Monday, March 3, 2008

What goes around comes around?

When I was a little girl my parents could hardly pry books out of my hands. I can remember trying to get away with reading at the dinner table. I actually thought if I held the book in my lap they wouldn't notice! And at night I would read with a flashlight under the covers. Or I would put something like a rolled up blanket at the bottom of my door to block the light as I read in bed. I still love to read and find myself reading a cereal box or grocery flyer for the tenth time if there is nothing else near me. I have to work at not allowing myself to read when I am eating lunch or breakfast with the kids. I don't want them to think that my reading is more important than they are. Just as my husband needs a few minutes of Discovery channel to unwind, I HAVE to read before I fall asleep. It doesn't matter how tired I am, I have to atleast read a page! And while as a child I couldn't stand to read more than one book at a time, I now usually have several going at once and pick up whatever I'm in the mood for. My night stand is always covered by two or three stacks of books. In the past year or so I've hardly read any fiction. I was into one of the Karen Kingsbury series for awhile until I decided that they are just a little too much like a "Christian soap opera"- if there could possibly be such a thing. I don't mean to sound overly critical here. If you can read books like that and still tend faithfully to your work and not let your mind get carried away too much, good for you. I decided there's just too much I want to learn about and I just don't have time to waste on the sort of addictive drama that even Christian authors are turning out. However, I did just read a book by Elizabeth Berg called Dream When You're Feeling Blue. It was light, quick, and very tame for a secular author. It was a story about an Irish Catholic family specifically 3 sisters, in Chicago during WWII. So I got my fiction fix for awhile.

Here are the other books I'm reading right now:



Keeping Your Children's Hearts by Steve and Teri Maxwell- this is the one I read a chapter of while I'm on the treadmill in the wee hours. I told Pete that the other day I almost threw it across the room. I think there are a lot of really good ideas in it like setting spiritual goals for your children, sheltering your children from the negative influences of the world, etc. BUT that particular morning some of the seemingly extreme ways that the Maxwell's have chosen to shelter their children kind of got on my nerves and I almost had to stop reading. But it's really good, really.



A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola- this has opened my eyes to the Charlotte Mason method of education and I WANT TO KNOW MORE. I want to figure out if I can combine the two methods of education that really appeal to me- Charlotte Mason and Classical- and what would that even look like?



Classical Education and the Homeschool by Douglas Wilson, Wesley Callahan, and Douglas Jones



Climbing Parnassus by Tracy Lee Simmons- this one is going to take a while.



Teaching the Trivium by Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn- this will be on my night stand for while as well.



The Everything Homeschooling Book by Sherri Linsenbach



with the kids I am reading-



book 2 in the Moody's series by Sarah Maxwell. These are wholesome books about a homeschooling family and all of their adventures



We read a story from our Catherine Vos Bible story book each day after lunch. I got a book called the Bible picture timeline from Veritas Press and I am working on putting a plan together to read the story from the Vos book and the scripture that corresponds with each page in the timeline. The timeline book is coloring pictures. So Peter and Kate will color the picture that goes with the weeks story and then they'll each make a notebook including some thoughts of their own with the pictures. I'm really excited about starting that soon as we are almost ready to begin the Vos book again.



Today we read Sarah Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan



Recently we read the first 3 Narnia books. Peter isn't happy that I wanted a break from Narnia!



then there's the usual pile of library books. Peter and Kate each check out one on geography (they each pick a state or country they want to read about), a biography, a science related book, and then several for fun.



Wow- I really didn't mean to go on forever about books. The whole reason I started to write tonight is because I got the kids in bed and decided to head to bed myself and do some reading. Peter always likes his door cracked open and through the crack I thought I heard the sound of a page turning. So I crept into his room and what did I find? Peter Ryan, head lamp on, with a pile of books on his bed. I could barely get out the words, "turn off the light and go to sleep" because I was trying not to laugh. I am so happy that he has such a passion for reading! He checked the Children's Illustrated Classics version of White Fang out of the library on Saturday. That's a book I read aloud to the kids last fall and he loved it. He asked me to read it again and I said "No, if you want you can read it yourself, but I'd like to read things to you that we haven't already read." So what did the boy do? Read 14 of 17 chapters already!!! As a gift from my parents he got this handy dandy head lamp that goes off by itself after a certain time period. We have found him asleep with it on more than a few times!



2 comments:

Racine said...

Mom and Daddy always told me that your eyes went bad from reading at night to deter me from staying up late myself. Needless to say, I didn't listen. Dan's going to have our kids reading star wars and computer books, I just know it! I'm glad you put pics up from Kalahari, I hadn't seen any yet! Looks like you all had a blast!

Middle-Aged Moi said...

I have to admit that I did some "sneak reading" when I was a kid too. And I still need to sneak in a read at some point during the day, even if it's only for a little while. It just doesn't seem right to NOT read....:-)