Homeschool Log

Trying to update my homeschool log for this last week.

What have we done, in educational terms?

Reading.

Mostly reading.

Yes, we have been shopping and to the movies and the kids have accompanied me to work meetings. Been to their part time jobs and their delivery of junk mail, too.

Yes, they have played the piano and guitar and listened to CDs and jumped on the trampoline and played and used the computer and Wii , sung along with Singstar, caught up with friends, and we visited another homeschool family.

Yes ,they have served and sung at Mass and have done a bit of formal study here and there - some Maths, Anny some Kumon English, some Latin, some writing.

But most of this week has been reading.

In the car. In bed. In the family room...sitting room...dining room... garage...at the library and at the bookshop.

The clutter of books everywhere is driving me batty! I walk around and tidy up piles. Piles of books.

My house reminds me of a quote from one of our Agatha Christie novels ~

It was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the otherway about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any stronghand to keep them down.

What has been read?

Everything. And anything.

From fiction ( P.G. Wodehouse and Tolkien and Lewis Carroll) to non fction ( Life on Mars, The Dangerous Book for Boys, Famous Speeches, The Joy of Mathematics) to magazines ( White Dwarf), to picture books ( The Frances series by Russell Hoban) to roleplaying game books to a biography of Pope John Paul II and a mini Saints book. And a 1962 Missal.

I'll just write reading and books down in my log. I'll know what that means.

An unschooling life, made up of books and reading.

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense ofmyself in the world, I would do that again by reading,just as I did when I was young.~ Maya Angelou ~

And why are the children such readers? Perhaps this quote explains it... a bit .....

Children are made readers on the laps of their parents. ~ Emilie Buchwald ~

The years of reading aloud, of comforting toddlers with books, of living in libraries and bookshops, seem to have made books the friends of my boys.

Well, books are my friends, too...