I was reading earlier to Megan, and all the while she was drawing landscape pictures and coloring them. We were reading Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. When we came to the part about Penelope the parrot, Megan added a parrot.
When I first began reading aloud years ago, I made the rookie mistake of thinking my children had to be snuggled close as I read, paying careful attention. The image in my brain did not match reality. The reality was more like trying to read in an earthquake. Kids move! Some are content to color and build. One daughter literally wanted to move. She could spell her spelling words perfectly as long as she was jumping.
Information is often processed with movement. Megan likes to color or design outfields with her Fashion Plates that she received for Christmas. My older daughter, Laura, would build with her Littlest Pet Shop toys. I would finish reading to discover a whole little world under my coffee table.
How children focus and is only sometimes like the school teachers teach. As I've researched how children learn, I have learned that sometimes very intelligent children are untraditional in the ways they process information.
After years of homeschooling very different learners, and years of researching how children learn, I am certain that all the different ways children use to process information should not be squelched, especially in a homeschool environment. My rule is that they can do whatever they want to do during read aloud time, as long as they are quiet and pay attention. It works for us.
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