reading

The Joy in Listening to Books

April 20, 2021 By Annette1 5 Comments

Have I ever told you how much I enjoy my Audible Membership? There is so much joy in listening to books. To have a good tale as I work in the garden, take pics of bunnies in my rabbitry, do dishes, wash the floor… you get the picture. I’d much rather listen to a book most of the time than have the TV running in the background.

So I thought I’d tell you a bit about some of the books I am reading and/or listening to lately. Most of these are on audible. You’ll find that a couple are physical books while another is on librovox!

Affiliate links will be used in this post. This doesn’t hurt your bottom line and helps me bring you more books!

I’m listening to Alcatraz by Max Brand on LibriVox. When I was a teen and young adult I read most of Max Brand’s novels but I don’t recall ever reading Alcatraz. It’s bringing back some happy memories for me and I hope to find more Max Brand books on LibriVox.

Physical Books that I am engaged with are The Blacksmith’s Wife which I got from the library as part of my studying the Irish Potato Famine. I’m not very far into it as I just got it on Friday and on Saturday I had to taxes. Sunday was such a lovely day that I went for a walk instead of reading. 🙂

I’ve also started dipping my toes into A Habit Called Faith by Jen Pollock Michel and When Twilight Breaks by Sarah Sundin. I’m enjoying A Habit called faith as it’s encouraging me to look deeper into Bible stories as a way of strengthening my faith. I’m Day three into a forty-day journey.

When Twilight Breaks is a WW2-inspired story that is a love story mixed with the danger of the Nazi party in Germany. I hope to glimpse more history than romance! 🙂 Time will tell eh?

The joy in listening on Aubible

My current audible reads are all based in the fantasy world created by Robin Hobb concerning the Rainwilds. I adore this series and listening to it again in order of the history. It’s such a fascinating story of dragons, connections, strong women, strong men, lots of danger, and lots of resolution. Some horrible things happen and some absolutely magnificent things happen too. Sometimes the narrators give an odd pronunciation of a word which throws me off until I interpret what they are really saying.

Why do I like listening… it’s a different experience than just reading. I am a speed reader so sometimes when I read books I miss some of the details. When I listen to a book… I don’t miss a thing (other than what I would normally forget). It’s harder to “find the spot” in an audible listen as opposed to with a physical book when I want to double check a detail, but overall, what I forget usually isn’t shattering.

Fool’s Errand is my current main listening read. With Trinity by Leon Uris being my backup. 🙂 I call it my backup since I have one on my phone, the other on my tablet. My phone is my backup since I dislike downloading much on it. And it’s there when I’m in the car and want a break from playing music. My tablet is easier for me to be aware of when I’m cooking, cleaning, picture taking and the like so doesn’t get banged around.

The joy in listening to just not books

I have to admit that I don’t only listen to books as I work. I also listen to materials using The Great Courses and Curiosity Stream. They aren’t quite books, but they are informative and very interesting. On Great Courses Plus, I’ve learned about great voyages, am working through understanding Tai Chi, and have listened to military stories. On Curiosity Steam, I’ve learned more about birds and cats then maybe I’ve a right to know and currently am learning about the Nile. There is so much to learn and hear…it’s a bit mind-boggling sometimes.

My audible membership gives me one credit a month. I’m careful with how I use it, only purchasing books that make me feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. I usually build up a couple of months worth before I start spending them since I always like having something in the bank. 🙂 Though if I’m having tons of listening time and need more credits it’s easy enough to buy a group of credits inexpensively. So give it a boo eh? You might love it as much as I do.

If you like the idea of audio books but don’t want it for yourself personally… did you know you can gift a membership to someone? Rather cool eh?! 🙂

What about you? Do you take joy in listening to books? Do they help you focus on the work you have to do? Or at least help you occupy your time? If you’d be so kind, let me know what you are listening to.. or just plain reading! 🙂

Reading Aloud with Teens

February 3, 2020 By Annette1 6 Comments

One of my favourite things to do over the years is read books with my lad. Everyday we’d plow through different books together, talking and laughing, learning together. So much fun we shared. 🙂 As my lad gets older it gets harder to find the time to read together. But reading aloud with teens is very rewarding.

I mentioned that reading aloud with teens is very rewarding. I have given you some hints in the past, but let me tell you how.

