In Praise of the Old

So, having worked our way through half of 'The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading' (OPG), my 8 year old was getting bored.   She hated the stories, and reading was becoming very much the chore.
The problem with that, is that I am trying desperately to teach her that she should LOVE to read.  How can I teach that if the very book I am teaching her to read with doesn't help?

For a little while I had tried "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" (100 EZ).  She liked it better, but I found that she was developing some bad habits reading wise (she is, I believe, very slightly dyslexic) and I switched back.
And then I found the McGuffey readers were all online now- for free.  I downloaded a copy onto my new Christmas iPad, and started working through it with her.
What a refreshing change!  Suddenly she is EAGER to read the stories.  The old fashioned pictures capture her imagination and can be used to actually entice her to read.  Vocabulary is built into it, and it even teaches her to read script!

The cute fuzzy animals that frequently appear in the pictures help too ;)

Now, I should state that I find that both the other books I mentioned are fabulous reading books.  They have definitely helped us learn the letters, and different letter blends too.  In fact, I would think you could easily use OPG as a way to learn some of the letter blends as they appear in the McGuffey readers.  It is just that, for a child who finds reading a little difficult, or is a lot harder to motivate and make them WANT to read, a book like this is a gem.
Once we have her cursive writing lessons finished, she will end up copying the script sections in the readers too.

This is the picture that convinced her to read today. 
You can see the script here.

There is also a High School reader.  I think I shall work with my son through the readers too.  He has a few bad reading habits that need to be broken!

Speaking of my 12 year old, I have a few words in praise of the old for him too.  I have found that he positively loves the classics.  He has been reading through Anne of Green Gables, and before that worked through Tom Sawyer.  I cannot say he is the fast reader I am.  In fact he is an easily distracted reader (unless it is a book that is totally unrelated to school, in which case he is FAST and cannot be distracted from reading).  But he has discovered a love for the classics.  The giggles and chuckles heard from his corner when reading the Hobbit (although I really wish he had not learned some of the sayings in there- we have had an outbreak of 'Shut yer gob' ever since!) or Oliver Twist are a balm to a mother's heart.  I have all kinds of other stories lined up for him.  If he would just READ faster!

If you are interested in reading with classics or Old Fashioned books, you might enjoy these links.  I am not affiliated with any of them, neither do I control what you will find there- so be warned ;)

For a complete set of the McGuffey Books, hardbound and with a teacher's guide by Ruth Beechick, you can go to Mott Media and get them.

An Old Fashioned Education has some really good resources.  You can pretty much homeschool for free there :)


The Baldwin Online Children'sLiterature Project is a huge selection of wonderful old books that have been transcribed and put online for free.  You can also buy them from the site in real book and ebook format :)

Project Gutenberg is the best free ebook site online- you can get all the classics and public domain texts you want here.

Sacred Texts have some good free ebooks.  They also have a nice selection of Fairy Tales.

The Internet Archive has a huge selection of books to choose from.

Ambleside, of course, has a library of books and links to their choices online.

There are lots of free scanned books at Google Books online too.

Now, when it comes down to it, you can do several things with the books.  I prefer to download the Pdf format and read it on my iPad with my daughter- so she can see the pictures.
Otherwise I download the kindle or epub formats.  The former I can read on my iPad, the latter I can read on the iPad or the Nook (so it is my preferred format because I use it with my son).
If you like, you can also print out and bind it separately.

Back to School- with adjustments!

It's back to school time at our house.
Nothing special. Just a slow adjustment period to doing lessons. Sometimes while waiting for books to arrive.
Usually with the kids being rather reluctant to actually work.
I have had the plans set up now for a few weeks.
I find that I need to have everything planned out for accountability purposes- after all, if it is planned there on the page, I can hardly claim to not know what I need to do now, can I?
As with everything planned like that, it means that adjustments have to be made.
So I started with mathematics.  Daily mathematics is easy to instigate- especially since Rebel is using Teaching Textbooks.  He is using TT7- which is about 6th grade level, and has been since earlier this year.  This level is self-grading (what a great concept- I wish the future levels were too!!) and the program is geared towards the homeschooler.  It is well organized and features a great amount of in-depth instruction- well worth the money!
M'lady has to make do with Singapore Mathematics :)  Not that I dislike it, we have used it for years.  It is just not quite as exciting for her as TT is for him!
This week I added in the reading subjects.  And languages.  I wasn't going to add in the languages (Latin and Greek) just yet, but he insisted.  That's just fine with me ;)
Some of our reading is lacking- because, well the books are not yet here, or I have to get them from the library for now!  But this is the one area that already needs adjusting.
We have started reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.  It is an interesting read, Franklin was an entertaining writer.  But the language of Franklin's time is different, and it is a rather harder read than I had expected.  My 20 pages a week (20 pages in the e-reader that is) would seem to be something I cannot accomplish in one, 1-hour lesson.  So we'll be reading my issued amount across the week.
I have also planned something new for the year.
If you look on my front page, you will have noticed that on my Goodreads widget, I have just finished reading "The Core" by Leigh Bortins.  (If you are reading in a blog reader, it is on my main blog page).
One thing I really took away from this book, was the desire (even, should I say, need) to do some memory work.  I am still in the planning stages of this, but I think I might well follow Leigh's Classical Conversations progress.  I do not want to do the coop itself (although I can see many good reasons to do it), but I would like to take away some of the suggestions from it!  Thus the reason for the memory work.  I will also add in some Shakespeare and Art.  Yes, I have absolutely NO excuse for not doing more art with the kids!
Our biggest adjustment is moving into the kitchen to do the work.  I have for years allowed the kids to sit on the floor to work.  This year I have decided to stay in teh kitchen and be the old cliche homeschoolers working around the kitchen table.  It makes my kids focus more- and it stops them making too much of a mess in the kitchen and the living room :)

Any way I look at it, I still have some tweaking to do. Hopefully I'll be back later with some progress!!

