I’ve continued reading. Most interesting completed reading was Jim Trelease’s ‘Read Aloud Handbook’. It had a lot of general information about getting kids to read, but the second half is a collection of booklists for different ages and stages. I don’t know that I agreed with them all, but there were definitely some I’d like to look for.

I’ve also read Anno’s ‘Magic Beans’ and ‘Multiplying Jar’ (I don’t know that they were the full titles), and the two Sir Cumference books. I preferred the Anno books—they seemed less forced. But the others have some merit, I just didn’t enjoy them as much as I’d hoped.

I’ve just started reading ‘Swallows and Amazons’ by Arthur Ransome (again! I know:-) ) for the AO copywork project. I’ve also chosen it for bookclub in December. I’m hoping I might be able to get it done before then, as that would mean I’ve read it more closely than pretty much anything I’ve read for bookclub. We’ll see…

I tend to read so quickly that I really don’t take it in, and I rarely think in depth about what I read. It was always my problem in Lit. I started reading ‘Don Quixote’ with the Classical Homeschoolers Of OZ list. They’re taking it a chapter a day and I started trying to do it that way. I need to get back to it. I’m wondering if I actually manage to limit myself to one chapter at a time, whether it may allow what I’m reading to sink in more. I guess that’s one of the reasons why the CM approach makes sense to me. (I really must start putting my bookmarks up here for Pad to explore).

I’m also reading ‘Raising Lifelong Learners’ by Lucy Calkins. Most of it is fairly familiar stuff about supporting reading, but I found the first chapter on supporting conversational skills was thought provoking. Likewise her chapter on early writing. I was a little wary at first, but it’s the concept of acting as a writer, rather than the physical skill. I also read with interest her chapter on play. Mostly it was all fairly logical, it was just that she did talk about a few things I guess I’d assumed, without actually thinking.

Anyway. Enough for now. Hopefully I can be a bit more regular about this again (maybe I’ll add updating it to my Desk day tasks as a minimum).