The Main Reason: It’s fun. Seriously. Reading books together is fun. The conversations that ensue, the knowledge gained, the laughter shared together. It’s so golden! Everything spills out of the fun of reading together.

What else comes from reading together?

Increased vocabulary. You can read books above the reading age of your student.
Modeling reading. The joy in learning, the wonder of new things learned.
Improved comprehension. Since you are talking about what you are reading you can automatically check the level of understanding.
Listening skills increase. You need to listen in order to have conversations. Since conversations are a great part of reading together it doesn’t take long for those skills to kick in.
Since you can read a variety of materials you can see what sparks your children’s interests.
And since you are sparking their interests, you can increase their curiousity in the world around them and
Give them a greater thirst for learning
and in the process help them to further develop their critical thinking skills.
You can not only read fiction, but non-fiction books. How to manuals, scary stories, biographies and whatever strikes your fancy. Switch up the genres of the books you read.
Discuss difficult issues like divorce, abortion, racism, political correctness and more. Stories can open eyes to concerns you hadn’t thought about before and give insight into how your child thinks.
And since you are doing all of that… consider how much closer you and your children become as you discuss great ideas, books, and interests together. It’s amazing.

Our Latest Read Togethers

Since my son is studying World War 2 this year our focus has been on reading books about that war. Some of these books I’ve reviewed so it’s been a pleasure to read them again. I’ve linked to reviews.

World War 1 heroes.
Elly: my true story of the Holocaust.
Marika.
It Rained Warm Bread.
Fever Year.
Spies, Lies and Disguise.
Under the Broken Sky.
Survivors of the Holocaust.
Desert Danger.
Heroes of the Holocaust.
Behind the Bedroom Wall.

Affiliate links follow below.

Racism, heroic action, desertion, anger, pain, horror, surprising kindness, devastating brutality, mistakes by commanders, weaponry, sneakiness (in a good way), faith, and indoctrination. All these ideas are covered by these books. We’ve had so many discussions and pleas for just “ONE MORE chapter mom, ONE MORE!”

Future Plans

We have plans to read additional books as well. One of World War two planes, Anne Frank, White Rose Society and more. So many good books around there. Every author has a different perspective and notes different things that broadens our perspective. I’ve recently finished listening to the audio book Story of the World War II. I’ve told my lad snippets of it and he plans to listen to it as well.

Others in this Series

Four Hints for Reading Out Loud

November 12, 2018 By Annette1 2 Comments

When reading in How to Write a Poem, one of the chapters talks about how to read your poetry out loud to a group. I have to admit, I hadn’t really thought about this too much. It makes sense though, to pay attention to the poem that you are reading, so you can give the words all the weight, and the lines the feel that the author intends.

When you read your poetry, or poems written by others, these are some of the things to pay attention to.

Lines And Punctuation:

In a recent poem I wrote I used these words and lines

Weeping, Wailing
Mourning arise.

For after mourning,
the dawn will come.

Reading those lines quickly such as weeping, wailing, mouring arise. For after mourning, the dawn will come. Doesn’t sound the same as if you read

Weeping, wailing (pause) mourning arise (short pause) For after mourning (pause) the dawn will come. (longer pause). You need to give the appropriate breaks as the lines and punctuation call for. Don’t over do it with watching the line breaks, or give the wrong sort of weight to the punctuation.

Slow down

Slow down in reading. Take the time to savour the words and remember, you aren’t reading a report, you are reading a poem. Words that are meant to say more than just the words written. Let those words live, express them well verbally and don’t be afraid to use your body as well. Let your poetry come alive for what you are communicating is emotion and the story.

Key Section

You will find as you read over a poem in preparation for reading it aloud that certain sections will resonate with you more than others. Emphasize those sections, let the truth, or the emotion, of those sections ring out to your listeners. Slow down, modulate the tone, volume and pitch of your voice, and let your connection with the words show. This connection will show the importance of these words and draw your listeners in.

Humanity

Remember this, you are a human, reading to other humans. You aren’t reading to a wall or to a robot where how you present yourself doesn’t matter. Practice before you set out…memorizing bits of it of if you can, remember to look at your audience not worrying if it takes a moment to regain your spot, read with confidence and good posture and enjoy what you are doing. Sharing good poetry with others.

