Sarah (00:01):
Not sure what to read aloud next? Let me help. Go to readaloudrevival.com/quiz or text quiz to the number 33777 and I’ll help you pick. In two minutes, I’ll have a personal book recommendation just for you and your kids. Give it a try, it’s free, it’s fast and I’m positive I’ve got a good recommendation for you. Readaloudrevival.com/quiz or text the word quiz to the number 33777.
(00:45):
You’re listening to the Read-Aloud Revival podcast. I’m your host Sarah Mackenzie, homeschooling mama of six and author of the Read Aloud Family and Teaching From Rest. As parents, we’re overwhelmed with a lot to do. It feels like every child needs something different. The good news is, you are the best person to help your kids learn and grow and home is the best place to fall in love with books. This podcast has been downloaded 7 million times in over 160 countries, so if you want to nurture warm relationship while also raising kids who love to read, you’re in good company. We’ll help your kids fall in love with books and we’ll help you fall in love with homeschooling. Let’s get started.
(01:37):
Hello, hello, welcome to episode 160. We’re doing something a little different today. Recently we did a live event for Read-Aloud Revival Premium members about what we’ll be up to in Premium this fall. Now, hopefully you know that RAR Premium is our online community where we help your kids fall in love with books and we help you fall in love with homeschooling. In Premium, we provide resources for mamas, usually master classes and Circle with Sarah sessions, those are both professional development for the homeschooling parent as well as seasonal Mama Book Clubs.
(02:16):
And then we also have resources for kids, primarily our Family Book Club which you can use with kids of all ages all together as a family and also WOW: Writers on Writing workshops that breathe life into your child’s writing. Our fall lineup is really wonderful and the RAR team hopped on a live Zoom with our members to show them our lineup for September, October and November. We’d thought you’d enjoy this too if for nothing else to get some top notch book recommendations but also so that you know what you can look forward to in RAR premium these next few months.
(02:56):
I’m going to air the audio segment from that live fall reveal here in today’s show. But first, we’ve got an excellent question from podcast listener Corrie.
Corrie (03:09):
Hi Sarah, I’m wondering if you can answer a question for me. As I’m planning through things for my nine-year-old this year, I’m thinking through reading and trying to keep a balance between encouraging him to read good books but also not wanting to kill his love of reading. He loves reading Calvin & Hobbs and graphic novels and I’m looking through some curriculum I’m going to be using for writing and it has some great literature connected with it and yet I don’t want to just assign him a bunch of books to read all year because I’m afraid that’s going to kill it for him.
(03:49):
While he can read books like The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe without a co-op, we won’t be in that co-op this year. I don’t want to kill it for him and I’m just wondering if you can speak to the balance of assigning great books to your kids for reading for school and yet still giving them the opportunity to read their own things and not killing it by assigning things he doesn’t want to read. Thanks so much for your input and all you do on Read-Aloud Revival.
Sarah (04:23):
Yeah, this is an excellent question Corrie and I think it’s worth considering because we really do want our kids to love reading more each time they put down a book, not less. So many of us had experiences as kids where the books we were assigned for school didn’t feed our love of reading, they did the opposite, right? We weren’t sneaking under the covers with a flashlight, we were speeding through them to get through them as fast as we can to get them over with if we were reading them at all, right?
(04:53):
This is so important, in fact, that we’ve got a whole class dedicated to exactly this topic coming in RAR Premium this September. It’s called Assigning Books to Preserve Your Child’s Love of Reading. That is to say assigning books for school in such a way that it doesn’t kill your kid’s desire to read. It’s a big topic and an important one and I think there are several different strategies we can use here, so I’d invite you to join us in that Circle with Sarah session happening in RAR Premium in September. Of course the replay will be available in the RAR Premium library afterward like everything else because I think it’ll be really helpful.
(05:34):
For now, let me give you one idea and I would encourage you to consider taking this tip from Donalyn Miller’s book The Book Whisperer and that is to provide some time during the school day for free voluntary reading. Making sure that they have time set aside during the school day that counts as school to read what they want to read. Now, what Donalyn does with her students and she’s a public school teacher, what she does is she assigns a certain number of books to be read during the school year.
