Family Reading

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Over the years I have read many books to my children, the children I have cared for, my grandchildren, and even to myself. My husband and myself have read many books together and also shared our own genre of books with each other. I have a long time love of reading books. The love of reading books comes from my father who took the time each night to read to me till 4th grade when my reading level was college level and my father wasn't sure what to do so the Dr. told him to just read anything to me and he started to read medical journals, Life jornalism books, National Geographic, and the old Readers digest books, pretty much anything he could think of. 

We were not rich by any means but I know there were always books for me to read, magazines like Highlights, Ladybug, Cricket, Jack and Jill, Spider, and Humpty Dumpty. Book sets delivered to our home that I devoured some with help, most without. 

Years later when I would have my own children I just expected them to read like I did. At three years old my parent thought I had memorized the books I was reading and the Dr. told them that I knew how to read and wanted to know who taught me. They hadn't, they had just been reading to me and somehow I just picked it up. So when my children struggled with reading I didn't really know how to teach them because it had just come naturally to me, but thankfully my husband had learned to read the good old fashioned way so between us we did OK until the kids went off to school and let them take over. 

Now forward past my first 4 children to my last two girls and I knew something just wasn't clicking for them and thought that the school had it all covered. In steps Covid-19, remote learning and the thrown in my face fact that the school had let me and most of all my chidren down. Not to say my kids haven't had great teachers because they have but the teachers can only do so much with the time they have when the government or state gives them a timeline to adhere to even if the kids are left behind (No child left behind is far from the truth of things). The truth is if the child falls behind they are usually left there to fail with little or no support to help them. 

So our family after my 18 year old and 5th child graduated 12th grade by the skin of her teeth and my now 13 year old were done with school this year, we decided we would homeschool our youngest through High School. We want her to learn to read better, to understand what she is reading, and actually hold on to some of that knowledge before being rushed on to something she doesn't even understand (like algebra when she doesn't know her times tables). 

Back to reading before I get going off to far in the wrong direction. This summer we decided to start family reading, where we all read the same book together at the same time. To make sure our daughter is staying up with us we all take turns reading passages so that we can help her with words she doesn't know while modeling what to do while reading. Such as pausing for commas, showing emphasis,  how words look or sound the same but are very different from each other, and how to find out which to use in a sentence. We just want her to be better prepared for the future then her sister is at this time. We have just lost too much time trusting that the school would do the work for us. 

So here we are on our first book The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe written by C.S. Lewis, which by the way I thought was the first book in the series The Chronicles of Narnia not the second so we will be going back to book one The Magician's Nephew at some time in the future. Learning never ceases even as an adult. If you are interested in The Chronicles of Narnia check it out below.