Book Month

On Wednesday mornings, we have the Ladies' Study at the church. Because we have a large number of homeschool families, part of our child care is the homeschool room. This is my responsibility, and I love it.

I actually have 2 rooms: grades 1-3 (formerly grades 1-4, but it became necessary to move the grade 4 student up to the big kids' room, much to their delight) and grades 4 and up. For the first hour, I teach the little kids while the big kids do school work, and then in the second hour we switch.

Every month I have a theme of sorts for what I'm teaching them. September/October we combined into church history months, culminating with Martin Luther on Reformation Day. November was geography month, and they did country projects. December we were off. January was astronomy month, and we had fun learning about stars and planets and the size of our solar system and galaxy.

This month is book month. I told them to bring books to read (or look at for my smallest students). For the smaller students, I had them read quietly for the first 30 minutes, and then my helper read them a story, and I finished with another story. The big kids had to read for the first 30 minutes, and then had a choice to keep reading or to start writing/drawing a book. I wouldn't let them just sit and colour; the choice was "read a book or make a book".

I have never heard my homeschool rooms so quiet, even the little guys (although it was a bit noisier as they can't all read in their heads just yet so there was a lot of whisper reading). It was beautiful, and I got to relax and read as well. I'm pretty sure this was my best idea yet. I wonder if we can keep book month going for the rest of the year?