(06:03):
And she also assigns genres and I don’t know exactly what those numbers are currently that she’s assigning, but you have to read this many books in the school year, four of them have to be classics, four of them have to be historical fiction, four of them have to be fantasy, four of them have to be sci-fi, that kind of thing and you can of course make those number varied however you want. The idea is that it gives your kids the chance to develop the ability to choose books for themselves. That’s a really important skill and it’s one we want our kids to develop as they grow into adult readers.
(06:37):
It also gives them some agency and autonomy in what they read which I think increases the chance they’re going to enjoy it. And if you assign genres, that helps break them out of ruts so they’re not always choosing the same kind of book, widens their reading experience, but you had mentioned wanting your child to read a lot of great books, so you could have him read a certain number of classics. Now, I’ve done this in a few different ways, one of the ways that I’ve done is that I will give my choice. So I’ll say, you’re going to read one of these classics this year and I’ll give them three options and then they get to read the flap cover copy and then decided which one sounds the most interesting to them and then they get to read it during their free voluntary time.
(07:16):
So trying to make it so they have buy-in. Every time we hand a book to our kids and say you must read this, I think we lose something in that buy-in and that internal motivation. It doesn’t mean you can’t ever do it, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t ever work, I’m just saying if you want to stack the odds in favor of your kid loving the book then we want them to have a little buy-in right out the get-go.
(07:38):
Like I said, we’re going to dive deeper into what this can look like. Different strategies you can use to help your kids love reading more after their assigned reading, not less, in a homeschool setting in our September homeschool professional development class Circle with Sarah in RAR Premium, I hope you join us. I think it’s so important that we cultivate joy in our children’s reading lives. In fact, I would go on a limb and say I think it might be the most important thing they take away from their entire school experience.
(08:09):
The knowledge, understanding and personal experience of being able to say I am a reader and reading brings me joy and pleasure in lots of different ways. I lose myself in books, I learn from books, I grow and connect with new ideas in books, that’s what we want them to leave with. And if they leave with that, they are so equipped for what comes next. So anyway, thank you so much for your question Corrie, it was an excellent question.
(08:39):
Okay, so let’s go ahead and listen to the fall reveal where we pulled up the curtain. It was so mysterious, I wouldn’t even show any of the premium members the printed calendar ahead of time. I didn’t want them to know the books we were reading or the guests we were having to come to teach our classes because it’s so exciting to reveal them. We’re going to go ahead and listen to that fall reveal. Like I said, whether you join us in RAR Premium or not, you will get some top notch book recommendations from this episode for sure because we always choose the best books we can for our Read-Aloud Revival Premium picks.
(09:15):
And if you’d like to add joy to your homeschool year and to be in a like-hearted community that is dedicated to growing great relationships with our kids and having successful homeschools that we enjoy, we would love to have you in RAR Premium. That is what we do. You can join us by going to rarpremium.com. All right, here we go.
(09:37):
It is going to be fun today because we are going to tell you all the things we’ve got coming for the fall. Kortney, do you want to introduce yourself first for anybody who hasn’t met you yet?
Kortney (10:04):
Sure, I’m Kortney Garrison and I’ve been working with Sarah at RAR since like 2015 which is a long time now, it’s like the years keep adding up somehow. I’m the Community Director and that means that I do lots of behind the scenes work with email and support questions and stuff in the forum and then lots of planning and brainstorming and organizing behind the scenes. My oldest is 13, almost 14 and then an 11-year-old and a 7-and-a-half-year old and we’ve been homeschooling from the beginning. And things are pretty relaxed, obviously book centered curriculum here, but yeah, that’s us.
Sarah (10:50):
Yeah, I cannot believe we’ve been working together for five years, that’s wild. Fun story everybody is that Kortney and I connected to work together when I was asking Kortney for breastfeeding advice because I had a new baby and I was not sure what was going on and I knew she used to be La Leche League Leader. And so she just left some comments on my old blog and I reached out and that’s God for you.
Kortney (11:16):
True, it’s true. And a really great thing is that Kara was a La Leche League Leader as well, so it’s just like in our blood. We’re here to help.
Sarah (11:26):
Some places require that you have a college degree, at Read-Aloud Revival we require that you … I’m just kidding. Kara, do you want to introduce yourself?
