Fabulous Reading Resource

A few weeks ago, I read a review of Reading Eggs on Mary's Homegrown Learners blog.  I was very intrigued by Mary's review and decided to sign us up for a free preview.  I have to say I am VERY impressed with this website.  I ended up purchasing a subscription so I can use it with both of my boys.  There are two main levels:  Reading Eggs for children from the pre-reading stage until about 2nd grade and Reading Eggspress for children from about 2nd grade through 6th grade.

What I like about this as a mom is that I find the activities to be challenging for all age levels.  I feel that each lesson includes many important components of reading instruction including phonics, sight words, vocabulary, and comprehension.  There is a placement test that your child can take to help you decide where they should start.  I felt that my youngest son tested a little low (i.e. the level they placed him in seemed too easy), so I emailed their help desk.  They replied very quickly and explained how I could go about moving him up.  Great customer service!!  I am also REALLY impressed with the difficulty level of the activities for my oldest son.  He reads well above his grade level; however, I sat with him as he did one of his first quizzes and could not believe the critical thinking skills he had to apply in order to answer correctly.

What my sons like about this program is that they receive "golden eggs" for completing their lessons.  These eggs can then be used like money to purchase items for their own little avatars.  They can customize the avatars and each avatar has its own house.  My youngest son (and actually my oldest son too) loves to buy new items for his "guy's" house.  He is actually learning a lot about budgeting because he has to decide if he has enough eggs and whether he should save or spend.  He has been know to do several lessons within as single day in order to accumulate more eggs to spend!!  I feel okay about it because I know he is learning a lot from the lessons.

In all, I highly recommend this program.  My sons are doing lessons from Reading Eggs/Reading Eggspress several times per week as part of their homeschool reading instruction.  Even if you don't homeschool, this would be a really great program to have your child use over the summer so they don't lose their skills.  They will have so much fun they won't even know they're learning.

First Grade Reading: We love Henry and Mudge

It's been a while since I've written about our first grade reader.  I'm excited that he has finally progressed to the point that we are now able to check out library books as his guided reading material.  I will still supplement with some printed books from Reading A-Z, but I think he is very happy to finally be reading primarily out of "real" books.  My older son was extraordinary in that he could pretty much read anything from about age 4 on.  So he didn't really go through the "beginning reading" stage.  One series of beginner books that he always enjoyed, however, was the "Mr. Putter and Tabby" series by Cynthia Rylant.  We own many copies of those books.  I thought they were a BIT advanced for my first grader right now.  He will probably be ready for them in a few months.  I was excited to discover another great beginner series also by Cynthia Rylant, the "Henry and Mudge" books.  Even better was my discovery of a whole bunch of "Henry and Mudge" printables from Homeschoolshare!  Homeschoolshare doesn't have printables for EVERY book in the series (there are 28 books!), but they do have printables for many of them. 

My son would really like to read all the books in this series so I printed out the list shown below from Homeschoolshare.  He can mark off each book as he reads it.  We have been trying to find the first book, but neither of the libraries we visit has that one!!

Below you can see the printables we did for Henry and Mudge in the Sparkle Days.  There was one printable for each chapter of the book.  Filling out a quick summary on the printable after reading the chapter was great writing practice for my first grader.

To help him with organizing his writing, I just used a black marker to draw some "writing" lines inside each printed shape.  This little modification helps so much to keep his words in line.

A great resource for reading instruction

I wanted to pass along a great resource I came across recently.  It's so important for beginning readers to be appropriately matched to "just right" text.  What I mean is that for optimal growth in reading, children should be able to successfully read 90-95% of the words in any given reading passage.  If they struggle over more than 10% of the words, the text is too hard for them.  If they read more than 95% with no errors, the text may be too easy for them.  It's fine for them to read easier texts for fun, but for reading instruction and growth, they need to have some words that they must "solve" in order to become better readers.  This is one reason that I like to use Reading A-Z leveled books because I can be sure that I'm matching my first grader to appropriate text.  Now, however, my little guy is starting to read more fluently and I'm starting to explore using library books for his reading books.  The website I'm sharing is awesome because it lists published books by level.  I printed out the levels that represent the range my son is reading at and I have it in my purse so when we are at the library I have some specific titles to look for.  HERE is the link to the website.  At the top you will see a little table which tells the "letter" level and the corresponding grade level.  If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section.  Hope you find this link useful.

