Oh, The Adventures We'll Have!

Jasmine reads to Megan

We went to the library today.  Megan now loves the library.  We go every week or two to stock up on books for Megan, as well as for the rest of us.  Right now Megan's favorite book is The Berenstain Bears Go To The Doctor.  She is afraid of the doctor.  I think the book reassures her that going to the doctor is a normal thing, not a scary thing.

The choices today are the same as the last time we went.  Megan wants books about Fall.  She sees the leaves changing around her and wants to know why.  We also got a book about pumpkins and one about the body.  Megan has developed a fascination for some basic anatomy.  "What's under my skin?" She often asks.

My choices on homeschooling books are limited in our local libraries.  I picked up a book on Unschooling.  While I doubt I'll become a die-hard unschooler, I am always curious about how others homeschool and what works for them.  What I have discovered so far is just as reassuring as any of the more strict books about homeschooling and education that I have read. 

"Whatever other tools you may introduce, the first requirement is one exemplified by this five-step reading program that occasionally appears on homeschooling lists on the Internet:
     1. Read to them.
     2. Read to them.
     3. Read to them.
     4. Read to them.
     5. Read to them.
It's one of the basic tenents of the whole language approach to literacy: children will not learn to appreciate reading if they never see it being used.  Reading aloud will do more to turn your kids into readers than any other single thing you can do."  - Mary Griffith in The Unschooling Handbook.

I have noticed this with my older daughter.  Often what I read to Laura will spark an interest in her faster than something she reads herself or even what she watches on TV.  I read a book to her a couple years ago about George Muller, and she has loved every story she can find about him since that day.  She has also developed a love of missionary work because of some of the missionary stories we have read. 

I am amazed at what my daughters learn from being read to.  Megan loves to act out the things I have read to her. She comes up with all sorts of phrases.  I'll be stumped, knowing it sounds familiar, but not sure where I heard the phrase.  I'll ask her, and she'll nearly always tell me the exact book I read to her.  Sometimes we had read the book days earlier!

The more I read aloud to my children, the more I enjoy the time with them.  Laura will often occupy herself with some little project, keeping her hands busy while I read.  Megan, however, is only four.  She loves snuggling with me and looking at the pictures.  She is getting better, however, at listening to longer stories with less pictures. 

I may lose my voice with all the reading aloud we are doing.  I don't mind.  We love it!  I find myself wanting to hit the library more often with my children, and then coming home and enjoying the books together.  Some of the books we have read together have created such wonderful memories!  When my children think back to their education, I want them to remember the fun stories we read and the time we spent together more than the worksheets or the quizzes.  I want them to think of learning as something fun and desirable instead of drudgery.

I find it amazing that, in the first grade, I was in the slow reading group.(I really dislike labeling kids and placing them in groups where they feel inferior.) Then, over the summer after first grade, I latched onto my grandmother's collection of Little Golden Books.  In those hours at Grandma's farm, I first escaped into the silly lives of Sylvester and Tweety, which I had seen on Saturday Morning Cartoons, and a whole stack of other stories.  It all clicked.  At the time I thought that the books were probably babyish.  However, I enjoyed them and, in the privacy of my Grandmother's farm, could read and enjoy without fear that others would laugh at me.  Now that I'm older, I realize that the reading levels of those books were a lot more advanced than I expected.

Eventually, at my other Grandmother's, I found other books and authors.  I discovered Rudyard Kipling and so many more.  My Grandmothers both loved to read, and had lots of books around.  One grandmother was constantly reading new books, telling me about authors she liked.  I pray that my girls learn to love reading as much as I did. 

I look forward to the future books we haven't read yet.  It brings in me an anticipation of adventures to come that I'll share with my daughters.