When I started this blog, for one, I thought I’d have more to say about it, and two, I thought I would have more time to think, process, and write. Neither of these things have happened.
Since the beginning – officially, three years ago, I believe – this has been harder than I imagined. Then again, my kids are not me. I remember being their ages, and taking off and running with everything. Tabitha reads very well, but she doesn’t do it for fun. I remember spring break at school when I was her age, and pretty much reading the entire vacation, probably well over 1000 pages! She’s the one who thinks she’s missing out on the “social” aspects.
Asher, he likes homeschooling, he just doesn’t want to do it. He’s bright, especially in math, but there tend to be a lot of arguments about actually sitting down and doing work – who does computer work first, who does their reading time with me first, etc.
So… here’s a couple things that we’ve read recently; this may be interesting to people looking for appropriate books, especially for boys.
Tabitha (8) read “From Anna” by Jean Little. I think she liked it pretty well, and she did a really good job with vocabulary and expression and such, but when she was done with it, she kind of shrugged and wanted the next book to have “more pictures that go along with the story”.
We are currently reading “Heidi” by Johanna Spyri, which I think she’s gotten into more than she will admit, though it’s not as though she’s picking up the book for fun and reading it. Considering its setting, there’s a lot that we’ve talked about as far as what the world was like in the time that Heidi would have lived, and I think that’s helped her a lot, not just with the book, but with the realization that things weren’t always the way they were in the world – that amenities like electricity and plumbing and food safety and quick travel are all fairly recent in human history.
And Asher – we’re on our second “Boxcar Children” book. They’re no literary powerhouse, certainly, but present some kind of adventure, and aren’t terribly hard. He says he doesn’t like them, but I think he’s going to say that about just about anything. We finished “Frindle” by Andrew Clements. It’s kind of a funny book, but also showing some signs of age. It’s set in the 1990s, which in itself isn’t a problem; books have settings, after all, but when you take fictional characters and put them on “David Letterman” and the like – well, I guess I’m just getting old. 🙂