How do you find time to read all of those books and articles and still have time to care for your children and home?
By April. Filed in Living, Parenting |Tags: anthony robbins, audio books, audiobooks, boost, build vocabulary, CD, children learn from being read to, cognitive development, Dumbing us down, hot days, How can I find time to read all of the books I want to read?, indoor activities, library, life learning, listening skills, rainy days, read to children, robert kyosaki, snowy days, Unschooling, vocabulary, wayne dyer
This article is going to address two issues:
Indoor activities for too rainy/snowy/hot days for playing outside, and
How can I find time to read all of the books I want to read?
A common question I get from friends and family is: How do you find time to read all of those books and articles and still have time to care for your family and home?
The answer is simple: I include them!
Since my children are Life Learners I am not new to trying to find activities for them during the summer when it’s too hot to play outside or on rainy days. I am doing the same thing all year round while other children are in school. Where we live, in the desert, there are many days where the temps are just too high to spend much time outside unless it is early or late in the day. This leaves us inside hiding in the protection of our home and the air conditioning. The problem with this is that, with growing boys you are either going to help them stay busy, or you are going to be in the middle of a knight, a ninja and Spiderman jumping from couch to couch slinging their swords and shooting their Nerf guns. That can be fun for a while but soon you might start to lose your mind. Setting them in front of a TV is not an option I employ.
I don’t own a TV so my entertainment and information comes from other outlets like books and the internet! Just as I include my children in my household duties like cooking and cleaning, I also include them in my learning. Luckily most children love being read to and usually they are interested in what we are interested in. This is at least true for me. My children love anything homesteading, health, animal, unschooling, and even self-improvement related. So in addition to the children’s books that I read to them, I also read my books to them. There are so many situations I’ve found that I can read to them: at bedtime, while they are playing a game, while camping, while waiting for daddy to run in a store, in hotel rooms, while they are digging in the dirt in the back yard, while they are jumping on the trampoline, at the beach and simply cuddled on the couch together. The opportunities are endless.
Children who are read to frequently early on in life become exposed to the sounds of their native language. This introduction is interesting and exciting to them. They are also introduced to the concept of rhyming, and many other word and language play activities. These skills will serve as a foundation for the development of phoneme and phonics awareness. Children who receive stimulating literacy experiences from birth onward are given an edge with vocabulary development. Their listening skills become polished and acute. They are also given an understanding of the goals of reading. Other skills that may be obtained from being read to are reasoning and cognitive development. Reasoning or logical thinking can be utilized to draw conclusions, especially if you take time to discuss the material you are reading. Cognitive development is furnished when the child processes the information they have acquired. My children don’t understand everything I am reading to them but they are polishing many skills that I may not even realize they are using. It doesn’t matter that the content is not geared for a child. It matters that they are being exposed to a broad vocabulary and given the opportunity to consider ideas, have an opinion, employ their instincts, and try to understand, comprehend and imagine the scene the author is portraying. Reading to your children is one of the simplest activities you can do with and for them.
Something you may have never considered is that there are many audio books that may be on your “to read” list. These are GREAT for road trips or just playing at home while working together to complete chores. I always have something playing while folding laundry or doing the dishes. I may not hear all of it since there are interruptions but I get the gist or essence of it. Right now we are listening to the first one on the list below: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Barbara Kingsolver is so poetic, romantic and graceful in her descriptions. My children are loving listening to her go on and on about apsaragus.
To give you a good idea, some audio books I’ve listened to and plan to listen to that I’ve found at the local library are below. Many of these you can’t even find on Amazon as an audio but the library has them.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From
Nature-Deficit Disorder
Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About
Money – That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will
Talk
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
Other authors to search for are Anthony Robbins, Andrew Weil, Dale Carnegie, Wayne Dyer and more from Robert Kyosaki.
On occasion there is content in my books that I choose to skip over. For example, I believe there were a couple of parts in Dumbing Us Down (best homeschooling book out there IMO) I left out, but I can’t remember what they were since it’s been a while. I only read them a few parts of Anastasia, but they loved the magical parts about nature and the ringing cedars that they got to hear. I don’t read much fiction but I loved that book. If reading your books to your children doesn’t appeal to you, at least you now know how many audio books are awaiting you to listen to them!
