What We're Reading

Read anything good lately?

I'm trying to make sure that we use these lazy days of summer (which are totally not happening; June has whizzed by in a craze of activity) to carve out some daily reading time.

And as always ... not just for the kids!

The girls and I found Art Fraud Detective: Spot the Difference, Solve the Crime! at the library the other day. In a word: LOVE. You use the enclosed magnifying class to pore over famous paintings, trying to spot the forgeries among the real deals. It's like a high-class version of Where's Waldo?  They were definitely digging it.

 Ian just finished My Side of the Mountain,  at my encouragement (Remember our survival literature unit? I also got The Cay on audiobook; thanks for the recommendations in the comments!). Yes, I do require some reading that's not either Percy Jackson or Star Wars graphic novels. Shoot me.

Shark vs. Trainis getting reading after reading at our house. Thank heavens, my daughters are not too old for the right preschool-age picture books! Bonus: this gem was written by a local homeschooling dad.

Let's see, what else ... oh, we just finished Socks. Not my favorite Beverly Cleary in the whole wide world, but still fairly amusing.

I've been prowling the British Isles, literarily speaking. Not intentionally, but between Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, A Red Herring Without Mustard: A Flavia de Luce Novel (the latest sequel to The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie),  and Mansfield Park it's apparently my season for Angliophilia. Read any of them? I'd say Major Pettigrew's my current favorite.

That's all for now! Happy browsing.

(Affiliate links therein, folks. Just disclosing. Over and out.)

Book News

Penderwicks fans, rejoice! Jeanne Birdsall's latest volume hit stands today, and I for one can't wait to get my greedy little paws on a copy. Melissa, I'm teal with envy.

You do know the Penderwicks, right? Think a 21st century version of The Saturdays or other delightful, large-ish families. These girls are spirited, not sappy. They're more soccer games than tea parties. They have their differences. But the bonds of love and loyalty run oh so strong.

Note: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, #2 in the series, might be slightly less appropriate as a read-aloud if you or your kids dislike a) romance between adults, somewhat arranged by their children, and b) romance between thirteen year olds (minor plot thread). Just so's you know.


In other news, we ordered and have been having fun with Amazing Leonardo da Vinci Inventions You Can Build Yourself. Fun as in, making polyhedra with toothpicks and marshmallows, attempting to make moldable plastic with vinegar and heavy cream, and concocting paint from sidewalk chalk dust and eggs.

Ian's planning to try re-creating da Vinci's walk-on-water shoes. Perhaps in time for a test run at our pool-intensive getaway with friends next week ...

What We're Up To

As a relaxed, eclectic homeschooler who battles a tendency to anxiety, sometimes it just helps to write it all down. Are we doing enough? (Susie Homeschool Blogger accomplishes so much more [always a sign of wackadoo thinking].) Are they learning? Am I making every moment count?

Relax, girl. They're wired to learn. And so are you! 


So for my own review, and your idle curiosity, here's where our learning adventures took us this week.

Bible: Stories from the Book of Acts (Egermeier's Bible Story Book). AWANA memory work.

History: The World of Columbus and Sons. Just one chapter. Not our most historical week. Till Year's Good End (Middle Ages picture book for the girls.) Discussion of Passover.

Science:  Popular Mechanics for Kids: Lightning and Other Forces of Nature (DVD). This inertia experiment with eggs. Resulting hijinks in the front yard with dissecting hardboiled eggs. This interactive physics simulation of crashing vehicles. Discussion of Marie and Pierre Curie. Ranger Rick magazine.
Green Hour at the creek. (Gosh, and I always feel like a slacker when it comes to science.)

Math: Singapore Math (Ian.) Logic puzzles from Braingle.com. Learning Resources Dino Math Tracks Place Value Game. iPad Games: "Monster Squeeze," "Math Ninja," and everyone's favorite: Rocket Math.
Note: Rocket Math, played by all three kids, is made by the same folks who bring us two other favorites: Stack the States and Stack the Countries.

Poetry: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." And, on its anniversary Monday, "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere."

Geography: Families of Russia (Families of the World) (DVD). Geography club meeting on Russia. Trip to local Russian market. Russia mapwork, followed by ...

It's a salt dough map of Russia, made entirely by himself. Can you see the pride oozing from his pores?

Read-Alouds: Pied Piper of Austin. Island of the Blue Dolphins (to Ian; after our success with Hatchet, we're following up with a survival-book theme of sorts). Ginger Pye (to the girls). We felt like Ginger Pye was an appropriate follow-up to the tale of that other Cranbury family, The Moffats. Those Pyes and Moffats from the days of yore, they sure are free-range kids! Plus, this one features, centrally, a dog. And the relationship between its siblings protagonists, Jerry and Rachel, reminds me so much of these guys:

Also, their mother, Mrs. Pye, "never scolds." So in that way, she's just like me!

And if you believe that, I have a pig in a poke to sell you.

