Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
This was a for-fun book. In December, I read this book called The Woman on the Orient Express. It was a historical fiction about Agatha's life right after her divorce, as she traveled on the Orient Express and was given the inspiration for some of her novels, including Murder on the Orient Express, which really made me want to read it. Then, my brother got it for me for Christmas (without even knowing!). I finished up some of the nonfiction in January and was able to read this one. I really enjoyed it. I want to read more Agatha Christie books.
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
This is a pretty famous book. The "hold it in your hands and if it doesn't give you joy, get rid of it," book. The KonMari method, the one where you fold the shirts the one way. I've been into watching decluttering and organizing videos on YouTube lately and everyone talks about this book and how much they like it, so I thought I'd give it a try.
To be honest, I didn't like it. First of all, she is wacky. Seriously. She treats and talks to stuff like it's alive, a person. I'm dead serious. She thinks you should empty out your purse every night because it's been working so hard carrying your stuff around for you all day and deserves a break. She says that in the book. And it's a common theme throughout the book. I couldn't get past that plus the fact that she talked on and on and kept repeating herself. I think her book could have literally been half as long as it was, which felt like an annoying waste of time when I was reading it.
However, I did get some stuff out of it. One thing I liked was her focus on getting rid of stuff in one fell swoop before putting away anything or trying to organize. I am a big believer in owning less stuff (though I am a natural collector/hoarder, so it's a work in progress). But reading her book did motivate me to go through our house and make a DI run.
One concept that was common throughout the book was the idea of only keeping things that you like (that bring you joy). I like the intentionality of that. I applied this specifically to our books. I love books and reading and want my kids to grow up to be the same, so I collect books. However, after reading this book (and watching some stuff on twaddle--more on that next month, though, since I'm currently reading a book called The Twaddle Free Education), I decided I had some books that I really didn't like. I'm not going to purge my collection down to 50 books or something, because I love books. I like the ownership. That doesn't mean I should keep a book just because it's a book, though. I should only keep books that I really like, that I really want my kids to grow up reading. So, because of this book, I went through our children's books and got rid of any I didn't actually want but was holding onto because they were books. And I actually got rid of quite a few. Now it's easier to find the books we actually enjoy!
The Read-a-Loud Handbook by Jim Trelease
So this was actually a reread. I read this during the summer and absolutely loved it. I think every parent should be required to read this. I have been working on getting a homeschool blog going and this book was very applicable to that, so I decided to refresh my memory and read it again.
The book focuses on the benefits of reading out loud to our children. There are so many! If you only do one thing for your child's education, read out loud to them. The more you read, the bigger your vocabulary, the greater your context awareness (meaning, you understand things like a forest even if you've never been in a forest), and the better your critical thinking skills, which all add up to make it easier and more enjoyable to read more. And again, the more you read ... Children's listening level is actually a few grade levels higher than their actual reading level, so reading out loud even to older children is very beneficial.
I love everything about this book. It reminds me of a paper my newspaper teacher had us fill out at the end of the year. It was a survey type thing. One of the questions was asking about the first book we read and I talked about how my mom would read to us growing up. He commented on my paper that almost every single avid reader and writer (because you don't become a good writer by writing more, you become a good writer by reading more) began with their parents reading to them as they grew up.
One specific point I wanted to mention that I really noticed during this reading was when Trelease talked about television and screen time. His main focus was not on the harmful effects of TV, but rather on the opportunity loss. A little screen time isn't bad, but whenever the child is watching the TV, he isn't doing something else that is more beneficial. This is especially true when looking at how much time a child watches TV versus how much time they spend reading. I really loved this because I've been working really hard at being very intentional about our screen time and cutting down on how often I turn on a TV show for Ashtyn.
And now, because I'm so excited about reading to the girls after rereading this book, we read all the time. After breakfast, we do our devotional (where we read scriptures) and then we pick a book and read it. It's usually a longer children's book. Sometimes we'll read several shorter ones. Parker usually plays for most of it, but she'll stop occasionally to look at the book. Ashtyn just sits and listens most of the time. Then we put Parker down and some days, Ashtyn and I go to the story time at the library, but a lot of time we'll read together just me and her. She really loves this book we have that's a collection of Golden Time Stories. She has her favorites and almost all of them have good sized paragraphs on each page. She will curl up next me and I'll read almost the entire collection. Every time I ask if she wants to do something else, she'll say, "No. Read the next story." It's amazing. Then I put Ashtyn down and have time with just Parker, so I'll put Parker in her high chair for food and read to her while she's in there and she loves it. After I get Ashtyn from her nap (Parker's usually asleep by then), Ashtyn usually asks me to read to her some more (we used to watch shows when she woke up and we still sometimes do, but if I offer to read to her instead, she always chooses that). And then of course, we read to both of them before every nap/bedtime. I love that we have so much time when we can read and that both my girls love us to read to them. I honestly think it's because we've read to them so much since such an early age. We started (with both of the them) when they were not even a week old and haven't missed a day since Ashtyn was three months old (when I really started doing her bedtime routine with a book). And I love it.
Creating Daily Routines by Dolly Freeman
This was a short eBook that I got for signing up for a homeschooling mom's blog. It was really short, but I liked it. One thing it brought up that I really liked was how routines and schedules differ. A routine gives you more flexibility where schedules, because they impose time constraints, are more demanding. I am a huge schedule and routine person, I like things to happen the way they were planned. Because of that, I got my babies on a sleeping and eating schedule as early as possible (brand new newborns physically aren't capable of that, but you'd be surprised how early they are if you gently try). We literally thrive off our routine. We don't have a super strict schedule excepting nap times and bedtimes. It's rare for me to allow something to interrupt those or even cause them to be late.
The main thing I connected with in this book (since we already have a routine that I love set up in our home) was when she talked about "routine robbers". These are things that cause your routines to go out the window. One she talked about was TV. This one is a big one for me. Ben and I have actually talked about this quite a bit, because he isn't as big of a TV person as I am, but I get sucked into it. I can very easily get addicted to TV. There are times in my life when I hardly watch any at all or very little, but once I start watching a little, it's very hard for me to not spend every free second watching it. I have a hard time with moderation, so I actually generally try to just avoid it. When I do get into a TV rut, though, I've noticed I lose motivation to do other things and I end up just doing minimum things (like putting the kids to bed on time and eating something for dinner). It's good to be aware of things like this in our lives.
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