First Grade Reading: Jellyfish Study

 I wanted to share some more about my first grader's reading program.  A few weeks ago I printed off the book Gaggle, Herd and Murder from Reading A-Z for him to read.  He really likes to learn about animals and I knew he would enjoy this book about the names for various groups of animals.  After he read it a few times, I had him choose one of the animals from the book to research.  He chose jellyfish.  In the photo above you can see the printed book and the cover of the lapbook we made about jellyfish.  In the photo below you can see a photo of the page from Gaggle, Herd and Murder that was about jellyfish.

The rest of the photos are of some of the various lapbook components.  All the lapbook pieces are from Homeschoolshare.  We checked out some books about jellyfish from the library and used that information to fill in the mini-books.  This project took us about a week to complete with my little guy writing on 2-3 mini-books each day.  This was a great way to incorporate reading, writing, and science all into one activity.  I think more lapbooks are in our future for sure.  He was proud to show his finished book off to his grandmas.

One of the best things about homeschooling............

...............watching my oldest son reading fiction for pleasure.  YAY!!  I snapped a few quick and sneaky photos of him during his daily 30 minutes of independent reading.  Once he was sitting outside on the deck on a beautiful day (something he couldn't do in public school) and the other time he was all cuddled up under a quilt on my bed (also something he couldn't do in public school).  Reading while cuddled up in bed........a man after my own heart!!

First Grade Reading: Camping Week

I explained my system of planning reading for my first grader in THIS POST.  I thought I'd try to do a post each week sharing another week of our learning together in reading/language arts in case it helps someone else.  Last week our main guided reading text was Our Camping Trip printed from Reading A-Z.  In addition to reading that book, we did some of the worksheets from Reading A-Z which focused on long /i/ words and contractions, both of which were skills taken from the text.  The worksheets are shown in the photos below.  Note that I added the yellow highlighting on the right worksheet.  Although he is very capable of doing so, I didn't think my son was paying close attention to keeping his letters between the lines, so I highlighted the space and told him to make his letters sit in the "yellow".  This is a great way to help children visualize on papers with lots of lines. 

As a writing activity, I had him brainstorm a list of things he would take on a camping trip and I made up a quick little paper for him in Word using clip-art and a table for organizing his list.

I also checked out the book Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping and read it to him one of the days.  Then we talked about the story elements and he dictated them to me as I filled them in on a story map we had printed from Reading A-Z.

I am finding that I really like planning his reading this way.  It's easy to find other literature and poems that correspond to the topics in the guided reading books and I feel this makes his reading experience more integrated and rich.  Can't wait to share what we're up to with his reading this week.........but you'll have to wait until NEXT week to find out!!

Great Graphic Organizers

On Monday of this week I stumbled across a great website with lots of free printable graphic organizers.  I am finding that I like using these a lot with my oldest son as we work on reading comprehension.  When I found this website, I was doing a Google search to find a printable story map with the major literary elements. In addition to finding the story map I wanted, I found a wealth of other resources.  I'll share a few of my favorites now, but I encourage you to visit the site to see what other goodies you can use.  HERE IS THE LINK to the website itself.

Here are a few of the things I printed immediately.  My excitement over this find greatly increase my son's writing workload on Monday, but (bless his heart!) he didn't complain a bit!!

Since the boys and I had gone to the play "Ferdinand the Bull" last week at a local children's theater, I had him fill out this "Play Response" form.  I was planning to have him write about it anyway, but having this great form to write on was better than the blank notebook paper I was planning to have him use.  (NOTE:  All the forms shown here were completed by my fourth grader, not my first grader!)

I thought he did a great job on this.  He really took it seriously and I love the illustration he added in lieu of an actual photo from the play. 

The play was VERY different from the book and I'm sure I could find a great compare/contrast organizer on the website, but for now I'm really happy with how well he summarized the main details of the play.  I also liked that there is a place to circle his "rating" of the play at the bottom.  We are going on a field trip this Friday and I've already downloaded and printed a Field Trip Response form for him to complete next Monday.

