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Reading Aloud Matters

Reading Aloud Matters

I spent hours of my adult life nestled in the corner of the sectional, feet tucked under me, with a book in my hands. Sometimes a baby sucked on a bulging breast at the same time, and one of those babies didn’t like to listen to my voice resonating through my chest cavity. Some well-timed nips to the nipples drove home that message. Ouch!

Other times a toddler couldn’t be calmed or a middler would knock over the orange juice onto the carpet and the book would get flung back into the library basket. Reading time over! Waving the white flag.

But those were exceptions.

We made it a daily priority to read together for an hour. Read aloud time signaled the start to our homeschool day. It was the “coming together” of all of us of all the ages in all our stages, and it told us: “Yes, we homeschooled today.”

Over hummus and olives one Friday night in my friend’s kitchen (homeschoolers really rock the social scene), a bunch of my mom friends and I became animated as we swapped titles and our various reactions to the children’s novels we had read over nearly 10 years time. Better than a book club! We drank wine, we got misty over Anne of Green Gables, and had a wide variety of reactions to Moccasin Trail and Across Five Aprils.

We also laughed about the books that bored us but that thrilled our kids. For instance, I have no idea what happens in any Redwall book. I got through (operative phrase there) the first one (not as delighted by the woodland feasts and feisty creatures in chain mail as my kidlets), but then somewhere during the second installment, I discovered I could make a shopping list, consider the benefits of dying my hair, and respond to angry posters online all in my head while reading, without skipping a sentence. So I’d merrily read along and space out, until that one moment that was sure to give me away at the end of any given chapter:

“Mom what do you think is going to happen next?’

Blink. “Um…” I scrambled. “I have a hunch the bad guys are preparing to attack the Abbey.”

Yes! That is what they thought! They knew it!

And that, friends, is the correct answer to any question about plot in Redwall. You’re welcome. You may return to kitchen remodeling in your mind.

While in this vigorous conversation about kids’ lit, one of the moms made a remarkable statement:

“I can’t figure out how you all have time to read aloud. We never have time. That’s the one thing we’ve never done in all our years. I just don’t see how it could be fitted in.”

For a tense moment, you could have heard an olive drop to that tiled floor. We were stunned, because what quickly became clear is that there were even a few us (I plead guilty to this charge) who sometimes got little more done in a day than reading aloud. I couldn’t imagine what homeschool would be if you didn’t read books to your kids.

If I had been forced to supervise workbooks all day, every day, for 5 kids, for 17 years without fiction? Without discovering Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf or Robert Peck’s Soup? Not getting to read The Shadow Spinner or become enchanted by Toad and Mole and Badger in The Wind and the Willows?

The-Wind-in-the-Willows-the-wind-in-the-willows-30730319-630-390
The Wind in the Willows

My laundry basket of library books, the wide array of reading lists, the hours spent using my voice to share my emotional reactions in real time to the plights and adventures of heroes and heroines I grew to love as my own possession… This was/is the teaching that is/was homeschool to me… to us.

Homeschoolers rightly think reading to our children is about getting them to hear quality language or to learn about history in a story-format or to become familiar with great literature. It is those.

But it’s also this: When you read aloud, your children discover your values and your humanity. They see tears form in the corners of your eyes. They notice the catch in your throat as you describe a tender scene of connection between two estranged characters. They hear you roar with laughter over an inside joke or a cultural touchstone and they want “in” and expect you to help them “get it.”

Big, Juicy Conversations

And then you talk. About the book! About that awesome story and your surprise at the ending or how glad you are that it did end well. Forget that odious word “narration” for a moment (it has been used to drub tedious recounting out of children when a Big, Juicy Conversation will do so much more).

  • You talk about who you liked and who you believed and who you rooted for to get what he or she wanted.
  • You talk about the evil stoat or the wicked prince or the confusion that goes with a troubled character who has both admirable qualities and also real flaws.
  • You compare today to then, and here to there. But you do it, filled with emotion and connection, and the sense of your own place in history and on the planet, all in front of your children—showing them a way to interact with each other, with their neighbors, with their fellow country-persons, and even with how they perceive other times and places.

Reading aloud is the chief way in the homeschool you show who you are to your children—and they show themselves to you. It’s the core of education.

I can’t think of any more important practice in the homeschool than the sacred read aloud time.

Read to your children every day that you can. You won’t regret it.

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Posted in Brave Writer Lifestyle, Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Living Literature, Reading | 7 Comments »

“But I’m bored!”

What to do when your kid is bored?

There’s a difference between boredom, and the quiet space and time that lead to new activity.

Children are without resources. They come into the world wholly dependent on you to show them the way, to provide for them, to create their environment.

When a child complains, “I’m bored,” it usually means that the current environment appears flat. They can’t see the possibilities any more. They’re used to the furniture, the materials, the toys, the games, the places these are housed. Routine and predictability are good for a smoothly flowing life, but they can be the enemy of creativity.

Rather than abandoning your child to his or her boredom, help your child to reinterpret the space. You don’t need to make suggestions (bored kids are notorious for shooting down each one as tedious, too difficult, not interesting). The suggestions feel coercive to the bored person, and not like they will create the relief being sought.

