Books

29 June 2013

I love books, we have lots in our house all on built in bookshelves.  Pretty much every room has a bookshelf in it the bathroom is the only exception.  There are shelves in the kitchen for cookery books, in the hall for our outdoor books on climbing, canoeing, wild flowers, birds etc, in the living room they are low down for the children's books and higher up for bigger adult type books.  Our house is not overflowing with them but people do notice them when they come to visit.  Both my children love to read books, my eldest taught himself to read and often leaves a trail of books he has read in a day around the house.  Although they take me a while these days, I always like to have a book on the go.

We are home educating at the moment and I feel that books are an integral part of how we learn as a family.  We meet up at a different friends houses for various activities, play, fun and learning and I am always interested to see what they have on their bookshelves.  Most of these houses are like mine there is a good collection of children's and adults books and a pile somewhere of library books too, all except one.  Even though I have been visiting this house regularly I have never noticed until recently, it is interesting how we don't notice until we actually look, how few books there are, now they seem noticeable by their absence.  I have been pondering their absence recently especially as the eldest child, now nine, is not yet reading and is not remotely interested, I can't help feeling that the lack of books has a part to play.  His mother is becoming concerned that he is not interested.  If we are to encourage a love for books and reading is it not important that they are a part of a child's life,  that they have a collection of their own.  Ones that they can look at at their leisure or have read to them by someone that can read.  That they are accessible to the the child and they have somewhere that they can sit comfortably to read and look.  I realise that there are many many ways of learning but I do feel very strongly that books should pay an integral role.

We have been reading lots about the Romans in this last week as we going off for a trip to Hadrian's Wall, we are camping in the area and will be visiting many of the sites along the wall.  We will update you once we return in the middle of next week!

4 comments:

  1. You are so right. We have mountains of books and all of mine love them, even the littlest boy who isn't reading yet. He will happily sit for ages turning pages and absorbing the pictures. And the library is one of our favourite places to go. I agree that children needs lots of books in the house, and also no electronic screens to distract them! Then they will love reading I think.

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  2. I totally agree, when I was young I was told off at school for reading comics instead of books but I really don't remember us having many books. Nowadays I love them and read most days and my children have hundreds. I have amassed a massive 400+ ladybird books in the children's play area and they love to look through them. We take them to pre school for the theme of the week and the teachers there love seeing them too... I guess that's nostalgia. I have always read to my children and I think this has improved my 4 year old vocab and his love of books. My 1 year old isnt quite ready as she would prefer to rip them up but we look at her board books instead. Sarah xx

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  3. Absolutely, modelling reading is so important. Our house is overflowing with books (and we visit the library, too) and my son (13) is an avid reader.

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  4. I read a quote by Gareth Lewis, who writes about home education a few weeks ago, he said that children who grow up with involved parents in a house with books who have access to nature could never be considered deprived. I really liked that, the idea that it doesn't matter how little our income is, the important things are few and we all have access to them in some way or another.

    Hope your camping trip is lovely.
    x x

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