Dealing With Prereading

This past year has been the first year where my oldest had significant quantities of reading in books that I assigned based on the curriculum we're using (Ambleside Online) but that he read independently in a book that I had not previously read, or that I'd read so long ago that I couldn't remember what happened. In the not-too-distant future, I'm going to have three kids reading challenging books, and I'm going to need to be able to have intelligent conversations about these books, and also keep the household running.

My strategy is to keep a prereading notebook. It's just a regular composition notebook, which I covered first with scrapbook paper and then with contact paper. That's what I do with most of my notebooks, and they are practically indestructible: my scripture journal has been with me for five years, most weeks drug to church and back in my backpack, and it's still beautiful. Which means that I can count on this notebook, which will see lighter use, lasting nicely as well and plan on it not falling apart before my youngest is reading these same books. Also, being pretty helps me to like it, and want to use it, and that helps me to get the job done. It's remarkable how much difference it makes to have an attractive notebook, even if it's just a composition book that I got for $.50 in back to school sales at the end of summer.

This Week: Meeting a Luthier

For her birthday, Miss Kitty received a visit from her grandparents, and they brought a cute little loom. Which she loves. She got her Grandpa to help set it up, and to teach her what to do. After that, when I presumed too much (didn't take much!) then she would remind me: "Grandpa already taught me this." She turned out her first woven item... and we promptly lost the tool that she's supposed to use to make the weaving happen. Bummer. But she has created her first object, a six-inch long "scarf" for Pinkus, which she is extremely proud of! And the tool did turn back up, and was promptly put into service working on a second project, which she also finished this week.

I finished reading The Gospel at 30,000 Feet, and I'm getting back into the swing of pre-reading. Which is good because I'm behind... again. Oops. I wish that I'd thought to start this last year. Pre-reading Hero's hardest books (and narrating them, because my brain needs training too, and that also gives me a record to jog my memory with Dragon comes through in a few years) has consistently been challenging. But I feel like even an imperfect attempt is helping me to grow, and making me a better teacher --even when I'm trailing behind him, rather than going before. We're playing leapfrog through this book. I think that I'm going to try to get all the way through one book at a time, rather than trying to keep up with all his books close to his schedule. I suspect that I will have more success this way, even though I will give up some of the benefits of slow reading. Doing a written narration on each chapter is challenging: the kids have grown into doing narrations of gradually longer passages with a single reading... but I have not. I'm getting better at it though!