in reality it's sometimes difficult to read them as they get bogged down in the older language style. Even I have found this to be true for myself. However, it's much easier to listen to them so this is one way I have found to have them not only learn from them, but to enjoy them as well.

We are also doing a literature based history program this year. I have a number of books going for that particular program, but I will share those titles next week.

Happy reading!