Three or four nights a week, once the dinner dishes are all finished up, we all escape into the lounge room for a favourite activity- “book time”.
“Book time” was a concept we read about when our oldest children were very young, and it has happened in our home in various forms, (and with various degrees of regularity!) for most of that time.
These days, the children get out their drawing books at “book time”, and off we go!
We usually start with an “Adorable Fallacy”. (We are on our second “go ’round”, and I think it will take us a few more before we really have these at our fingertips!)
Next, we read a chapter of our “tricky book”. The “tricky book” isn’t really tricky, but it is usually non-fiction of some type.
Finally, we read a chapter… or two…. of our “fun” book. This is some kind of engaging novel, and the little ones really enjoy it. They are always keen for another chapter!
I do try to keep in mind that once they are in about Year 5 they will have a couple of chapters of “school reading” for their various curriculums once they go to bed on school nights, so I try to keep “Book Time” short: but it is so much fun that keeping it short isn’t always easy!
About a year ago, I had the idea that we should start keeping track of the books we read, and start recording some kind of evaluation of each book, so that we could remember later on whether or not that book was a good read-aloud. So we have begun doing just that, and I will type up our chart and update it here as we go.
It will have been worthwhile if we save you from reading something that is a bit mediocre.
…And just maybe we’ll read something that your family might enjoy!