How we homeschooled today #92
Recommendations urgently needed for overcoming Reader’s Block
If I had to describe today in one word, that word would be: Meh.
Luckily Substack has no word limits, so I’ll expand…
Today was meant to be one of two days this week spent entirely at home, because the children (aged 6 and nearly 8) get pretty grumpy if we have too much time out of the house. They also get pretty grumpy if we have too much time in the house. It’s a balancing act.
First thing this morning there was yet more Duplo play, and both of them read their Beverly Cleary books (which is quite sweet, because now they’re both reading them they can giggle at all the funny bits together.) Having initially been thrilled that my daughter loved these books so much, I am now getting worried that she might never read anything else—she’s now on her third go at reading the entire Ramona series.
They weren’t thrilled when I said it was time to do some work. My daughter did a page of her Jolly Learning book, and my son traced …(checks notes)… three letters of his Beowulf handwriting practice. I suggested to my daughter that maybe she’d like me to make handwriting practice sheets for her too, because she wants to learn cursive writing. She asked me to copy out sentences from… Ramona. She copied two words.
They each wrote out one spelling. Grudgingly.
After a break I changed tactics and gave up on the desk work. I suggested we all snuggle on the sofa for some reading aloud. I read about tsunamis and hurricanes in Ocean Atlas, and we looked at some pages from The Story of the Vikings Picture Book (internet activities linked to this book here). My daughter and I played a maths game from Tiny Polka Dot, and she did a little Khan Academy. My son read Flat Stanley.
This afternoon I read to them from a book about the Black Death, and then they used maths cubes to build swords, and had playfights. The play got progressively less friendly until my husband took the children into the garden for fresh air and a run around. It lasted for five minutes before the whingeing drove him mad and they all came in for a movie. By this point I was feeling pretty unfriendly myself and was out of the front door before they’d even pressed play.
I took myself off to a bookshop, which only made me grumpier. Does anyone else get reader’s block? I can’t get into a good book and it’s putting me in a bad mood. I have a book voucher to spend and I cannot find a single book I want to spend it on. The lack of a good book makes me grumpy, and being grumpy makes me less likely to find a good book. HELP! Please send recommendations for this under-recognised but debilitating condition.
But while I was flicking through dozens of books that I didn’t want to buy, I came across this little gem in Ryan Holiday’s book, The Daily Dad:
[In Mastery, Robert Greene]… tells the story of the compass that Albert Einstein’s father gave him as a present when he was five years old:
“Instantly, the boy was transfixed by the needle, which changed direction as the compass moved about. The idea that there was some kind of magnetic force that operated on this needle, invisible to the eyes, touched him to the core.”
At the core of most of these stories are a few key ingredients: Luck. Openness. Curiosity. And, of course, often a parent who actively exposed their kid to different things.
It’s your child’s job to figure out what they want to do in life. No parent can or should make their child master anything. But it is your job, especially when they’re young, to open their eyes, to introduce serendipity into the equation, to expose them to all the possibilities that life has to offer.
Show them what’s out there. Help them discover.
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I have no idea whether we share similar tastes, but here are some thoughts:
- My go-to is P.D. James as a sort of "palate cleanser" - I love her use of language, the mysteries are always intriguing.
- For classic reading, why not try a short story? I just finished An International Episode by Henry James, and am reading The Haunted Man by Dickens
- The "newest" novel I read was All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, as well as my husband's Exogenesis (in case you are into dystopian sci-fi a la Brave New World).
- For non-fiction I can recommend "Weapons of Mass Instruction" by Gatto and Stolen Focus by Johann Hari.
All the best in overcoming your block :)
These days, if I have Reader's Block, I pick up some middle grade novel I didn't make it to as a child. It's quick and usually satisfying and, like Ruth said, doesn't ask too much of me. But there I've gone and finished the book in a day or two and am feeling back in the groove.