Probably the most well known of Charlotte’s methods is her use of living books instead of dry, factual textbooks. Living books are usually written by one person who has a passion for the subject and writes in conversational or narrative style. The books pull you into the subject and involve your emotions, so it’s easy to remember the events and facts. Living books make the subject “come alive.”
So we are using "living" books instead of textbooks for the subjects we are studying. Many times I'm finding you can't fit a "living" book into just one subject. Take for instance, the Little House on the Prairie series. There's science, history, math...a whole lot of good stuff in there. In their article, Ten Things to Do with Your Child Before Age Ten, Trivium Pursuit recommends reading aloud to your children at least two hours a day. Two hours a day!? At first I was thinking, "There is no way that could happen." But, we've set up our routine where we are reading to them about that much. Early on we established reading together as a daily before-sleep ritual and that has carried over. Right now, I am reading through the Little House series before afternoon naps (or "quiet time" for those who don't take naps anymore) and Don is reading through Stuart Little before bedtime at night. Don also reads aloud to the whole family during our daily Family Worship time.
During Family Worship, everyone must sit quietly and listen - Daddy will be asking questions at the end of the reading! This is also practice for sitting still in worship service at church. During the other reading times, however, we've taken the Bluedorn's advice:
Do not require your children to sit beside you on the couch perfectly still while you read. As long as they stayed in the room and were not distracting or interrupting, we allowed our children to play quietly with their toys or to work on cross-stitching or to draw or some similar quiet project, while we read aloud.
Just a note: Art projects during "story time" usually go much better when Corban (almost 2) is already in bed for naps. I usually read simpler stories with him before his morning quiet time and afternoon nap time.
We also have time one day a week dedicated to reading poetry. This year we are focusing on the works of Robert Louis Stevenson using A Child's Garden of Verses. This is an area of our home education that I particularly enjoy. The kids seem to like it as well and enjoy figuring out the imagery in his poems. We are working on memorizing "The Swing". I think the exposure to good poetry has increased my K5-son's creativity. Generally he's a very logical thinker, but he is beginning to talk about nature and other things with more poetic descriptions. I tell them a poem is like a painting made with words.
The books we are reading aloud this year:
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