Inspiring Summer Reading - Nonfiction Reading For Facts

I had a second grade student in school this past year, who despised reading, but loved science.  Instead of spending my time with her, sounding out words in the recommended reader, we did simple science experiments (usually from the back of a Magic School Bus book).  She read the instructions out loud, and we worked through the steps together, and she loved it - reading and all.

It's a technique I've used often at home.  Science experiments, and recipes for that matter, whether they come boxed in a kit, or out of a book, call for very careful reading, and good comprehension skills.  It's not reading for entertainment, but for information - a type of reading we engage in every day.

Which is why, when the younger girls showed some interest in turning the extra cream we had left-over from our tapioca tasting into homemade butter, I gave them written instructions, printed from Scientific American, to follow.

I could just as easily have told them what to do.  Butter churning know how is one of the prerequisites to being a homeschool mom, after all, right up there with baking homemade bread.  How else could we make it through all those Little House on the Prairie unit studies?  But if I had told them what to do, I would have missed out on a golden opportunity to trick them into to inspire summer reading.

 
Normally my 8 and 9 year old girls would never consider perusing the pages of a layman's scientific journal, much less carefully reading through a three page article with no pictures to speak of.  But, with butter making in the balance...

...it was all fun and games.

E read aloud...

...while C carried out the instructions.

When their results were questionable, they consulted the pages instead of the mom...

...and were encouraged to continue on to success by themselves, thereby...

...honing their reading skills, engaging in a mini-science lesson, using up our extra cream, and providing me with yet another excuse to pull out the Lego minifigure mold.

Lego stud silver dollar short stack, anyone?

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Inspiring Summer Reading - Positive Peer Pressure Edition

Some boy (he's just a friend, Mom) from the youth group saw a picture of our cake arch on the girls' Google plus - or some such virtual friend circle, and sent them a link to a recipe for Lembas bread.  Lembas bread being the elven staple given to Sam and Frodo before their perilous journey in The Lord of the Rings.

The girls, who had never even cracked the cover of that particular book, jumped into action.

I chose not to point out that the recipe, from the Council of Elrond, looked suspiciously like a recipe for vanilla honey sugar cookies (especially, since we were out of shortening, and had to substitute in butter), or that the "bread" fresh from the oven tasted a lot like soggy graham crackers, or that printing out a mallorn leaf (from Entropy House) to copy onto construction paper...

...carefully decorated, and lined with wax paper...

...for wrapping up a piece of freshly baked Lembas bread for a special delivery to said boy at youth group that same evening, might have been a bit of overkill for a boy, whom I was being told was just a friend...

...but rather, used the opportunity to promote peer encouraged summer reading, by simply moving the book from our bookshelf to the table, where it could easily be enjoyed with a warm cookie (I can't quite bring myself to call it bread) and a glass of milk.

Okay, so I might have said all those other things, too.  But, I did produce the book, and managed not to roll my eyes, too much, in the process.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Inspiring Summer Reading - Books and Homemade Toys - Giant Squid Edition

Teaching remedial reading to small groups of elementary, and middle school aged children, at a local private school this last year, has really got me thinking about the ways I've encouraged my own children to read, and enjoy reading.

All of my children have been pretty natural, though not all early, readers. They might not all read constantly, but when they do, whether it's for entertainment, or for information, it's with an enjoyment I didn't encounter in my students at the school.

So, over the course of the summer, I thought I'd share some of our homegrown strategies for encouraging a love of reading.

The first thing that comes to mind is that for the younger children especially, I often try to find ways to connect books to their interests of moment, whether it's through a snack, an activity, or as with the squid pictured at the top of this post - a toy, or more specifically, a homemade toy.

Actually, there's a story behind this particular toy, and since it demonstrates one of the ways we encourage reading - I'll share it.

Out of the blue, the other morning, D (age 11) called from his room, "Mom, how many tentacles does a

squid have?"

The answer is two, in case you were wondering, two extra long tentacles, and eight arms.

Naturally I was curious as to why he was asking. We've been in more of a Lego, and building phase lately, than into marine biology.  It turned out he was building a Zoob squid to play with with his Lego men.  That made sense.

I oohed and awed over D's Zoob creation, but pointed out that it might have been a little big in comparison to the Lego guys.  Unfazed, D informed me it was a kraken.  Needless to say, I was impressed (and my homeschooling heart swelled with joy - if not pride).  It's been a few years since we read 20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, so I figured he probably picked the reference up from some video game, or cartoon, but even so - kraken - that's a pretty good word to be able to pull out of your hat.  I knew I was going to have to make the most of it.

D went back to playing, and I started searching out a pattern for a quick, and easy squid toy.  I found a simple, and free, which is always a bonus, crochet pattern from Crafty and Devious for just the sort of young kraken I was looking for.  The pattern was what I wanted, because it was simple enough to make up quickly in the morning while the children were still sleeping.  If you don't crochet, don't worry, the toy is the point, not how it was made.

I modified it slightly to match our discussion by adding adding white crochet (5 sc into a magic ring) circles to go behind the eyes, because squid have very large eyes.

And, I crocheted two extra long, additional arms, adding a sc, hdc, dc, slip stitch to the bottom, to form the tentacles, since D and I had specifically talked about those - besides which they are great for grabbing Lego men.

With my pattern picked, I slipped out to the library to see what they had for a book to go with it.  I would have liked H.P. Newquist's Here There Be Monsters, The Legendary Kraken and the Giant Squid...