Kara (11:33):
Sure, I’m Kara, I am a former La Leche League Leader, so I can keep my job. And currently I am Podcast Manager for the Read-Aloud Revival which I absolutely love because I get to research our guests and learn all about the amazing work that they do. And do all kinds of behind the scene stuff, put together the transcripts that are looking so pretty nowadays, everything is looking so pretty and new lately. And show notes and things like that and just lots of working with podcast details and I have two kids, I have a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old. We’ve homeschooled since almost the beginning, I quit once because these things happen.
Kortney (12:22):
They happen.
Kara (12:24):
But now we’ve been going for a really long time and my son just found out that he qualified for dual enrollment at the college here this year, so it’s working you guys. I don’t know how, it’s working.
Sarah (12:36):
It’s so awesome, dual enrollment was an excellent experience for our oldest who’s now going to university at the same place she was doing dual enrollment, so exciting and our next one’s going to do dual enrollment this next year too, so I bet your son’s going to love it. So today we are so excited to share with you guys our fall lineup, so we’re going to be telling you our Circle with Sarah topics, our Family Book Club topics, our Mama Book Club topic which some of you probably already figured out from our poll in the forum and our WOW workshops because we’re going to keep doing those. So we’re just going to jump right in, we also have giveaways. So, do we have a link to the giveaway Kort or not?
Kortney (13:17):
To enter the giveaway?
Sarah (13:19):
Yeah, just in case anyone didn’t do it yet.
Kortney (13:21):
I can grab that.
Sarah (13:22):
She loves it when I give her things to do right at the last second.
Kortney (13:25):
When I’m on camera.
Sarah (13:31):
This is where my little halo comes up. If you had not gotten a chance to enter the giveaway, we’re going to be giving away books away just for fun. So Kortney, should we start with Circle with Sarah?
Kortney (13:41):
Sure. This a brand new thing this year, we’ve been doing Circle with Sarah which is our time to gather together and to talk about how we can fall more in love with our homeschool and find the real tools and communities to make those abstract things work in the day-to-day. So, for September we thought that’s the time when people start thinking about school and lots of us will be changing our summertime easy routine into more fall-ish school stuff and so that’s the time when people start making reading lists and assigning reading and that can be the thing that kills the joy of reading. In the summertime we’ve been free reading and everybody’s been happy and the book piles are piling up and then in the fall that tamps down as we start suggesting things.
(14:31):
So we’re going to talk about how to assign books without killing the love of reading and what else? Ah, the importance of always keeping a space in our schedule for that pre-reading. So we have a tendency to schedule our days out, but to give that full time so that kids have time to approach their own reading with plenty of time.
Sarah (15:03):
One of the things that I think is so important is we want our kids to leave our homeschool or leave their reading life as kids loving reading more and not less which is often times the exact opposite of the experience that a lot of us had, anyway, with assigned reading in school. We’re going to talk about ways that we can do better than maybe was done to us with assigned reading. So yeah, that’s September and again, those Circle with Sarahs happen on the first Friday of each month. Actually in September it’s the second Friday because we didn’t want to interrupt your Labor Day weekend.
Kortney (15:33):
That’s another I thing I think that’s happening, I didn’t double check this, but starting in September we’re going to start scheduling things, Office Hours will move to the third week, I believe. So we’re going to have Circle with Sarah the first week, second week will be the WOW workshops, third week will be Office Hours and then fourth week will be our author access events. So it goes back and forth from a mama themed event to a kid themed event which I think is really good to help us enact our priorities. That we need to fill up ourselves before we can pour out for our kids and that everybody is getting filled up.
Sarah (16:08):
Okay, so that’s September Circle, what about October Circle?
Kortney (16:11):
October, the newness of school has worn off and we’re four weeks in or six weeks in and were maybe only have done three weeks of curriculum and so if we keep on at this pace, things are not going to end in May where we thought they might. But the good news is, almost everything is fixable. So, no matter where you are or what deficits you’re coming up against, there are ways to fix it, but the other side of that coin is not everything needs fixing.
Sarah (16:46):
Not everything needs fixing. So I think the key is figuring out what actually needs to be fixed and what will work its way out without us getting too wrapped up about it.
Kortney (16:58):
And then how to deal with maybe the anxiety that comes up when we think about not fixing everything. So, I think that’ll be a good one.