I also found this Reading Log form that I like a whole lot.  As you may remember, in addition to reading a piece of literature together (where we work on vocabulary, comprehension, literary elements, etc.), I'm having my fourth grader read an additional book (his choice) for 30 minutes each day just for fun.  I'm not quizzing him on it or having him write about it or anything like that.  The focus is just on reading for readings' sake.  I'm so proud of him for reading three lengthy chapter books so far this year (and he's almost done with the fourth!).  I have been having him just keep a log of the titles of the books, which I'll continue to do so we can keep track of what he's read.  However, after finding this form, I've decided that from this point on I'll have him complete the form when he finishes each "just for fun" book.  It's a quick form to complete and it allows him to categorize the book by genre, rate it, and write a brief summary.  Below is his form for Because of Winn-Dixie, which he just finished last week.

The next photos show some bookmark printables that I found and loved!  I haven't used these yet, but they are just what I needed although I didn't realize it until I saw them!  When we were still doing A World of Adventure, my son and I had talked about the different types of conflict in literature.  Even though we've put AWOA aside for now, I still wanted to continue to help him analyze conflict in future texts that we read.  So.....I'm loving these bookmarks.  I made several copies of the page you see below.  My plan is to cut them out and have them available so he can easily grab them to mark places in the story where he has identified a particular type of conflict.  When finished with a book, the bookmarks used can be stapled together in a group as documentation of our learning and thinking about that particular book.

In our AWOA curriculum, we also talked about the development of plot.  Needless to say, I was thrilled to find a set of "plot" bookmarks.  Again, I've printed up a bunch of these and I'll let him use these to mark where he finds the various stages of plot development in a story.  I'm sure that initially he'll need a lot of assistance from me in how to use these tools, but I am hoping that over time he'll be able to use them himself. 

These examples are only a few of the treasure trove of resources available at Cheryl Sigmon's website.  Be sure to visit and check it out!!

How I plan for my first grader's reading block

I wanted to write a post to explain how I've been planning reading for my first grader in case it might help some of you out there.  As a former special education teacher who worked with struggling readers, I have pretty firm beliefs about what components should be included daily for beginning readers to build a solid foundation of reading and writing skills.  Therefore, our reading/language arts (R/LA) block each day has the same general components or activities which include:  writing, guided reading, re-reading, working with words, and independent reading.  During our R/LA block I work directly with my little guy for the most part.  We can usually complete everything in about 45 minutes give or take, and I don't usually time it, so that's an estimate.  During the time I work with my first grader, my fourth grader is doing his own 30 minutes of independent reading from a self-selected text as well as reading the next chapter of our focus literature text.

We usually start with writing, but not for any particular reason.   I am using my son's interest in Legos to encourage his writing.  To start the school year I had him create a scene with his Legos.  Then I had him act out the scene.  I took "action" photos as he moved the pieces and narrated the story.  Then I printed all the photos out on printer paper, one per page, and he wrote his own book using his ideas and his own Lego creation as a basis for the story.  He wrote one page per day until this book was finished.  Below you can see the first page of the book.  He never complained once about writing!!  He finished his fire truck story and is now working on writing a page each day in a Lego Mini-Figure book I made for him.  He writes two sentences in this book each day.  I'll try to remember to post photos of that book sometime soon.

Guided reading is a "teacher" term that simply means reading with some adult support.  I use printed books from Reading A-Z as the basis for my first grader's guided reading texts right now because most readers that are commercially available for young readers are either a.) too phonetic or b.) too hard.  Reading A-Z offers a range of printable books with lesson plans (which I don't use, but they're very well-done) for the most beginning readers (one or two words per page) through about the fifth grade reading level.  For my example in this post, I'm showing the book Scaredy Crow, which I chose as our focus text last week. Once I selected that core text, we pulled skills from it throughout the week which I'll show in a minute.  The first day, my son and I looked through the book at the pictures and talked about the story.  I pointed out a few words I knew he wouldn't know and also told him and pointed out the names of the main characters.  We also talked about some features of the text such as quotation marks around the words the characters spoke.  Then I had him do his "first reading" of the book.  The next day and one other day during the week he re-read it to me.  More about that below.  In the photo you can see the book along with a cut and paste worksheet I found with -ow words.  Since the book made reference to "scarecrows" and "crows", we used -ow words for some of our word work this week.  