Rather, boredom can foster creativity if the parent wisely redirects the child into reflection combined with seeing the old with new eyes. Rather than saying, “Go play with your Legos,” you might say, “I wonder how else Legos can be used besides for building things…”

You might offer, “I bet if you hid behind the couch for 15 minutes with your flashlight, you might get some new ideas.”

Sometimes feeding your child helps. You could say, “While you figure out what to do next, have some crackers and cheese.”

You could turn your child loose with a new, more advanced tool.

“Take pictures with my camera while you figure out what you want to do.”

“What if you put on make up to look like (favorite character right now) while you think about what to do next? Use my kit upstairs.”

“If you want to use the mixer (or any appliance) for a new project, let me know and I’ll show you how it’s operated.”

“I find drawing helps me think of things to do. Do you want to borrow my ‘special Mommy markers’ for added magic?”

You can share methods that have helped you conquer your boredom:

“Maybe you will find something to do by clicking around the Internet for 15 minutes.”

“When I get bored, I page through magazines, walk around the block, read a chapter from a book, drink tea, go exercise… Any of those sound good to you?”

And you can do things silently:

  • Put a new hat or scarf on top of the dress-up clothes and move the basket to the middle of the room.
  • Arrange the library books on a coffee table in a stack.
  • Add brand new drawing utensils or decks of cards to the game drawer.
  • Bring the sheets and blankets downstairs out of the linen closet and tell your kids they can use them any way they want.
  • Put the microscope on the table when it’s not scheduled for use.

Your role in facilitating creativity is to help foster an environment that awakens curiosity to explore a new function or new pursuit, that relieves the mundane from its tedium, and that leads to new uses of old things. Your job isn’t to solve the boredom with a scripted activity.

If after giving your kids these incentives, they continue to look bored, just know that this is the quiet, evolving space that leads to a new idea. You can offer comfort for the process:

“I bet it’s frustrating when nothing interests you… no matter what! I hope it doesn’t last long. Let me know if you need something from me.”

Then move on.

It won’t be too long before the new interest arises.

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Extra-ordinary kids!

DSCN1199.JPG Caitrin and best friend Sarah with handmade lanterns for their Japanese tea party.

Have you read the book about the homeschooled kids who built a canoe in the basement, whittling the wood from felled trees? Or what about the teens who figured out how to cross breed fish in their creek, or built eco-friendly low-cost dwellings in their backyard as practice for working with Habitat for Humanity?

I remember reading about a kid who played with blocks as a child but then went on to write symphonies in college, after mastering the violin, and learning to conduct a symphony. Somehow these were related.

Then there are the kids who’ve read all of the classics and have taught themselves Latin and/or Greek. Others have performed on a Broadway stage, joined a prestigious ballet company, or have tried out to be Olympic athletes. All homeschooled.

Other impressive homeschoolers got into Harvard, or wrote best selling fiction (The Inheritance Series, anyone?), or worked as interns at the state government house!

Meanwhile, you’ve got runny noses, a daughter whose handwriting resembles scrawl, and a son whose main ambition seems to be punching pixels on a screen by thumping a button on a controller. You can’t imagine that your kids, your garden variety kids, will ever be so extraordinary. You feel mildly guilty about that. (I know I did.)

Perhaps your homeschooled children seem “extra” “ordinary” – as in “more ordinary than usual” – to you!

I found myself inspired and discouraged at the same time when I’d read about successful older homeschooled kids. I couldn’t see how my brood would ever get there.

First of all, we were appallingly bad at science (so scratch cross-breeding and habitat building). We had so many kids, I couldn’t imagine being able to afford supporting a lifetime habit of acting or ballet or singing or violin or lacrosse or gymnastics, let alone accommodating all those rehearsal/practice schedules!

And as far as boat-building in basements—I was lucky if we could find the basement floor, let alone make space to build in it.

Yet I plugged away with our books and our homeschool parties, our math pages and our co-op, committed to what I could do—how I could make my home a place where creativity had a chance to flourish, and where ambitions were accommodated as best as we could.

I couldn’t see the seeds being planted. I couldn’t know how they’d take root.

I wasn’t privy to how my children processed our experiences together, and how these memories became anchors of insight that led my kids to aspire to and achieve some of the amazing things they’ve now done. I never saw most of it coming. Truly.

On this side of homeschooling, I want to encourage you not to worry about the outcomes. The smallest acts of enthusiasm, support, and opportunity lead to big choices down the road. Your job isn’t to think of the great things your kids can do or should be doing some day.

Your job is to make sure that today, they have something interesting:

to read,
think about,
observe,
and enjoy.

Or as Charlotte Mason says, ” “Something to love, something to do, and something to think about.”

Find that sweet spot each day, no matter how briefly visited. These collect into a childhood of impressions that shape how they will choose to spend their teen years and eventually, their adulthood. They don’t have to “change the world” or impress anyone. All they need is the freedom to keep making choices that enhance their enthusiasm for being contributing people—human beings who want to share who they are with others using their unique constellation of gifts and passions.

That’s it.

You can do that.

You already are.

Posted in Brave Writer Lifestyle, Brave Writer Philosophy, Family Notes, Homeschool Advice | 3 Comments »