...but it was out, and besides which I think we've checked that one out before.  I settled instead on Sandra Markle's Outside and Inside Giant Squid...

...which turned out to be just perfect, with a quick mention of the legends of the kraken, segueing nicely into a photo illustrated, simple, scientific text on the illusive giant squid - just right for an 11 year old.

Anyway, the next afternoon, with the book checked out, and the kraken crocheted, all I had to do was wait for a good opportunity, when D was occupied elsewhere, to sneak into his room, and set the scene.

At first, after he spotted his surprise he snatched up the toy, and ran off to play, leaving the book behind.  I thought maybe my plan had backfired.  That happens sometimes. But, it wasn't long before I spotted him totally engrossed it's pages.

The time I had put into the project (actually less time than it took to tell you about it) added a weight of value to the book.  It wasn't just a book, but the promise of an adventure - one on which I wasn't his traveling companion, so much as the outfitter for the journey.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

A Christmas Carol Vocabulary Activity - Capacious Amounts of Coal

I'm not usually a big fan of handing out candy in the classroom.  It can set a bad precedent, and often backfires.  However, while reading A Christmas Carol this week, with my small reading groups, I made an exception. First off, because it was the last week before Christmas break, and everyone was handing out goodies. And secondly, those little bags of candy coal on the end aisles of all the grocery stores, at this time of year, are perfect for Dickens' classic.

I used them in our classroom as incentive for close reading.  The word capacious, meaning ample, roomy, and generous - was one of our Stave 2 vocabulary words, from when Fezziwig adjusts his "capacious waistcoat".  But, the word is used twice in Stave 3, as well, in connection with the Ghost of Christmas Present.

This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. 

How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach!

So, as we read Stave 3 aloud, I had the students on the lookout for the word.  When they spotted it, all they had to do was raise their hand, and point it out on the page, and they could receive a piece of coal - for a total of two pieces of coal each for the chapter.  Not exactly a capacious amount, but enough to keep the students engaged, and following along while their classmates took their turns reading.

Tasting "A Christmas Carol" - Christmas Pudding

We watched Disney's The Muppet Christmas Carol for our family movie night, to go along with our reading of the Dickens classic.  I was pleasantly surprised at the number of direct quotes from the story it contains.  It turned out to be a lot more on the educational side, than I had anticipated.  Though, of course, with the Muppets there was plenty of "entertainment", too.

The children had a good time picking out the parts of the movie that were the same, and the parts that deviated from the book.

The Christmas pudding was omitted from the Kermit/Cratchit's Christmas dinner.  But, that was okay, because I was ready with Mathew Walker Christmas pudding (ordered earlier in the week off of Amazon) to fill the gap.

I had deliberately ordered the small, four serving pudding, so that I would be able to deliver the line that, "nobody said or thought that it was at all a small pudding for a large family", and because as I suspected...

...the English dessert is an acquired taste - especially for our American palates...sort of like a really moist fruit cake.

I don't think Christmas pudding will make our list Christmas favorites. It was fun though to take a taste, and bring a spoonful of the story to life.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

A Christmas Carol Stave 2 Vocabulary Activity

To review some of the vocabulary from stave 2 of Dickens' A Christmas Carol (though again, this activity would work with any book you happen to be reading through near Christmastime) I gave the children stocking tops (the white papers) with quotes from the stave/chapter printed on them, with the vocabulary words underlined, to match up with the synonyms, printed on the polka dots (round label stickers) of construction paper stockings.

The activity worked the way I  had hoped, but I think it might have been even better to have given the students the stockings with the tops attached, but polka dots blank, so they could have looked up the vocabulary words in a thesaurus, and filled in the synonyms themselves, for that little extra push of learning.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

"A Christmas Carol" Stave 1 Vocabulary Activity

I put this activity together, to work on the vocabulary from stave 1 of A Christmas Carol, with a couple of small reading groups I lead at a local private school, and with my own children (the 10 to 16 year olds, anyway) at home.

We used the Christmas Carol vocabulary for stave 1 from Quizlet.com, but the activity would work equally well with any of the staves, or for the vocabulary from any book you happen to be reading through, near Christmas.

I started by sketching out a large-ish Christmas tree, on a 4 foot sheet, from a roll of paper.  Before coloring it in, I traced out a circle on the tree for each vocabulary word.

But, instead of printing the vocabulary words in the circles, I used their synonyms.

I printed the vocabulary words on the backside (upside down) of paper Christmas balls, traced out around a cup, slightly larger, than I had used for the circles on the tree.  I decorated the front sides of the ornaments with a couple squiggly lines, and marked them with the page number on which the word on the back could be found.

Finally, I gave them to my students (a different set and tree for each group) as a vocabulary race.  The goal was for each student to grab a Christmas ball, find its vocabulary word on the proper page of their book, and print out part, or all of the sentence it was found in, before matching the ball to the circle on the tree with the corresponding synonym (I had thesauruses on hand, in case help was needed).  They glued the ornaments to the tree by the tops, so when they were done, the tree was covered in quotes from the chapter...

...that could be lifted up to reveal the vocabulary words with their synonyms underneath.

The student who placed the most ornaments correctly on the tree was the winner, and got an extra piece of (candy) coal - as well as a hearty, "Bah! Humbug!" from everyone else.