 Re-reading previously read texts is very important for emerging readers and may be something you haven't thought to have your students do.  Here's why it's so important.  The first time a child reads a new text, they are focusing so much on pulling the words off the page that their fluency (how smoothly they read) does not have a chance to develop.  Additionally, they are working so hard to solve unknown words that their comprehension may be somewhat affected as well.  So.......be sure to have them go back and re-read at least short bits of text they've previously read.  I always have my little guy re-read a new book at least one time.  Poems are also a great type of text to re-read several times because their rhythmic nature can really facilitate reading fluency.   This week I found two poems about crows and scarecrows online.  I printed them out and read them to my first grader on Day 2 of our week.  I had him select the one he wanted to learn, then we read it together a few times.  He continued to practice this poem throughout the week and read it to his grandmas on the weekend.  And boy did his fluency improve!!!  I had him illustrate the poem and we'll put it into a poetry binder along with other poems we use and learn in this way.

Our "word work" time each day always consists of working with both sight words and decodable words in some way.  I wrote some about our sight words and word wall in this post.  Each day we review the sight words on his "word ring" and practice spelling them in some way (i.e. writing on marker board, writing with gel pens on black paper, spelling with magnet letters, stamping with letter stamps).  Additionally, we do more word work either with a lesson from All About Spelling (3 times per week) and/or with a skill I've pulled from our focus text.  This week as I said above, we worked on words with -ow (long o sound) since it tied into our story and poem for the week.  One day I spelled the word scarecrow with our magnet letter tiles (on a burner cover........these are great, cheap magnet boards!) and had him rearrange the letters to make new words, then he wrote those words in his spelling notebook.

One final extension we did this week was making a "scarecrow" book.  I found a simple graphic in Microsoft Word and printed three pages with the text "My scarecrow can scare away _________" and my first grader filled in an animal name and drew it next to the scarecrow.  The last page said, "But he doesn't scare me!!"   You can see one of his pages below.

So that's how I plan a well-rounded, interest-driven reading program for my little guy.  I'm really happy so far with how it's going.

OOPS!  I almost forgot!  I also have him read for about 15-20 minutes to himself each day.  He can choose any of the books we've done with guided reading, but he usually chooses from a box of Scholastic Lego Readers that we have.  One funny thing........he loves to go into his little "reading cave" to do this.  He uses a laundry basket with blankets draped over the top and sits inside to do his reading.  Luckily, I can hear him reading inside the cave so I know he's not just chilling out in there!!  The photo below shows his little reading cave.  In this photo he's sitting on a chair in our schoolroom, but now he usually sets it all up on the end of the couch.  His little stuffed kitties go inside the cave with him and he lines it with pillows, then puts his box of books in the laundry basket part.  He sure couldn't read this way in public school!!  It's great to be a homeschooler!!!

So here's the deal..........

In THIS POST I explained that I have been considering making some changes to our program for this year.  I've now made those changes and I feel SO MUCH BETTER about what we're doing!!  I promised to explain what I'd decided, so I'll do that now.

Our major change is that I've decided to put aside A World of Adventure for a few years until both of my boys fall into the age range that is intended for which is 4th through 8th grade.  I was having a hard time with the difficulty of the literature selections even for my oldest son.  And it was also really hard for me to keep my youngest son involved.  The publisher does offer a companion curriculum for adapting it for younger students.  Still, I feel sure that the direction we have chosen to take is best for us this year.  I want to restate that I do think AWOA is a really great curriculum.  We were not unhappy with it; it just wasn't a good fit for us at this time.

For my oldest son's literature I am going to let him choose which chapter books we'll read.  Now we are working on The Cricket in Time Square.  I'll write a whole post on our work with that book once we've finished.  I love this book so much and am so glad he chose it.  George Seldin's writing and characters remind me a lot of E.B. White who I also love as an author.

For language arts we are adding in Easy Grammar (4th and 5th grade level).  We've just barely started this.  I had managed to get a copy for a great price at a used curriculum sale this summer.  I am also considering Winning with Writing for a writing curriculum for him.  It is very reasonably priced and looks really good.

For history we are going to use The Story of the World.  I already had Volume 1 and the Activity Guide and was originally planning to use it before I chose AWOA instead.  We have done the first chapter this week and are LOVING it!!!  I will be posting more about it soon.  With all the references in the AG I'm easily able to add extra reading and writing for my 4th grader to amp up the challenge for him.  I'm SO excited about this!