Sarah (17:08):
Yup, I think so too. And then November, I’m excited about Novembers.
Kortney (17:12):
November is called the Seashell Approach: An Invitation to Wonder and it’s all about how we approach what it is that we’re doing as homeschoolers. What it is to be a teacher or a mentor, how we come alongside our kids and invite them in to wonder and how that creates a really rich and nourishing atmosphere where deep authentic learning can take place.
Sarah (17:49):
Okay, so let’s talk about the other thing for mamas coming up this fall which is our book club, Kara you want to tell us about that?
Kara (17:55):
Yes and I love how Kortney put that, that we need invest in ourselves and fill our cup so that we can give to our families in the way that we want to. And I think book club is such a wonderful way to do that, especially right now when maybe we can’t get together with other mamas as much as usual and talk these things through. So, it’s going to be really good to be able to talk through the book, The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. Donalyn Miller is a reading teacher and her whole goal is to help kids become these veracious readers who just love books, like Sarah said, love books more after each book that they’ve read. And in Donalyn’s life, she wants her kids to leave her classroom just craving books and having a really exciting reading life.
(18:48):
So those ideas really mesh well of course with what we do here at Read-Aloud Revival, so we’re going to read the book and we are going to discuss how to make her ideas applicable to the home and to homeschooling because her book is written for classroom teachers, but we’re going to just look at it and take the ideas and figure out how we can make it work in our own home.
Sarah (19:11):
I’m flipping through this book and seeing how many notes, I don’t know if you can see all my notes in the margins, there are so many notes in the margins and actually one of these notes says, “I don’t think this is true.” I’m agreeing with her and I’m arguing with her which is what you should do with a book you read, right? But as I was reading this book the first time, I realized this so … I feel like it jives so much with what we do at Read-Aloud Revival which with the kind of homeschools that so many of us are trying to build for our kids, the reading lives. But her ideas are very classroom focused, so I think in our book club it’ll be fun for us to read each of her ideas and then brainstorm and unpack how that can work in our homeschools in our homes.
Kortney (19:51):
You know what, let’s give away some books.
Sarah (19:52):
Let’s do it.
Kortney (19:53):
Okay, so three copies of The Book Whisperer, let’s see for Jodie Ger and for Carla Gant and for Amanda Wells. You don’t have to be here to win, I will email you and get the book out to you. Yahoo, yahoo, thank you for being a part of our community.
Sarah (20:10):
Yes. That’s all for mama’s stuff, let’s get into the kids stuff, I’m so excited to tell you about these. All right, so, for our Family Book Club in Read-Aloud Revival, what we do each season is one novel because that gives you several months to read whenever it works for you and then we do a picture book every month. And we choose the books that will appeal to a wide rage of ages, so even if you have all older kids or all younger kids, we’re trying to find books to the widest age range. Especially with our picture books which we think we choose ones that will work, of course, with young kids, but especially also for older kids, but let’s talk about our novel first.
(21:06):
Our novel we’re going to be reading this fall is The Nerviest Girl in the World by Melissa Wiley, this is brand new, hot off the presses, actually it hasn’t even come out yet.
Kortney (21:15):
It’s not out yet.
Sarah (21:16):
I think it releases August 18th?
Kortney (21:19):
Uh-huh (affirmative)
Sarah (21:20):
Okay. I’m going to read you the back. Pearl lives on a range where her chores include collecting eggs and feeding ornery ostriches. She knows a thing or two about horses too just like her three older brothers. One day, Pearl’s brothers get a job doing stunts for a new form of entertainment called moving pictures. They’re in the Daredevil Donnelly Brothers, a Death-Defying Cowboy Trio. Before she knows it, Pearl has stumbled into being a stunt girl herself and dreams of becoming a star. The only problem is, her mother has no idea what she’s up to. And let’s just say she wouldn’t be too happy to find out that Pearl’s been jumping out of burning buildings in her spare time.
Kortney (22:00):
I love books with siblings in them and the weird dynamics that happen with youngest kids and oldest kids and older brothers who are riding fast horses and young girls. I don’t know, I love that and it’s so good.
