So I’ve been struggling for months with intense mom guilt that this school year did not go how I’d planned. Last summer at the reunion, I was so challenged by hearing my friends talk about how important reading is in the homeschools, and gosh, that is what Derek and I have wanted for our family culture since literally the first day we were dating. I did so well when the big kids were little, reading stacks and stacks of books to them, but I’ve had a much harder time figuring out how to do that the past couple of years, especially now that we live in Malibu and have to add an hour of driving time to literally anything we do, from grocery shopping to Bible study to art class. We are just so much busier. The accident pretty much screwed up everything about this second semester of school, too. I wouldn’t have minded if our life had gone crazy because we were fostering and driving needy kids to appointments. I minded very much the time I’ve had to spend on physical therapy (which is 45 minutes away!) and fighting with the hospital (mystery $10,000 charges are not cool) and our stupid auto insurance (which took five and a half stinking months to pay out for our medical expenses!!!). BUT…the end of the school year is in sight, I’m down to once-a-week physical therapy, and many of our activities are winding down, so I’m trying to finish the year strong with some good reading. And for my own records, here’s what we did get done.
Chapter Books I read to the kids 2016-2017
Augustine Came to Kent
The Door in the Wall
Otto of the Silver Hand
Robin Hood
Pagoo
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
(See? Pathetic. I mean, we did read a lot of picture books, but not stacks every day. And the goal had been to really do literature-based history this year. Blah.)
Books We Listened to in the Car/At Home
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
Swallows and Amazons
Swallowdale
Peter Duck
Winter Holiday
Coot Club
Pigeon Post
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
Secret Water
Five Children and It
Little Women
Eight Cousins
Jack and Jill
The Railway Children
The Story of the World: Middle Ages
The Great Brain
All-of-a-Kind Family
More All-of-a-Kind Family
All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown
Betsy-Tacy
Betsy-Tacy and Tib
Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
Emily’s Runaway Imagination
The Story Girl
The Moffats
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (yes, I read it AND they love the recording)
(Okay, after going through our hoopla and audible recently played lists, this makes me feel a little better. When you consider that these are 5-10 hours apiece, that is a lot of time that they were at least listening to quality literature even if I wasn’t the one reading it to them.)
So my takeaway is…it can only get better from here, right? Six read-alouds in a year is an incredibly low bar to pass for next year. And in Iowa City this fall, where everything is just 10 minutes away and we’re not doing many formal activities, it will be easier for us to make weekly trips to the library (instead of biweekly or even monthly this year), we’ll have tons of down time at home to read together, and our family culture will be more like the one I’ve always wanted. Right?