I posted a picture of a bunch of harvest picture books that we read for Fall Equinox with a little bit on what our story time looks like and it was requested that more insight be given. This is the easiest avenue to provide that information and I figured that if one person was curious there may be others who are too.
How did we get started? We moved. Neither of my littles liked reading books or being read to when they were babies or toddlers. I'd start reading and they would reach over and shut the books. Even if I let them play, within seconds the book would be closed on me. This was most definitely a case of it was them not me. I'm a terrific reader with voices and accents done spot on. See you probably don't know that about me because it is only something I share with my family cause I'm rather shy of the spotlight. But now you know since I've announced it to the world. Oh dear. So back to we moved. We moved when the littles were four and two, nearly five and three, to a place with a tiny county library with a large focus on kids, with a two minute drive from our house. When I overheard that there was a hundred book checkout limit my book love and greed took the helm. I forced my littles to pick out a few books themselves to go with my stack and we started story time. My littles begrudgingly and I with the drive of a frantic mother who felt our lives would not be whole until I could say I read books to my kids. I had had enough of the mom shaming I'd received from actually telling people when asked how my kids responded to books. So by force for at least fifteen minutes a day my littles joined me on the couch while I read the books. It wasn't magic overnight. It took a few weeks of picking winners and duds for my littles to like story time. Eventually we found our likes and it became much more relaxed and enjoyable. Thankfully, we had an infinite number of books at our hands through the library. If we didn't like a book, no biggie, just return it. If we liked it we kept it for awhile.
My rules for reading time were: we sit on the couch where everyone can equally see and is comfortable, no toys, sit still respectfully, follow along in the book with the words and pictures. Those are still my rules today. The reasoning: equal position causes no fights, comfort is key for length of time required, sitting still is a necessary life skill and it means no one is distracted from the story from someone's movement. It teaches how one person's behavior is felt by the entire group. It teaches the importance of group over the individual which is lost in a highly individualistic culture like ours. It teaches unity. It teaches focus and endurance and self control. We've been doing story time this way for five years. Our time frame is anywhere from an hour to two hours. Though the books need to be dang good to keep us locked together for two hours straight. Our books are a mix of picture books: fun ones, cute ones, biographies, science, math, poetry, history - all picture books. You can learn about everything with picture books. I've learned a ton from them. They aren't dry, presented well and with pictures to further engage your senses. This year I was starting to worry we would run out of picture books but not yet!
Where I get my books. Well, mostly the library because our rate of consumption cannot be supported monetarily or physically having book space. Our library switched systems and started keeping track of the books on my account where I can access the list. Since June of 2016, over 1,000 we've checked out. I think I've illustrated my point. Plus, we are not great at rereading books. If I forget a title and request it and we've already read (shocking I know) my children make a huge deal about it. They remember pretty well all the books we've read. Not a bad problem to have. Part of my job description is keeper and scourer of book lists. My go to places for lists are: Pinterest (great for fun books and unit studies, I.e. erosion, weather, rainbows), Charlotte Mason Ambleside website, Beautiful Feet Books (book full of book lists by country), fellow homeschool IG accounts, and my favorite book list and curriculum Five In A Row. It's inexpensive and brings books alive. It's geared towards preschool and up through the lower elementary grades. I go to Barnes and Noble and make lists of their books to check out at the library. I search in my library system by publisher of a book we liked to find other books. I keep a written list of books so I can go down the list and request more once my library hold list frees up. Not everything is in our library system but it's pretty great and exhaustive. We do some chapter books but it exhausts my voice so I try to get those on Audible or audio from the library and we listen to them in the car. My goal is to fill my children with stories and information to fuel their imagination for a lifetime because that's where the magic is.
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