Family Reading

This week's post is brought to us by our very own Jennifer T. She may have moved away a few months ago, but she still is one of us! Not only is her background in literature, she also invests a great deal of time and energy enriching her children's education through reading. Check out the resources and recommendations she lists below. Thanks, Jennifer!

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One of my favorite activities is family reading in the evenings. This is when we try to block out all non-essential activities (as much as possible), so that we can have good quality and quantity time together to sit and read a good book aloud. The books are wonderful, but that’s not why I love family reading time. This is a time, set aside, where we SLOW DOWN. We have great discussions, and we bond as a family. A good book will have many springboards for great discussions. This is often where our inspiration for delving into new subjects of study comes from—it is where our imaginations are sparked—where we are inspired to try things that might initially seem scary or too difficult (like pursing our dreams or changing a habit we don’t like in ourselves). Are we focusing on all of the artistic elements in the books—the ones our English teachers loved to point out and make us write pages upon pages of reports? Not really. We just focus on what stands out to us as we listen.

What do we read? We try to focus on classic books. These books are timeless. To us, a classic book is one that is worth reading over and over again because you can get more understanding out of it each time you read, according to what experiences you have had since the first reading. Obviously, scriptures are our first classic, but there are so many others. I’ve found a great list of books for children from nursery age up to 8th grade that we are focusing on reading just now. It was compiled by John Senior (1923-99), who was a classicist professor at the University of Kansas. You can find the list here. I do not necessarily read one book right after the other; I use this list as a guide for acquiring my personal home library. We think it is fun to just pull a book off the shelf that looks interesting to us. If it isn’t right for us to read at the time, we have no problem setting it aside and choosing another one.

Another place that I go to for recommended readings (for adults and older youth) is a site for George Wythe University. They list the books they use for freshmen on up to PHD courses. They have a classics-based curriculum. Their website is http://www.gw.edu/. I like looking for books that an English educator in the Victorian times (her name was Charlotte Mason) coined “living” books. These books are written by those who love their fields of study—books where enthusiasm shines through. A good guide to choosing your own list of classics could be summed up in the 13th article of faith, “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”

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With these great lists and recommendations, all we need to do now is make reading a part of our family time. Try taking the time to explore one of these books with your family -- and enjoy!