The Reluctant Reader

 When I first had my children, I could never have conceived of the idea that I would have a child who was not anxious to read.  I remember I could not wait to read, and as soon as I was able, I read everything I could!
I read Pride and Prejudice at the age of 8.  I did not really understand it, but I read it anyway!
So I was very surprised when my son turned out to be the most reluctant of readers.  I blame my husband.  He is not the most avid of readers, he does not care for fiction and my son both takes after him and likes to emulate him.
It is not that my son is not a good reader- he is a good reader.  He just doesn't like to read.  He'd far rather play while listening to an audio book.  I suspect he is typical of many boys- reading means they have to pause and refrain from doing something else... of course it is o.k. when it is his idea to read.  Which for my son, usually means in the middle of another lesson, or instead of cleaning his room, or instead of going to sleep...
So how can you encourage the reluctant reader?
In the beginning, I started with the graphic novel and comic books.  Tintin can encourage the most reluctant reader to want to read a book, and Asterix works really well for history :)  Marvel and DC comics are good (though you should pre-read them) and the newer Japanese Manga books can be great.  Those can cause a little confusion at first since they are often printed backwards, but they are a lot of fun.
Next I found his weakness.  Weaknesses are not something that my son cannot do, but rather something he was very interested in.  In his case it was Lego Blocks.  I found a book on Lego blocks and building with them that really encouraged him.
Then I discovered 'silly' books.  Silly books don't have to be 'twaddle' (although some definitely are), but they have to be books that appeal to the humour of a child.  In my son's case, this was the Horrible Histories, Horrible Geography and Horrible Science books.  Horrible Books always draw his attention because they are just plain 'interesting', and written to appeal- and he still likes to read them.
Stories of children having adventures appeal too.  The reluctant reader can relate to them.  My son liked The Magic Tree House books and later, as he grew older and kind of outgrew the Magic Treehouse, they were replaced by The Hardy Boys, The Famous Five and The Secret Seven.
The Magic Tree House books were wonderful, because they were so short he would finish a book in no time. For the older elementary grades, the Hardy Boys have interesting adventures, and the Famous Five and Secret Seven books are stories about children his age having adventures.  That is almost always guaranteed to appeal!  He is a third generation reader of the Famous Five by the way- both my Mum and I read them and loved them ;)
The most recent addition to his reportoire would be the Redwall books.  I read these as a child his age, and I knew he'd like them.  My husband had seen the show and thought he'd like them, so we were non-plussed when he refused point blank to read them.  I kept the book around and would make him read a little every so often, but he still complained.
Then struck the latest of my 'tricks'.  I suggested that perhaps by reading this book he'd be better read than a local child he is somewhat antagonistic towards- because surely they had not read it.  He was encouraged to start reading it.  Then he started to argue.  So his punishment was one more chapter each time he argued.  He stopped after 5 chapters were assigned, started furiously reading- and read 7 chapters.  He was pleased with himself for reading the extra chapters ("that'll show you Mummy") but had ended up hooked, so the next few days he was reading the book as often as he could sneak an extra chapter!  I don't particularly recommend this method unless it is strictly necessary!

Nowdays he is just as difficult to please.  He doesn't want to read the books assigned for literature (too boring/badly written) or history ("I'm not interested in reading about that").  His excuses are just that- excuses.  He is being lazy, and it is difficult to ascertain the point where laziness and true dislike meet.   A true dislike is something that needs to be addressed, so typically when he comes up with a complaint, I ask questions to see why he is not enjoying it. 
So recently he was complaining about a King Arthur book I had assigned for Literature.
"Why don't you like the book?" I asked, as he complained.  After all, it's Knights and Castles and battles- surely those appeal to a boy?  Not to mention even his Dad told him he didn't understand why he wouldn't read it.  (Dad is the ultimate authority here- anything Dad likes, Rebel usually likes it too).
"It's boring," he said.  "They do stupid things!"  I asked for clarification.  He could give me none, so I said that was obviously not the problem.
He then complained that the book was written like a comic book- a complaint I really didn't get because he loves comic books!  I assumed this meant that he just did not care for the style of writing.  So I switched to a different re-telling.   Apparently that suits him better- I chose to get an audio version or Howard Pyle's retelling, where the style of writing is somewhat archaic so I made him listen and read along with it (I used an e-text for this, apparently e-texts are popular with him).
Afterwards I asked him, "So what do you think of that version then?"
"It is better written and it is funnier too..." came the response. Success!

His similar complaint of a history book turned out to be sheer laziness.  In that instance I just got an audio version for him to read along with...  
That is another good reluctant reader trick.  Following along with a book helps them to focus and seems (to them) to be less work.  It also frees you up to work with another child ;)

In essence, the reality of dealing with a reluctant reader is persistence and determination.  You have to patiently figure out what your reluctant reader likes and tailor the reading to suit.  You have to wait and try different techniques, different books and work hard.
And you have to never fail to try and make your reluctant reader, a book lover.
My brother was once a reluctant reader.  I used to work so hard to encourage him to read different books (yes I started young LOL).  I wouldn't say he is a bibliophile like myself now- but he reads books of his own choosing and has things he enjoys reading... so perseverance works.  On brothers- and hopefully sons too!