Sarah (22:17):
Of course we’re going to have a Family Book Club guide for you that will have the discussion questions and shared experiences and all that good stuff in the Family Book Club. And you can read the novel at any time during the fall which is why we schedule one over the whole season. So if you want to start your school year with it, that’s great, if you want to wait until November, that’s totally fine too, Melissa Wiley is coming in November to answer your kids’ questions, so you have the whole fall to read it and come up with questions for her.
Kortney (22:42):
And Melissa Wiley has already been here to talk about Prairie Thief, her last novel, so you can find that in the archives under the For Kids section. She’s excellent.
Sarah (22:52):
She’s excellent, we love her. And she’s a homeschooling mom which is fun.
Kortney (22:55):
Yeah.
Sarah (22:56):
Okay.
Kortney (22:57):
So, wait, no, let me give away a book.
Sarah (22:59):
Yeah, give away.
Kortney (23:00):
Okay, so we’re going to give away, we can’t send them yet because they’re not out yet, but we’re going to send copies of Melissa’s new book Nerviest Girl in the World to Anna Atkinson and Jacklyn Taylor and Crystal Willis.
Sarah (23:16):
I’m seeing a few questions about what age would you recommend this one for, so I think ideally it’s probably going to be enjoyable for six or seven and up. So for September our picture book for the Family Book Club, which of course we do one of these every month is Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn by Kenard Pak. This is the whole series. He’s not finished the series yet, but there’s one for each season transition. The illustrations in these books are so beautiful about the changes in the season. Ken is going to come to Read-Aloud Revival and tell us about how he made the illustration and answer our questions about the series. It’s so pretty [inaudible 00:24:03].
Kortney (24:02):
Yeah, just the in papers, there’s plain, but they’re such this rich, lovely, deep pumpkin color. Oh, you open the page and it’s like oh yes.
Sarah (24:16):
We’ll have your book club guide, same thing, that it’ll have your discussion questions and shared experiences and I’m introducing each of our Family Book Clubs to you in a little five minute video that invites your kids to look at a few things. So, on the first of each month, you can log into Premium and you’ll see the video, the five minute video, where I introduce the book to your kids and invite them to look closely at the pictures with me and also give you the Family Book Club guide. So on the first of each month is when you can log into Premium to grab that.
(24:49):
We’ll also put it in your weekly email so you don’t have to necessarily remember, but if you wanted to put a reminder on your phone to check Premium on the first of the month, that’s fun and we’ll have it loaded there for you.
Kortney (24:59):
So, let’s give away three books. I’ve got three copies of Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn for Charlene Thornton and Brooke Turbiefield and Erin Goddard. Congratulations.
Sarah (25:18):
Let’s talk about October and actually I’m going to just hold this up real quick since we just went through September. We’re also going to have these month page at a glance, we haven’t done this before, but we thought this would be really helpful for you. So for September you can put this on your fridge, it’s got the calendar here, it’s got details about each event here and then it reminds of what this month’s picture book is and this season’s Family Book Club novel and Mama Book Club.
(25:43):
So, these are going to be emailed to you in the next couple of days for the whole fall. You’ll have September, October and November’s already queued up and you can just clip them together and put them on your fridge and then you have them. All right, let’s talk about October. I’m so excited, I wasn’t sure we were going to able to get it, but we did. So in October, we are going to be reading Thank You, Omu! By Oge Mora. This book is so fantastic, as you can tell it won all the awards the year it came out, this was her first picture book right out of art school.
(26:13):
She’s also go another booked called Saturday which is equally delightful about a little boy and his grandmother, I think, who are looking forward to Saturday as the best day of the week because they get to do something together. Maybe it’s a mother and child. Anyway, and then their Saturday doesn’t go as planned, but it’s still special.
(26:31):
There’s another one that I meant to pull up here and I left it downstairs called The Oldest Student, I think is what it’s called. It’s a picture book biography about a woman who learned to read when she was in her 80s?
Kara (26:45):
90s.
Sarah (26:45):
90s?
Kara (26:46):
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, oh I love that book. She wanted to read The Bible. We talked about that.
Sarah (26:50):
She wanted to read The Bible, yeah.
Kara (26:51):
When we were doing the get togethers a few months ago, we talked about that book a lot. Oh, I love that book. If you have a child who has had any negative feelings about not reading yet, I think it’s just a beautiful book.
