Teaching Children to Love Reading - All Ages

One of the key ways to teach your children to love reading is to love reading yourself. Let your kids see you reading books in your spare time. Tell them enthusiastically about the latest thing you've read or learned. After you read to them, gush (honestly) about how much you love that book. 

Passion is contagious. Be passionate about reading. 

Parenting is Not Your Highest Calling

(If you're confused by my post title, please read the full title of this book.)

This book was recommended to me by several adoptive parents. It isn't a book about adoption. It's a book about how to love. And it is fantastic! I am learning so much and the information in this book is so FREEING! It blows away all the parenting myths for which we all (yes, even Christians and sometimes especially Christians) fall.

Parenting isn't easy or instinctive. If you find it much more difficult than you imagined, that doesn't mean you're necessarily doing something wrong. Unconditional love doesn't come easy. In fact, love is arduous, messy, and requires more than you have to give.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

What's Your Motive?

This last Valentine's Day presented a perfect opportunity for me to express my love for my family. With a glowing face, I set aside my deadlines and ran to the store to gather expensive ingredients. I donned an apron and worked for hours to create an elegant, memorable meal, complete with personalized valentines on each plate. Eagerly, I called everyone to dinner. As they shuffled to the table, the older boys looked at their valentines with embarrassment. Micah, five, didn't like his valentine and began to pout. After we praed, everyone attacked the food as if in a race. Duncan, surveying my emotional desert, raved about the homemade bread, the salad, the perfectly grilled steak. The boys dutifully mumbled thanks with full mouths, all eyes on the clock-- wrestling would soon start. There was no time for the heart-shaped chocolate cheesecake I had made for dessert. In a matter of minutes, everyone was gone-- to wrestling and youth group. I stood in the empty kitchen, on a floor littered with carrot peelings, smeared sauce, and radish greens, the counters stacked with dirty dishes, the sink buried under a mound of soiled pans. The leavings of my love feast mocked me. I felt cheated, even bitter. Why doesn't love return measure for measure? What was the point of this? And then I remembered--I wanted to express my love for my family. I smiled ruefully. That is just what I had done.

-quoted from "Parenting is Your Highest Calling" and 8 Other Myths by Leslie Leyland Fields

What's your motive for doing the loving things you do for your family or for others? So often I have heard "They didn't even say thank you! Well I won't be doing that for them again!!" Do we only show love so that we will get love (or thanks) in return? Is it enough just to have the satisfaction of being loving? That's how Christ loves us.
Without expectation.

Lord, teach me to love like you do. Teach me how to love selflessly.

Stick to Your Style

We homeschool moms struggle with the temptation to compare. We see other families who are involved in all sorts of enrichment classes and wonder if our kids should take more classes. We see other families whose kids have beautiful penmanship and we wonder why we can't get that one child to do more than chicken scratchings? We see other families who love love love their curriculum and we second-guess the curriculum we've chosen.
May I encourage you: don't do it!
Over half of the homeschool moms at our church use My Father's World curriculum. And ironically I have encouraged several moms who asked for curriculum advice to use My Father's World. I say "ironically" because we have never used that curriculum ourselves. I just know a lot about it and there are a lot of moms looking for just that type of curriculum.
So last year while trying to pick a new curriculum, I thought: You know what, I really should look more into My Father's World. So many of my friends love it, maybe I'm missing something.
But after looking it over thoroughly, I realized I wasn't missing anything at all. It is exactly as I thought it was and it isn't a good fit for our family. I LOVE everything about the Charlotte Mason style of home educating and only a Charlotte Mason styled curriculum is going to be a fit for us.
Whatever your chosen style, stick to it! Let your homeschooling style guide your decisions. If you love textbooks, don't look at unit studies. If you are a homebody, don't look into a lot of co-ops and classes. Don't feel guilty for being the homeschool mom that you are.

The More the Merrier

I've always believed that large families are not just a selfish pleasure but beneficial for the country, even the world - but, until now, I've been short of ammunition for arguing my case.
I'm grateful, therefore, to Sky News presenter Colin Brazier, who has spent the past five years assembling evidence that supports the idea that larger families are A Good Thing. "We are so often told about the disadvantages of large families that we have lost sight of the hidden advantages," he says.
His mission began one day at the start of the Iraq war when, while embedded with the United States army, he heard a radio report claiming that the cost of bringing up a child had risen to £180,000. 

Read why that math doesn't compute here: The Bigger the Family, the Better

My Email Has Been Hacked

If you get any emails from me (or anyone else) without a subject line, delete them.

My apologies.

Readers in the House

A few years ago I heard Carole Joy Seid, a popular homeschool speaker, encourage us eager moms not to teach a child to read until their 7 years old. At the time, I was still in the throes of teaching two of my big kids to read and I loved that advice! I determined then and there that I would not be over-eager to teach my twins to read. I would wait!
And wait I did.
A couple of months before Daniel and Lydia turned 7, I was offered a three month free trial of Reading Eggs. I set it up for Lydia and thought: I'll just have her play these games every day and she can get a head start. A couple of months later, she had learned how to sound out words and had learned a lot of sight words. She was reading! What we love about Reading Eggs is that it ISN'T BORING! It changes up every day and is never the same. Thus, it holds their attention. I can't tell you what a difference this makes!

We jumped right into our beloved Pathway Readers and she took off reading. I was on cloud nine!!
Can I just tell you what a thrill it is to have a child read easily after working your tail off to teach 4 children who struggle to read? I had started reading lessons to soon with all four of my big kids and paid the price.
You may not believe me as I certainly didn't once upon a time, but reading, like potty-training, is developmental. If a child isn't ready, they're not ready. You lose nothing by waiting. And you may just lose your mind by not waiting.

Trust me. I know.