Reading Intensive Challenge: Log #1

Loves,

You can read my post detailing my new challenge here!

I’ve been putting off writing this log – I started thinking it needed to be super detailed and brilliant, for some reason.

Perfectionism. Gross. No thanks!

So don’t mind me while I just write my shitty first draft.

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Righto! Onwards!

Daily Habits:

• 20 mins+ of Reading Time – listening to my youngest read while my eldest reads by herself
• 20 mins+ of Me Reading To Them
• A lesson from Reading Eggs/Reading Eggspress.

These have been working well. I’ve been making a non-negotiable. If I don’t, they’ll never get done.

I’ve noticed that by putting more of a focus on reading time, it ends up having a cascade effect. They start reading, get obsessed and keep reading. My eldest kid ended up finishing 8 chapter books this week (!!!!)

Other thoughts:

• I read “Raising Readers” by Megan Daley – a teacher librarian here in Australia. She also has an excellent blog here. I have a bunch of notes from this. It helped build a useful framework in my head of how to approach reading.
• In “Raising Readers”, Megan talks about her shared readaloud books she reads to her daughters, and how they each got to take it in turns to choose the next read, including her. I thought this was a great idea… I can’t wait to get to choose a read as well!
• I have already ordered the Famous Five series by Enid Blyton for my next shared readaloud choice… it was one of my favourites when I was a kid.
• Me & my kids absolutely LOVED Lauren Child’s illustrated version of Pippi Longstocking. So we were thrilled when we chanced upon the Lauren Child illustrated version of Mary Poppins this morning. That’s totally going in our book basket for what we are reading next as well!
• I also uncovered 101 Kids’ Books To Read Before You Grow Up. We were going through it quite fastidiously when we were homeschooling and quite loved the recommendations. Now the girls are a bit older we’ll be able to read some of the older books too!
• A wee while ago I went on a stalk through AbeBooks.com to find out of print Jennie Maizels pop up books. She does these amazingly illustrated & handwritten pop up books on non fiction topics like grammar, punctuation, science and music. They are fawned over more than any other books in this house.
• We’ve just been popped back into a 3 day lockdown to contain a Covid outbreak. Or as I like to reframe it: a 3 day reading staycation!

Hooray!

Did it! I wrote the first log! Onwards!

BIG LOVE,