Sarah (27:14):
So true. Yes, so we’ll be reading all those books by Oge Mora, this is our official book club one and of course we’ll have a book club guide for you on the 1st of October that you’ll be able to use, the looking closely video, all the same stuff. Kortney, you want to give a few away?
Kortney (27:30):
Yes, it’s a beautiful, beautiful book. The illustrations are done with cut paper collage, I think your kids are going to want to make some cut paper collages because her stuff is so graphic and really simple shapes. Oh, Frank went right. And I don’t know, it’s a great book, I think you’re going to really like it. So I’m going to send three copies to Sarah Miller and Cherie Matthews and Shannon Ham. Yay, congratulations.
Sarah (27:58):
November’s Family Book Club picture book is A Race Around the World: The True Story of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland. True story and it’s so fun, so we got a treat for this particular month, this is November. We’ve got Caroline Starr Rose is going to come give us a presentation on who was Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland.
Kortney (28:20):
Wow.
Sarah (28:21):
She’s done so much in her research about this book that she’s going to come give us … and she used to be a teacher so she’s really fun to listen to and hear speak. And then we also that same month are going to get Melissa Wiley to come talk about the Nerviest Girl in the World, so November is going to be a fun month for hearing from authors. Should we give a few away?
Kortney (28:40):
Yes, so I’ve got a copy for Betsy Flake and for Pat Brown and for April Cunningham.
Sarah (28:54):
We did our six week Writers on Writing WOW series this spring where your kids got to learn from writers and learn a specific writing skill and then practice it with prompts. And you guys told us that you loved them and wanted us to keep doing them, so we are. You’ve also told us you wanted us to do them more like once a month which is what we’re going to do. So beginning in September we’re going to start having a monthly WOW workshop where a writer is going to come and teach your kids a specific skill for writing.
(29:25):
Now this is going to happen in the second week of each month, they’ll all be available on replay just like normal so if you can’t make it because you’ve got co-op or other responsibilities or obligations at that time, no worries. And basically what’s going to happen is the author is going to come and teach your kids a specific skill. And then we’re going to give you a guide that’s much like the Family Book Club guide, but gives you an idea of how you can use this workshop either as just a one day, in one day we’re just going to sit down for an afternoon and we’re going to practice this skill like a quick dip, right?
(29:55):
Or if you want to spread it out over the month and really make it enrich your learning and dive really deep into this particular skill we’ll have some ways for you to draw it out over the month and make it a heftier part of your curriculum. So that if you want to use WOW: Writers on Writing as a main part of your curriculum, you’ll be able to do that. In September, Andrea Davis Pinkney is coming. She has been at Read-Aloud Revival before, if you saw her Author Access, she sang to your kids. She sang I think it was Amazing Grace or something, wasn’t it?
Kortney (30:24):
She wants to make you cry, I think. That Author Access, she’s such a powerful presence.
Kara (30:31):
Was it This Little Light of Mine?
Kortney (30:31):
Oh yes.
Sarah (30:33):
Oh it’s This Little Light of Mine, that’s what it was, yes.
Kortney (30:36):
Oh, so good.
Kara (30:37):
Yeah.
Sarah (30:37):
She’s also the Vice President at Scholastic, so she’s a woman who knows what she’s doing. And she’s going to come and teach our kids how to take a photograph from your family and then write a part of your family’s history. We’re going to have all of our kids bring a photograph to that September class and then teach your kids how to dig in to what happened or create something else that can help your kids write from a photograph in their family, basically writing from your family’s own history. That will be in September.
(31:06):
And again, we’ll have a short version if you just want it to be a fun supplement for an afternoon and also a longer version for those of you who really want to make it your Friday writing activity or something. Something you can do all throughout the month and really help your kids dive in. One of the things I noticed with the WOW workshops from this spring is they were happening every week, but it was almost so often that you just started playing with one skill and we were teaching another one. So this is going to be a really fun way for us to dive deep and get really good at a skill.
(31:37):
October’s WOW workshop is going to be taught by Jonathan Auxier, just give you all a moment to be very happy about this because we all love Jonathan Auxier. He is the author of Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, Sophie Quire, Sweep which I think is just one of the best books ever written. He’s got a new series coming out this fall, the first one it’s a new series called The Fabled Stables and he said they’re prequels to Peter Nimble. They’re for younger readers and the first one is called Willa the Wisp.
