We’re pulling back the curtain…
Have you ever wondered what happens behind the scenes here at the Read-Aloud Revival?
For example…
- How do we decide who to have on the podcast and which master classes to create?
- What needs to happen in order to book an author for the membership Author Access events?
- How many hours does it take to get a podcast all the way through production?
(No really- do you have a guess?)
In this episode of the podcast, the RAR Community Director Kortney Garrison and I answer all of those questions and more. It’s a fun one, so start your most tedious housework job, because we’ll keep you company and make the job just fly by. :)
Click that play button below to hear the podcast!
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of the Read-Aloud Revival podcast
Want the transcript?
Download the transcript from this episode
of the Read-Aloud Revival podcast
Episode 40
Books from this episode:
(All links are Amazon affiliate links.)
Books from today’s episode:
- The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
- Hank the Cowdog
- The Green Ember
- The Prairie Thief
- The Way Things Work
- Castle
- Pyramid
- Poppy
- The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
- Our Only May Amelia
- Sunny Side Up
- Turtle in Paradise
- The Babymouse Series
- How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare
- The Growly Books
- The Five Love Languages of Children
- Every Bitter Thing is Sweet
- The Sketchnote Workbook
Other links from today’s show:
- http://www.thegraphicrecorder.com/
- Audio-Technica Microphone
- Audacity
- SpeakPipe
- Cheryl Swope in Episode 39
- Nurturing Competent Communicators
- Fairy Tales and the Moral Imagination
- A Quickstart Guide to Great Conversations with Your Kids
- Sarah’s Speaking Schedule
- Oh What a Year Printable
- Your Morning Basket
- Homeschool Snapshots
- Fr. John Riccardo with Dr. Meg Meeker
- CiRCE Podcast Network
- The Mason Jar
- Arts of Language Podcast
- The Simple Show
That picture frame was a gift to me from Kortney.
It says, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” -St. Catherine of Siena
My heart skipped a beat when I saw The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding in the show notes before I pressed play! I am an American La Leche League leader living in Poland, and I discovered RAR a few months ago when looking for resources that would help me “feel like a homeschooler again” (we moved here in August and put our previously homeschooled 5- and 3-year-old in a local Christian school part-time, since early second language acquisition is important to us. We’re doing light after-schooling in English, with a big focus on joyful reading aloud. :) I’m thrilled to see my kids speaking Polish, but I miss homeschooling full time!) Anyway, RAR has been an excellent support for my sanity, much like LLL was when my first child was born (and still is, with my third nursling who is now 8 mos.). Community is so crucial to meeting our goals–whether breastfeeding-related or educational–isn’t it? Thanks for all the wonderful work you do, ladies!
Dear Brooke, I wonder which part of Poland are you in? I’m from Poland but have been living in England for 17 years now as my husband is English. How do you find the community there? Are you connected with a church? Sorry for so many questions, I would love to be of assistance if I could.
Thanks for your reply. We’re in Warsaw (my husband’s hometown) and loving it here! Our sources of community are strong for the short amount of time we’ve lived here and we even know a few Polish homeschooling families. As you know, homeschooling is legal in PL but children must pass all subject exams in Polish — so if we pursue HS in the future it will require an elaborate system of tutors, since my husband won’t have time to do everything with the kids and my Polish will never be strong enough to prepare them. We’d love to shoot for bilingualism and biliteracy! Are you doing any Polish language studies with your kids, living in England?
Hi Brooke, thank you for that. I am so glad you found friends in my :)
And well done for teaching your children both languages. I am really struggling with that. We homeschool 6 children. I am okay with teaching them words and phrases but when it comes to sentences and the wonderfully complicated Polish grammar, we are a bit lost. My husband doesn’t speak any Polish, and so we are very very slow in our progress. I haven’t seen any good books to teach Polish as a second language – do you know any? Having said this the children are still quite enthusiastic about learning it as we have frequent contact with my family. Are your children struggling with Polish grammar or is it quite a natural thing for them as they are exposed to it all the time? Do you speak Polish at home?