Personal Reading: 
Ian: Ginger Pye. The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, Book 1). Clubhouse magazine.
Eliza: I ain't exactly sure. But she made an excellent batch of cornbread last night!
Caroline: Go, Dog. Go! 
Me: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. The Fellowship of the Ring. Life Study of Matthew.

Writing: The Complete Writer: Writing with Ease. Letter to one of our Compassion kids.

Music: Classical Kids: Tchaikovsky Discovers America. Russian folksongs on YouTube.

Art: Happens all the time. In particular, Ian spent hours carefully drawing Star Wars clone troopers.

Audiobooks: Novacom Saga (Adventures in Odyssey). Henry and the Paper Route. Peter Pan.

It may look like a lot (and I'm probably forgetting a few things), but be not deceived: Our days are hardly a tightly scheduled machine. We all do chores. We do things that look like wasting time. We lie on the floor and stare off into space sometimes. We have interruptions. And yet ... learning happens, all the time. Life is good.

Beyond Happily Ever After: Discussing Books

It can be a bit of an art form, learning how to talk about books with children. Ask the wrong kind of questions, and you'll get eyes like glazed doughnuts, and answers like "yeah," "no," and the ever-charming-but-deadly "good."

I hate the word "good" when used as an answer in conversation. It's just ... not good. Not good at all.

So if book talk is an art form, I'm really no Vincent Van Gogh (his birthday is today!). Maybe not even a Mark Rothko. But by gum, I take up my brush with alacrity, day after day, and I splash some color onto that canvas. And I get my kids to do it too. One of these years, we'll have Sunflowers.

Here's what we're reading together these days, currently and recently:

The Moffats (Read to the girls; good fun!)
Premlata and the Festival of Lights (Reading aloud to the girls as part of our India study. Reminds me of my tender adoration for Rumer Godden; we came away with four of her books from yesterday's library trip)
Hatchet (Reading to Ian; the girls often listen in. Perfect for a Bear Grylls wannabe.)
The World of Columbus and Sons (Reading to Ian for history. Ms. Foster always makes history comes alive by painting it as a montage of people's stories. I don't read every chapter aloud, but I read them all to myself!)
Ink on His Fingers (Reading aloud -- historical fiction, based on the story of Gutenberg and the printing press)
The Biggest Bear (Read to Caroline, who wanted a repeat and a repeat ... a twist of an ending saved the day just as I feared we were headed for tragedy. The author, Lynd Ward, did the pictures for the old favorite The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, which of course we had to dig out and reread.)

Here's a list of questions I like to ask the kids at the close of a chapter or a whole book. Not all at once, mind you. We'd call that a firing squad. No, just a mix designed to hopefully draw some insights out of their little brains.

- Who would you say is the main character of this story?
- Where and when does the story take place? (If it's not explicit, we look for clues in the text or illustrations)
- What does the main character want most of all?
- What is the main character's biggest problem? How did that problem come about?
- Does the main character get what he or she wants?
- What does [a different character] want most? (Especially if that character is in conflict with our hero)
- Which character do you like the most? Why?
- Is this story fiction or fantasy?
- Do you feel like the story has a satisfying ending? Why/why not?
- Can you imagine the story ending a different way?
- What does the main character learn that he didn't now when the story began?

These questions could be asked and answered of nearly any worthy book with tearable pages, from The Tale of Peter Rabbit to The Hobbit to Jane Eyre and beyond.

Eliza commented today that in "all little kids' books," the problem always gets solved. I asked her about that, and we ended up coming to the realization that without some sort of resolution, we don't really have a story. Of course, as the reading level becomes more sophisticated, so does the resolution.

Kids learn without being told that "happily ever after" is sometimes something that happens to you, and sometimes something you make happen, day after day, with no promises of tomorrow. Just another reason why great books make great mentors.

For more nitty-gritty on sharing books with kiddos, check out Bookie Woogie's blog. Written by a dad!

Nighttime Reading

So the Professor came to me late last night and slapped this book down on the table. If I didn't know better, I'd say the dear man had a lump in his throat.



He and the boy had just finished the last chapter, and he wanted to argue for its rightful place among Hall of Fame Childhood Classics.

Then I asked whether it didn't remind him of Watership Down. Upon which he confessed to never having read that book. Upon which I grabbed it off my shelf of favorites and tossed it at him as one would a gauntlet.

The Professor always does the nighttime reads at our house. Mama's voice gets a little hoarse, and certain traditions belong to Daddy alone. Here are some of the favorites he and the kids have shared over the years, sometimes more than once as each child ripens to readiness for a particular tale.

The Hobbit
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Complete Little House Nine-Book Set
The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
The Fellowship of the Ring and other LOTR
The Eagle of the Ninth (The Roman Britain Trilogy)
Treasure Island
The Railway Children
Treasures of the Snow

"A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight."

- Robertson Davies