Kortney (32:12):
The cover of it is just crazy beautiful. I showed it to my kids and they were just like, “When can we get this book?”
Sarah (32:20):
Yes, October actually.
Kortney (32:21):
Yeah.
Sarah (32:22):
He’s going to come in October and he’s going to teach our kids how to keep an art journal. This is the practice he says he wishes he knew about as a kid as a way to get ideas going and inspiration and to practice seeing the world around you. Now Jonathan Auxier is primarily a writer, a middle grade writer, and he does do some sketching and drawing and I think we might see more sketching and drawing and illustration from him in the future, but he uses an art journal to help with his writing process and so he’s going to teach our kids how to do that in October.
Kortney (32:53):
Yeah, that sounds like a great practice for kids who might be reluctant writers or who might have some issues around writing or some trauma around writing another way into the process because a lot of what we want with writing practice is thinking practice, actually. And so that’s what Jonathan is doing with his art journal is thinking on the page and getting those images and ideas down.
Sarah (33:17):
I told him he could only come if he did some yo-yo action because what you might not know about Jonathan Auxier is that he is not just a yo-yo aficionado, he goes to like yo-yo conventions and stuff. He is like a yo-yo dude. Okay so in November our WOW: Writers on Writing workshop, we’ve invited back another favorite because we love her, Barb Rosenstock is coming back to Read-Aloud Revival. You might have remembered if you went to the spring WOW workshops, she did one on noisy details. How to add noisy details to your writing to really bring it to life. And toward the end of her workshop, she had to skip over a bunch of stuff because we ran out of time.
(33:56):
So we invited her to come back and teach us that stuff and it is figurative language, how to use onomatopoeia and similes and metaphors and all different kinds of figurative language to really punch up your writing, she’s so excited to come back and teach that for us. She is one of our favorite picture book biography authors and she is a very engaging teacher and so I can sit and learn from her all day long, I’m really excited about that and that will be November.
(34:34):
What you’ll get in a couple of days is a quarter at a glance, you can see the whole season, so you can stick that on your fridge or in your teacher notebook or on a clipboard or wherever you want to stick it. And then we’ve got your month-by-month pages so that you can stick that up on the fridge and this is one that I would keep real handy so that you can see what’s coming and what age is it best for and what time it’s happening in your timezone and all that good stuff.
(35:00):
All of this is on a printable calendar but it’s also going to be by today’s end, it will be in the online calendar in Read-Aloud Revival Premium. And when you go to that online calendar, you can set a reminder if you want an extra email, I send you an email reminder anyway, but if you want an extra reminder, you can set it there. You can RSVP to see who else is coming and if you ever wonder, “Oh, we have a Read-Aloud Revival event today, how do I join it?” Go to the calendar because I always send an email, but sometimes the email fairies whisk things away and you don’t get them, right? So you can always go to the calendar to get the link for joining us because we use Zoom to do all of our live events and so that is where you’re going to find those links.
Kara (35:41):
Sarah, you had just mentioned ages and there was a question a couple minutes ago about ages for the Writers on Writing event. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Sarah (35:51):
Yes, so we just let the teachers tell us what ages their presentation is going to be best for. So September’s writing your family’s history from a photograph, Andrea Davis Pinkney says it’s going to be best for ages nine to twelve. Now, I will tell you that most of these authors are used to teaching kids in classroom settings, so they’re not used to having quite as wide of an age range. I put nine to twelve on your calendar, but you’ve got a eight-year-old and a fourteen-year old, they’re going to be able to … I learn something every time we do one of these workshops, so you can almost never go wrong going older. Sometimes younger may feel like it’s a little bit over them, but older kids will probably never feel like it’s too young for them as far as the writing workshop goes.
(36:37):
But she says the ideal age range for that on is nine to twelve. Jonathan Auxier’s class on keeping an art journal, seven to sixteen I would just six and up, I would say everybody probably can get something from that, it’s going to be fun. What five-year-old is not going to watching him yo-yo and draw a little bit, right? He said he’s going to show us lots and lots of examples from his art journals too, so I think that one’s probably just all ages.
