Reading Out Loud and a Generous Christmas

Do you like listening to stories being read out loud? I have to admit that this isn’t my favourite activity. My mind tends to wander and I miss half the words. But my kids are different from me. They love reading aloud time. Even though most of my children are grown up, they still like to gather whenever anyone opens a book and says, “Do you want to listen?”

I wonder why my kids love listening and I don’t. Perhaps it’s got something to do with the fact that they associate reading books together as a happy family time experience. There’s no pressure to listen. It’s not a formal learning experience. It’s just something pleasurable that draws us all together.

When I was a child, I was read to by teachers who always wanted to check whether I was listening properly. They’d ask questions after they’d read out loud. They sometimes asked me to write something about the book. I’d have to be ready with the right answers. I couldn’t just relax and enjoy the story.

But even though I don’t particularly like listening, I do like reading aloud times. Usually, I’m in the reader’s chair. I have the book and can see the words so my mind has less chance of slipping away to other things. And I just love seeing my kids’ faces light up as they’re hearing the words of a wonderful story. And then afterwards, even though I don’t ask any questions, my kids will still want to share their thoughts. There is always something they want to discuss.

A day arrived for each of my kids when they wanted to occupy the reader’s chair. And even though I prefer reading to listening, I had to be willing to vacate my seat. Yes, it was my child’s turn to read. It’s not always easy to let children read to us, is it? At first, their reading-out-loud skills aren’t very good. They stumble over the words, leave words out, speak too fast, and mispronounce words. In the past, I’ve said such things as “Slow down! Say the words as the author wrote them. You’ve got an audience. We have to be able to understand exactly what you’re saying.” But I discovered that criticising a child isn’t the way to encourage her to keep reading. It chases away all the enjoyment of sharing a book. It doesn’t even help improve her reading skills. I discovered something else: Reading mistakes aren’t always as bad as we first might think.

I wrote about these discoveries in my blog post, The Reading-Out-Loud Experiment.

In this week’s podcast, episode 144, I share that story.

I’m also answering some questions about reading out loud that were left for me on Instagram:

• What is our reading out loud process?
• Should we have a time (for reading) built into the flow (of our day)?
• What if this time crowds out other projects our children are working on individually?
• How do we choose books?

I talk about:

• Why I never enjoyed listening to books being read aloud as a child
• How I used to regard reading out loud as the dessert of my kids’ education rather than the main course
• How we should move over and let our kids occupy the reader’s chair
• How we have to be patient while our kids are learning how to read out loud
• My reading-out-loud experiment: What happened when I stopped correcting my daughter when she made reading-out-loud mistakes

I also return to the topic of Christmas presents:

• Do presents belong only to the commercial side of Christmas or do they have spiritual significance?
• Can we tell our kids to be generous?
• Or do we only learn about generosity by experiencing it ourselves?

I hope you’ll listen!

Show Notes

Blog Posts

Respecting Kids and Christmas Presents

The Reading Out Loud Experiment

A Main Course of Reading Out Loud

Listening

Photos

I took these photos while we were filming the Christmas music video: Lo How a Rose Ere Blooming. Can you see the baubles that we strung up between the gum trees? Just as the sun was rising, a man and his dogs walked by and saw us setting up for the video. Four girls, a mother and a dog, a few cameras and lots of sparkly baubles. This is probably not what he expected to see in the bush at that time of morning!

Here’s the video, in case you’d like to listen to Imogen’s version of this Christmas carol:

Thank you for listening to this episode. If you enjoy my podcast, please consider sharing the link so we can spread the word about unschooling. A quick review or rating would help too!

Please feel welcome to leave a comment about anything I talked about in this episode. Maybe you’d like to share your experiences of reading out loud. Is this something your family enjoys? Or you could just stop by and say hello. And please join me on Instagram!

Perhaps you have a question or topic you’d like me to discuss in a future podcast episode. Please let me know so that I can add it to my planning notes for next year.

This is my last episode for 2018. I’m taking a break over Christmas. Please watch out for more podcasts in 2019!

Happy Christmas!