Transferrable

Even though I used poetry as an example, each of these four points is worth remembering if you are reading any story outloud. The need to remember how the story is written. This was recently made very real to me in a story I am listening to on audible. The main character was running away… Bush. Bramble. Thorns. Thicket. Branch. Duck. Weave. These staccato word burst of out the speaker bringing to life the fear she had as she ran heedless into the forest. The reader did an excellent job of bringing the emotion to life.

Review: MaxScholar

June 18, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Do you want to improve your ability to read and think about what you are reading? Allow me then to introduce to you a program my son has been using for the past while by MaxScholar. Thiey have a Reading Intervention program to encourage students to learn to read better and understand what they read. Let me tell you about the Reading Intervention Programs that we reviewed for them.

What Is MaxScholar?

MaxScholar a bundle of programs designed to foster comprehension in reading, as well provide support in phonics. It is a comprehensive and multi-sensory approach (audio-visual is a big part of it). They use research-based methods to help their students improve their skills in reading. Research-based methods include orton-gillingham and lindamood bell.

What you get:

A 12 month, on-line subscription that has three basic parts: MaxPhonics, MaxWords and MaxReading.

They also have four subsections. These sections are ways of organizing the other material in an easy to find manner. For instance, my lad liked learning about different people in the MaxReading section, so I encouraged him to read more the bios section and he loved it! All these real people to learn about, he thought that was just fantastic. This was his favourite part of the reading program.

How We Used It:

At the start of the program we worked our way through the various tests. I admittedly didn’t understand the point of them as at the end, it still had my son at the Pre-K level for phonics. So I dropped the phonics portion for him completely. This allowed him to work through the MaxWords and MaxReading. We quickly discovered that he knows more vocabulary and could come up with words on his own, and understood the language rules fairly easy though he has a horrid time remembering them. But during the lessons he had them nailed. He found the wait time in reading a tad too long for his taste so for a few lessons I asked him to find other words that fit that pattern during the minute reading time. Good challenge for him.

Therefore our sole focus became MaxReading. After the first couple of stories where I saw my confident son’s confidence plummet due to the marking in the program, I chose to sit down with him to discuss what was going on. We worked through a couple of articles together and I showed him that even I couldn’t get perfect mark. We talked about how programs are set up in different ways and not every program works in a way that makes sense to us. At the end of it I said “as long as you are understanding the passage what mark you get doesn’t matter.” He decided he liked the stories well enough that he wanted to keep reading them so off he went.

Son’s Thoughts:

“I wish they taught people how to highlight important details” and “Why do they say that everything is important? It makes it too easy to just cheat”. “I liked the stories, they were interesting. Do you think they can do some stories from Canada?” “They should do more stories from people all over the world mom, but especially from Canada too.”

My Thoughts:

I listened to a lot of angst from my lad with this program. I strongly disliked watching his confidence plummet, especially it seemed like something missed in the program. It did give us a good talking point about learning to work with the quirks of a program. I understood his frustration as I was able to replicate it trying to do a lesson on my own, finding myself struggling to pull off 50%. In the end my lad learned what parts of the program worked for him, but the struggle remained for him, colouring his perception. The bios section remains a hit and he intends to finish that section off as he’s enjoying it, WOOT WOOT!

I do need to mention that perhaps part of it was my hands off approach and maybe this program needs more of a hands-on approach. The fact that we have a lot going on in our lives right now … son’s surgery, hubby’s new job, settling the purchase of a house and all that goes with living in community just added to that mix. It is a program built with students with learning disabilities in mind, great for children with dsylexia and more. My son is used to being independent with his schoolwork and most programs, once I have him set up, he just flies with it, merely checking in with me weekly. I do know that he loves the bios. That was a good fit for him.

MaxScholar
Reading Intervention Programs
Online subscription, 12 months
Reading, dyslexia, intervention, ortongillingham,
For individual pricing, attend this link.

Other Reviews:

55 other members of the crew reviewed Reading Intervention Programs by MaxScholar. I urge you to check out their experiences.

Social Media Links:
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Language Arts: Our Style

January 8, 2017 By Annette1 8 Comments

Welcome to the Virtual Curriculum Fair 2017 week two. This week we talk all about language arts, how one plays around with words. Our host is the lovely Susan. You can learn more about the VFCF2017 right here.