(37:00):
And then our November class with Barb Rosenstock she says eight plus. If you’ve got younger kids, they might to sit and listen, but as far as writing similes and metaphors and things like that, eight plus is what she recommended.
Kara (37:14):
I was just going to say purposely these teachers were picked because they’re so engaging, so that helps to get your kids even if they’re outside of that age range a little bit.
Sarah (37:25):
I love how for so many of your kids, you tell us that as they’re watching authors or illustrators, they have to start sketching, it’s like they’re so moved to start doing the creation and that’s exactly what we want so I love that. The other thing is with our Family Book Club author access and illustrator access, when we have the author or illustrator come talk, we’re now offering two replays. One full replay and then also a mini-replay.
(37:50):
So if you go into the page where there’s the replay and the book club guide and all that good stuff, you’ll find that there’s a little arrow you can toggle between videos. And if you have younger kids or kids with a shorter attention span or if you just don’t have the time to watch the whole thing you just want to dip, you can go to the mini version and we’re keeping those at 15 minutes or less and trying to pull out the parts that might be the most engaging for young students. So I think earlier this week we had Christopher Silas Neal come do illustrator access and for the mini version I pulled out the part where he’s drawing because that’s really fun to watch.
Kara (38:22):
Oh yeah, this is so fun, I just saw a comment that somebody said it makes me feel so much better about the next few months having this and that’s how I feel too. Having good books picked out, it’s wonderful.
Sarah (38:38):
Now it’s time for Let the Kids Speak. I love this part of the podcast because kids share the books that they’ve been loving lately.
Troy (38:54):
Hello my name is Troy. I’m five years old. I live in Honolulu Hawaii and my favorite book is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. My favorite part of it is when their mom is coming.
Kate (39:04):
My name is Kate. I’m from [inaudible 00:39:14] I’m three years old and my favorite book is [inaudible 00:39:14].
Julia (39:17):
Hi, my name is Julia, I am from Rocklin California, I am nine years old. My favorite book is Matilda by Roald Dahl. I like Matilda because her dad is always shouting and Matilda punishes him in funny ways.
Gavin (39:32):
My name’s Gavin, I’m nine years old and I’m from Colorado and my favorite book is Dog Man. Why you ask? Because of the flip-o-ramas.
Grant (39:43):
My name is Grant, I’m seven years old and live in Colorado and my favorite book is My Side of Mountain because he lives in a tree and he eats berries.
Holly (39:59):
My name is Holly and I’m six years old and I live in Houston Texas and my favorite book is the Mixed Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
Abby (40:07):
My name is Abby and I’m four and I live in Texas and my favorite book is Magic Tree House.
Slade (40:17):
Hi, my name is Slade and my favorite book’s Winnie’s Great War and I like it because it has a bear.
Skyler (40:29):
Hi, I’m Skyler, I’m from Alberta Canada. My favorite book is Wings of Olympus and I like it because it’s about Pegasuses.
Vivian (40:43):
Hi, my name’s Vivian and I like to tell you about my Princess Pulverizer Grilled Cheese and Dragons. I have three of them at home. I have Grilled Cheese and Dragons which I’m holding in my hand and then the other two are Bad Moooove! Princess Pulverizer and Worser, Wurst which we were just listening to on audio. I liked it because the Worse, Worser, Wurst she wants to be a wizard when she really wants to free Lester the Jester who’s a character. I’m four years old and I live in Milford Michigan.
Sarah (41:26):
Thank you kids. Ah, I always love those book recommendations from you. Hey, you can join us in RAR Premium for our next few months of homeschooling professional development, our Mama Book Club, our Family Book Clubs and WOW: Writers on Writing workshops, not to mention our amazing community in the Premium forum. We consistently hear from our members that it is the best place for homeschooling mamas on the internet and I’m inclined to agree. So join us, there is no risk, we have a 30-day money back guarantee, get RAR Premium by going to rarpremium.com.
(42:05):
I’ll be back in two weeks with a special guest on the podcast, I’m really looking forward to that so stay tuned. In the meantime, don’t forget to get your own custom personalized Read-Aloud recommendation from me for free by going to readaloudrevival.com/quiz or by texting quiz to the number 33777. Now, go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.
