Igniting a Love for Written Words

My kids are perfect.
Yeah, I know, every mother says that.
But really.
I have four perfect kids.

Perfect they are. at. being. kids.

They love to play. In fact, currently, it is their life aim.

They do what they love 100%. And, what they don't love, like work, well, that they do at a minimum, with just enough effort to get by.

When my children, who sometimes have the perception that school is work, start a day with the single goal of getting this done so they can go play, it doesn't end well.

I get frustrated.
They get frustrated when I make them redo sloppy, rushed work riddled with mistakes.

It is certainly not a blissful homeschool moment.

School is not, can not, always be fun and games.

There is work involved.
Hard work.

Quite frankly, I want my children to learn to do hard work, to put forth 100% effort when work is involved. They need to have determination and grit. I want them to succeed and not just with an "I made it, got that done" attitude. No, I want them to flourish.

So, when one of my daughters, who happens to struggle with motivation to read books, latched onto audio books, I was thrilled. We sought titles we both liked, and visited the library frequently to restock our supply. In this way, she 'read' and 'reread' many good books. Her comprehension skills and vocabulary increased.

During lessons, she still was required to read words from actual books. She needed to continue progressing in actual reading and decoding. However, the audio books offered us common ground for recreational reading.

After a few years of audio books, my husband and I knew we needed to increase her time reading actual words, rather than relying heavily on audio books.

We began by introducing her to a few new-to-her series of books. For reluctant page turners, book series offer a safe and enjoyable way to keep them coming back to books. Finding a series with vocab and sentence structure which did not challenger her, lent itself to greater success. After all, we weren't using these books to improve her reading skills, we were trying to ignite a love of reading, not just a love for a great story, though that is important, as well. {Our favorite for her is Imagination Station, a series from Adventures in Odyssey.}

Another motivator we utilized was picture books. Asking her to read picture books to her younger brother offered her a valid purpose, and did not in any way make her feel babyish for still reading picture books.

However, the greatest incentive arrived this past Christmas in the form of a Kindle. After downloading many books {mostly free versions!} she has been hooked.

Last night at dinner, after using the Kindle for just one day, she informed me she had read the first chapter of Little Women, the first chapter of James, and the first chapter in a Boxcar children book. Then, she asked me to find a Shakespeare play for her. Her sister's love of the Bard is wearing off on her, I think. {This is the one I downloaded for her as she is quite familiar with the storyline and characters.}

After I commented on her progress, she casually remarked, "Just put it on my Kindle, I'll read it."

{Music to my ears!} So, I did and will.



I should note, we still support and encourage her to listen to audio books. For Christmas, we got her The Cat of Bubastes, read by Jim Weiss.

Technology in Our Homeschool

Long ago, when mammoths roamed the earth and we started this homeschool journey, I was adamantly against all forms of technology, possibly even including the telephone (you know the one tethered to the wall). I wanted our children, quite possibly all children (funny how passionate you are about something when you are younger!), to learn how to interact with living breathing people and actually turn the pages of a real book. I'll go as far as to say, I embraced dog earing of pages as it stood as proof of a book being used.

As the years have gone by, I have aged (late thirties now - so old!) and changed my opinion (not always permitted in society at large, but I'm proceeding to do so anyway). Gradually, I have come to embrace some technologies in our homeschool. I can honestly say technology is neither good nor bad, it is the usage of technology which is either good or bad.

That being said, let me share with you our current educational usage of technology.

How we use technology in our homeschool:

• CD player - used for various accompanying CD's, including but not limited to poetry, music, and history. An estimate for frequency would be about once a week per course.
• Television and DVD player - used for DVD lectures for my oldest son (ninth grade) for his literary analysis class. The lectures last approximately 45 minutes each and are viewed once a week for the first five weeks of the class. The rest of the class time is spent in individual instruction with the teacher (me!). The rest of his work is completely individually throughout the remainder of the week. In this time, he interacts with actual pieces of literature.
• Cell phone apps - used for identifying some star constellations at night when observing the sky with my husband. (my cell phone is archaic, on the verge of the texting age) 
• Computer {tethered to the wall with no internet connection} - used for DVD lectures for Latin (our daughters) and a course in French (our oldest son). As I cannot speak Latin or French, these classes are really essential for us.
• Laptop Computer {portable with internet connection} - used by our oldest son for limited research topics. Incidentally, he also uses it for his fantasy football league participation, but that's not really school related. I also cart a laptop to co-op class for slide show presentations to accompany some lectures. The room we meet in has a flat screen TV, which I am able to project the images from my computer onto it.
• Email - is the primary source of communication for our co-op classes. Teachers regularly email students and parents additional information.
• Social media - used specifically by me to record our homeschool experiences and share information, for connecting with other homeschoolers, and for finding fabulous ideas and lesson plans.
• Digital Cameras - used by all the older children for taking photos of items like rocks, minerals, birds, etc. for identification purposes or projects. These are also used for a visual remembrance of events, proof of attendance/field trip, and editing photograph practice.
• MP3 Players/iPods - used by all the older children for memory work. For those who ask, I will read/record the memory piece onto their device. Then, they can 'study' it by listening to it again and again.

For some of you technological savvy individuals, our humble listing may seem like a throw back to the ice age, but for someone who started this journey swearing off all forms of technology, (ahem, me)...this listing is quite daunting.

We are looking forward to the possibility of incorporating e-readers for the children (though we will still be using real, tree originating books when possible) and some type of iPad or Tablet (a girl can dream!) for lessons.


We are currently studying ancient history, particularly the flood and resulting ice age. Please bear with my tongue in cheek humorous tone. Of course, this leads to fair warning: we are about to study the Tower of Babel...who knows what tone of voice or odd humor that will prompt!