Read alouds.

We've always done a bunch of read-alouds.  For years that has been what we do right before bed.  Lately, it's often been audiobooks and when we do audiobooks and I don't have to read, I've  been art journaling.  When we got to the Percy Jackson book Mark of Athena, my daughter decided to do the reading.  We're past that book now but she has been reading every night.  It's very cool.  It is helping her with some pronunciations of some  obscure words (last night's words for lariat which I could help with and some of the ancient Egyptian gods names that I couldn't help with.) If we listen to the recorded audio books, then we can get some of those right.  I enjoy the Percy Jackson series because they have so much humor in them and they teach a lot of ancient history.  I don't like that everyone has to have a boyfriend/girlfriend even the 12 year-olds.  Also, the fact that the gods have all of these illegitimate children is weird but is how the mythology went.   I went looking for a quote that I've posted before but the quote turned out to be the last 2 lines of an entire poem.  I may frame this and put it in the house somewhere.



I had a mother who read to me
Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea.
Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth;
“Blackbirds” stowed in the hold beneath.
I had a Mother who read me lays
Of ancient and gallant and golden days;
Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,
Which every boy has a right to know.
I had a Mother who read me tales
Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales,
True to his trust till his tragic death,
Faithfulness lent with his final breath.
I had a Mother who read me the things
That wholesome life to the boy heart brings-
Stories that stir with an upward touch.
Oh, that each mother of boys were such!
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be –
I had a Mother who read to me.
Strickland Gillilan