I have to admit, it took a while to figure out a system to study Language Arts in our home.
Knowing that my boy (like his mother) tells stories as easily as breathing I thought, why not use that.

So I grabbed this freebie book from the library discard pile and off we set.

First he needs to draw a picture of the story he wants to write. He spent days at this, getting all the details right and NO, I’m not allowed to show you. 🙂

Then you develop your main character. This was harder than the lad anticipated. He thought he could just do yellow, pointed ears character. Then I asked : so how tall is he? Does he eat meat or vegetables? What makes him laugh? Does he ever cry? Does he have friends or is he a loner?

Once he had the character nailed down a bit better he moved on to writing his story. Bit by bit he adds to it. And bit by bit he learns. Every day a 1/2 hour of work is required.

Each time he gets a chapter done, we sit down and we edit it together. We make the changes right in his story, discussing spelling errors, word usage, sentence structure and all that fun stuff.

And you know what? He’s learning. It’s not a battle. It’s a sitting down and talking and learning together. Sometimes I’ll read a sentence and not know what it wrong with it, so I’ll ask other folks and they’ll show me what’s wrong and then the lad and I both learn something new.

It’s good to do this. 🙂

I have to admit, I getting curious about what treasure his character is going to discover…

Anyways, this book has a variety of stories one can write out, from adventures to mysteries.
Draw it out, write it out chapter by chapter and just work your way through it. We’ll be working our way through it for a good time to come yet. 🙂

I admit that we are taking our time with it, and we did get side-tracked when I was ill so are rather behind, but a new week is dawning and a lad will learn and grow, and I’ll be there with him.

This post is part of the Virtual Curriculum Fair. I do hope that you’ll join us in reading through what some of us have put together. Here’s the list of the gang. 🙂

Please visit my fellow homeschool bloggers who are writing about Playing with Words this week:

All posts will be live by Monday, January 9th at noon EST.

Delight Directed High School English by Susan @ Homeschooling Hearts & Minds

Act Your Part Well- 2017 VCF by Lisa @ Golden Grasses

The Search For Language by Michele@Family, Faith and Fridays

Our Top Picks for Language Arts by Amanda H @ Hopkins Homeschool

Multiple Approaches to Language Arts in 2017 by Laura @ Day by Day in Our World

How We Cover the Language Arts in Our Homeschool by Joelle @ Homeschooling for His Glory

Use Your Words by Laura @ Four Little Penguins

The Art of Perfecting Macarons by Jennifer @ A Glimpse of Our Life

Loving Languages Every Day by Jen K @ A Peace of Mind

Speech Therapy & Elementary Latin by Yvie @ Gypsy Road

The Readin’ and Writin’ Part of Homeschool by Shecki @ Greatly Blessed

Children Who Love Books by Lizzy @ Peaches At Home

Customizing High School Language Credits by Christy @ Unexpected Homeschool

A Poetry Feast by Sarah @ Delivering Grace

Teaching Language Arts without Curriculum by Brittney @ Mom’s Heart

I know your pain and it is worth it! by Kim @ Good Sweet Love

Language Arts: Our Style by Annette @ A Net in Time

Words! Words! Words! by Lisa M @McClanahan 7

10 Wonderful Word Games (+1) by Lori @ At Home: where life happens

What About Reading Comprehension? by Kristen @ Sunrise to Sunset

Teaching Grammar and Writing Through Discussion by Chelli @ The Planted Trees

Review: Alpha-Mania Adventures

December 1, 2016 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Are you working at helping your youngsters learn to read? Today I have a series of five books called “Alpha-Mania Adventures” that should prove to be an aid to you.

This series of book has been created based on a program by Ruth Rumack, who has a Bachelor’s in Education. She has
a particular interest in working with students of all ages who
experience reading challenges, as well as those diagnosed with learning
differences and other exceptionalities such as ADHD, anxiety, and
executive functioning issues. She is a member of the Learning
Disabilities Association of Ontario and regularly attends learning
conferences to ensure that she is on the leading edge of new research
and new methodologies. At her Learning Space, Ruth and her team of
highly-qualified educators provide individualized support that
emphasizes honoring the individual strengths and needs of each child.
Their goal is to provide all students with a strong academic foundation,
achieved through active, kinesthetic learning that doesn’t feel like
learning at all. (supplied information)

These books are actually rather cool. Children, playing pirates, happen to meet some real pirates. These pirates all talk in rhyme. The goal of these books is to, in a fun engaging way, introduce children to phonics and phonological awareness.