Another change I'm really excited about is that this week (tomorrow) we'll be starting a new science curriculum.  Again, I had originally wanted to use Real Science Odyssey from Pandia Press for science.  Then I chose AWOA and decided not to order.  Through the end of September Pandia Press is offering a discount on their ebooks and I jumped on it and ordered the Chemistry curriculum.  It is intended for Grades 2-5, but the labs are hands-on and the text is written just right for children so I think my first grader will do fine with a bit of help on some of the lab sheets.  My husband (who has a PhD in science) teaches science to the boys on Thursday mornings while I teach Kindermusik in our home studio.  He'll do one lab with them a week and I'll do one.  I have to admit that I'm so excited about this curriculum that I'm a bit disappointed I don't get to do it all.  Admittedly, he's way more qualified than me to answer their questions!!

I can't tell you  how much better I feel now.  When I made my curriculum decisions last spring as a new homeschooler I really wanted something I could open to tell me what to do each day, especially for my oldest.  Even though I'm a certified, licensed teacher and have taught for 20 years, this made me feel better.  What I should have know is that even when I taught in public and private school settings, I ALWAYS had to tweak everything and add in lots of my own activities and ideas.  It's just the way I love to teach.  The changes I've made much better reflect how I love to plan and teach.  So it's all good.  Can't wait to post more soon! 

Word Wall

 Increasing sight word vocabulary is a daily part of my reading/language arts program with my first grader.  I have word lists from our local school district for kindergarten and first grade.  He had mastered the kindergarten list last year as a public school kindergartener.  I used the lists to assess the first grade sight words he already knew.  Then, each week, I'm adding about 5 "new" words for him to learn.  I am taking these from the unknown words from our first grade sight word list as well as words he doesn't know from the guided reading books we read each day.  His "new" words are added to his "word ring" and he does various things each day to practice them such as stamping them on paper, writing them on a marker board or building them with letter cubes or magnet letters.  I wanted a place where he could refer to these words during writing and also a place where all his "known" words would be easily accessible for more "word work" activities.  I decided to use a folding presentation board (I bought it at Hobby Lobby) and turn it into a portable "word wall."  Many early elementary classrooms have a "word wall" of frequently used words and I think its a very valuable addition to any classroom, including home based classrooms.  I didn't have the wall space in our schoolroom to devote to a word wall, but the presentation board is the perfect solution since it folds flat when not in use.

I used shipping labels (cut in half) to print my alphabet letters.  Then I printed all the words he's already mastered on those teeny tiny return address labels.  These labels come 100 to a sheet and their size is perfect for the presentation board.  In my previous life as a special education teacher, I had a word wall with words that had velcro on the back and attached to a felt-covered bulletin board.  That way as we added new words we could reorganize the existing words in alphabetical order.  With the printed labels, I didn't worry about ABC order.  Some of our "word work" each week will involve having him pick a letter and alphabetize the words beginning with that letter on a separate piece of paper.  I am really happy with how this turned out and I'll post more in the future to let you know how we are using the board.

Taking a little detour

We are now about 4 weeks into our homeschool journey.  Overall, things are going very well.  However, after reflecting a bit about the curriculum I've chosen and how it's working/not working for us, we are making a few changes.

As you may know if you've read my curriculum page, I chose A World of Adventure from Learning Adventures as my main curriculum for my oldest son who is in fourth grade.  In hindsight, I admit that I chose it because it reflects the kind of education that I wanted to give him and I liked the fact that Dorian (the author) had done all the work for me so I could just open to "today's" lesson and be good to go.  I should have known myself and my child better than that, but I'm sure that many a homeschool-newbie has followed this same path or something similar.  Before I go on to explain some of the changes we're making, please know that I think this is an excellent curriculum and as of now we are not abandoning it entirely.  It's good stuff.

So............here's what's going on.  First of all, I really wanted a curriculum that presented history in a chronological manner and I really, really wanted the literature we read to correlate with the history period we were focusing on.  AWOA completely fit the bill in this department and that's largely why I chose it.  The first six-week unit in AWOA is Ancient Egypt, and the main literature selection is The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw.  The literature selection is recommended to be read aloud and then there are comprehension questions for discussion in addition to vocabulary and written language assignments.  Although my son was not complaining (bless his heart!), I soon realized that this particular text is pretty advanced for a fourth grader to easily comprehend, even when it's being read aloud.  Keep in mind that my fourth grader is a gifted learner.  And still, I found that it was really hard for him to keep track of the characters and all the details of the plot.  So I asked my mom for advice.  She taught reading and language arts in the upper elementary grades for MANY years and is truly the voice of experience.  She basically confirmed to me what I already knew.........my son would not make gains in reading comprehension from a text that was too difficult nor would he grow to love literature (remember, he's a non-fiction kid) if only presented with texts that are either a.) too difficult or b.) not interesting to him or c.) both a and b.  Essentially, she gave me permission to abandon the book entirely and try to find something that my son was more interested in and that was better suited for him.  And I had to get over my need to have our literature align with our history study.  Which was a bit hard, but I'm over it now. :-)