Brightly coloured pages tell the story. Which are interlaced with predominately white pages with activities for the learner to complete.

Each book closes with a number of bonus activities. Some of these activities are: making salt-dough letters, making letters in sand, making up their own pirate rhymes, say it slow, say it fast games, making alliterations with food, and digging for treasure as well as many more.

The alphabet is provided as well as answers for each activity are found in the back of the books. I would recommend getting the whole series as each book works are a particular set of phonics and phonemes.

There are five books in the series, each book introducing children to new sounds and letters. Each book is about 40 pages long.

Written by Jennifer Makwana
Based on the the Alpha-Mania Program by Ruth Rumack
Illustrated by Jalisa Henry
Pages 40
Meant for Pre-readers

Website: Rumack Resources and Alpha-Maniacs

Amazon.ca
Alpha-Mania Adventures: The Great Riddle Race: A Sound Manipulation Book
Alpha-Mania Adventures: The Splitter Critter and the Greedy Pirates: A Segmenting Book
Alpha-Mania Adventures: The Fantastic Floating Feast: An Alliteration Book
Alpha-Mania Adventures: Slomo’s Secret Treasure: A Blending Book
Alpha-Mania Adventures: Captain Ray and the Rhyming Pirates: A Rhyming Book

Amazon.com
Alpha-Mania Adventures: Captain Ray and the Rhyming Pirates: A Rhyming Book (Volume 1)
Alpha-Mania Adventures: Slomo’s Secret Treasure: A Blending Book (Pirates) (Volume 2)
Alpha-Mania Adventures: The Fantastic Floating Feast: An Alliteration Book (Pirates) (Volume 3)
Alpha-Mania Adventures: The Great Riddle Race: A Sound Manipulation Book (Pirates) (Volume 5)
Alpha-Mania Adventures: The Splitter Critter and the Greedy Pirates: A Segmenting Book (Volume 4)

For more information, connect with Rumack on her website and the series’ site, as well as Rumack’s Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
and Instagram.

Pirates and learning through reading

April 10, 2012 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Before I went out to do the bunnies I opened up a freebie from the folks over at Living books Curriculum. I had signed up a while back for their newsletter which gets me free stuff once a week. Anyways the freebie today was modern fairy tales, and we read one called the Box of Robbers. What a fun story to read to a six year old. he was quite intrigued. 🙂

I took care of the bunnies and we had breakfast and then our homeschooling day began.

We started off our day reading the paper. There were two interesting stories about genetic research so we talked about how our bodies are made of different genetic material and how scientists can work with it to either change something to hopefully make it better OR to test people to see if their bodies will react to medicine in an atypical manner. It’s rather fun using the paper to learn from. 🙂

Then we went on to do some reading

we started off with 50 magical stories. The story today is called the King of the Polar Bears.

in response to the story the lad said “I liked it!” When asked why he liked it I got the response of “I liked it, mommy, I don’t know why I did, but I just liked it!”.

Then we read more about pirates in our world history book.

Today we learned about the pirate base in Port Royal and how many pirates used the island of Madagascar as a base of operations. We learned abit about the cruelty of Henry Avery. We took a moment to learn a bit more about him.

then onwards to reading about the red squirrel in the ultimate guide to wildlife of North America.

The red squirrel this small squirrel is noisy and highly territorial. we’ve seen them at the Pinery and they are a very talkative squirrel. They are very quick.

On to chapter nine in “the Lamb”

it’s been good so far going through this book. Today I could see the lad thinking…and that’s always a good thing.

He did pages 10-12 in Pirates sticker book.

and pages 6-9 in dressing pirates

yesterday I picked up a pirates megablocks set on sale at Giant Tiger and I promised the lad that once we got finished our pirates work today that we would play pirates for a while.

The set we got is kinda a combination of these two sets…more like the second one than the first…but our characters look like real buccaneers and we have an alligator in our set. (great for playing peter pan!). 🙂 This gave the lad (after looking through the mega-blocks site) that some of our given to us lego was from the pirates sets of megabloks. So we played pirates. Always a good way to review the language the pirates used.

reading

The Joy in Listening to Books

The joy in listening on Aubible

The joy in listening to just not books