Luckily, my mom (the veteran retired teacher and lover of books) had a whole stash of great upper elementary chapter books in her basement.  I hauled about 12 to 15 home and the next day I allowed my son to (gasp!) read the cover blurbs and choose which book he would read next.  (Sidenote:  The Book Whisperer author would be so proud of me.  I actually heard her voice whispering in my ear as we made this transition.  I'm totally serious.)

So now we are happily reading The Cricket in Times Square by George Seldin.  I LOVED this book as a child.  Fortunately there are a ton of free resources for this book online.  For example, Lesson Pathways has a really comprehensive list of very cool activities and links to enhance a child's experience with this book.  THIS LINK has been invaluable as it has an online quiz for each chapter as well as activities, vocabulary and English lessons.  I've been having my son take the online quiz after reading each chapter.  In a future post I'll share what we're doing with the vocabulary lists.  I haven't used much yet from THIS link, but it looks like a bunch of good stuff.  And of course there is a great bunch of resources at Homeschoolshare.  Many of them are for making a lapbook.  I'm not yet sure if we'll be doing a lapbook.  If so, I'll be sure to post about it.

I feel much better about our literature now that we've made this switch.  I think The Golden Goblet is a really wonderful book.  In fact, I may finish it myself to see what happens.  We may just hold off a few years and try it again.  As of now, I'm not sure how we'll be using AWOA.  After abandoning the literature component, my plan was to continue using it for our study of history as well as for some of the science units it includes.  However, the further I go into this journey, the more I find myself wanting to tap into my children's interests and to build learning experiences around those topics.  I'm realizing that by randomly (although it was far from random..........weeks and weeks of research went into my curricular choices!) choosing curriculum without considering their interests and needs, what I am offering them is really not a whole lot different than what they'd get in public school.  So I'm taking some time to reflect on this realization and to think about what it means for us and what direction I want to go next in our exciting journey.  I'll be sure to post more on what transpires very soon!!

I'd love to hear from you if you've had similar issues.  I am 100% positive that I'm not the only one!! 

Food for Thought

I recently ordered (and very recently finished reading) The Book Whisperer:  Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller.  I first became aware of this book when Nicole from Journey to Excellence blogged about it over the summer.   My youngest son (6 years old) is an emerging reader, and my oldest son (almost 10 years old) is a very gifted reader.  However, my oldest generally prefers to read only non-fiction.  While I'm happy that he is so eager to devour any and all information he can glean from non-fiction texts, as a book-lover, I really want to try to nurture his love for literature during our homeschool time together. 

Although this book is written by a classroom teacher and is intended primarily (I assume) for a classroom teacher audience, I really found it full of food for thought as I plan for our reading together this year.  A few points that hit home with me as a homeschool mama are:


1.)  Requiring children to only read books that we adults choose for them can kill their love of reading.  Miller requires her sixth grade language art students to read 40 books each year and also has genre requirements; however, her students have a great deal of freedom to choose which books they will read.  This makes me determined to find a genre that my oldest son can connect with and (hopefully) grow to love.  I was the girl who nearly always had her nose in a book all the way from late elementary on.

2.)  Requiring children to do a lot of "busywork" or to complete a lot of assigned activities for each book they read can kill their love of reading.  I completely get Miller's point about this.  It's a bit of a hard one for me because as a former public school teacher, I love the idea of doing a bunch of fun little "projects" to go along with the books we read.  However, if I look at it from my own perspective as a reader, I would be much less inclined to read on my own if I had to complete a bunch of work for each book.  So it totally makes sense.

3.)  More than anything our goal should be to instill a life-long love of reading in our children.  This is more important than skills or tests.  I can completely embrace this.  I do want my children to love books as much as I do.

I really recommend this book whether you are a classroom teacher, a homeschool mama, or just a lover of books.  It gives a lot of great insight and (for those of you who love data) the philosophy put forth by Ms. Miller is supported by decades of research in best practices for reading instruction. 

Have any of you read this book?  If so, what did you think?