I completely relate to the difficulty of teaching Polish to the kids while living in an English-speaking country! I don’t have any amazing resources to share, really. My kids are little (5, 3, and 8 mos.) and I knew we’d be moving to Warsaw, so when we lived in the US I simply tried to expose them to Polish as much as possible through flashcards (Usborne has a cute little set geared toward preschoolers), picture books, movies, Skyping with Babcia, praying the Ojcze Nasz, etc. That really helped prepare them at least for the concept of speaking Polish and for the strange sounds, and they’ve adjusted to przedszkole without any problems. No, we don’t speak Polish at home — my husband has always felt more comfortable speaking English to the kids because it’s his heart language now, after living outside PL for 20 years. That’s beginning to change now that we live in PL, and we’ve started to speak Polish as a family when we LEAVE the house, although my Polish is still weak (despite studying with a private tutor…but I am determined to make progress if it kills me!). Just this week, though, my husband proposed the idea of speaking Polish at home for a month or so just to get me out of my comfort zone (zobaczymy…!). Since the kids attend przedszkole they often to speak Polish with each other when they play, with lots of grammar mistakes still, but for just 6 months in-country their progress is unbelievable. If I were living in an English-speaking country, my goals would be different. I’d focus on heavy exposure with fun materials and maybe find a Polish tutor when the kids got older, not with fluency as a goal necessarily, just knowing that ANY second-language exposure is hugely beneficial. Have you read much about bilingual childrearing? I can recommend a few good books if you would like, but you probably know them already.
Dear Brooke,
The Poles call it “przedwiosnie” – lots of germs in the air. It lasts from October to April in England :)) Sorry to hear you had sick children…And thank you so much for your help, I will get the books and educate myself, and hopefully, raise some bilingual children too. Thank you once again.
Brooke, That’s so encouraging! My own experience of learning English was to be thrown to an English speaking community with not a word of Polish. It nearly killed me, but after a month of this I was able to communicate with people again! After 6 months I was thinking and dreaming in English. You have shown me light again: I will start reading to my children in Polish again, even 2 – 3 poems or a little story every day. I would love you to suggest some good books about bilingualism, I have not read that much. All the best to your family, I am sure you will be reading Mickiewicz and Sienkiewicz in Polish before long :)
Alina, glad I could offer some encouragement and sorry it took me so long to reply — sick kids! :) Here are some books I’ve found helpful (they all have lots of ideas for incorporating the language at every opportunity, instead of seeking all-or-nothing fluency):
– The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language
by Kendall King
– 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child
by Naomi Steiner
– Raising a Bilingual Child
by Barbara Zurer Pearson
“Community is so crucial to meeting our goals–whether breastfeeding-related or educational–isn’t it?” Yes! A thousand times! So glad to have you listening along from so far away, Brooke.
And thank you, Alina,. for reaching out and extending this community.
It’s an honor to share this work
Hugs to you both, Brooke & Alina!
Thanks Sarah for your transparency about listening to podcasts too much. Me guilty here too! I had to back off as well.
I started reading children literature too from y’all inspiration and the famous C.S. Lewis mentioned in RAR. :-) Started reading Charlotte web. I probably read it as a child. Don’t remember.
Also talking with a neighbor and thinking about reading with her. She is 8-9 year old. I think I’ve got lost of a of books pinned on Pinterest that y’all have mentioned. And going to look at Honey for a Child’s Heart recommendations. Question: how might I make the reading the book with my neighbor fun? Like a book club between her and I? Any resources?
Yes! First, we have a little guide that will help you with casual discussion starters. You can get that free here:
https://readaloudrevival.com/5-questions/
Second, inside membership we have a similar guide to simple celebrations you can have around the books you are reading together, and it is GOLD.
Membership info is here: https://readaloudrevival.com/membership
Hope that helps! I just love the idea of you reading with the neighbor girl!
Thank you Sarah!
Oh I can’t wait to get into the membership! Sounds like such a good thing even for this mamma with a 2-year old and don’t plan to homeschool.
Great podcast you two!
I appreciate Sarah’s approach to podcasting and interviewing. She seems like she would be a lovely conversation partner over coffee or over the phone! As an introvert, I find it difficult to not be so straightforward and blunt in my conversations or interviews, (whether through a chat or through e-mail), and a chat over coffee elucidates the type of approach I should take. Thanks!
I wanted to mention that I love Ross Campbell’s work; he’s the co-author of The 5 Love Languages for Children you mentioned. He wrote two other great books that have helped me and many other parents here in China through my proxy, “How To Really Love Your Child” and “How To Really Love Your Angry Child.”
I hadn’t seen those books! Looking into them now- thank you for the recommendations.
In China, we all say, “My pleasure!” :)
Yes, new book recommendations are one of my favorite things! Thanks, Vanessa :) Sounds like it would be lovely to share a cup of coffee and chat…or maybe because we’re both introverts, we can just grab some coffee and read quietly next to each other!
Yes! Unfortunately I’m the outgoing introvert type – they seriously exist – so I might interrupt you with a thought when it crosses my mind. Well, only if it’s a really, really important thought :)
So much good stuff happening at RAR membership. Whole Family Membership Book Club Kit, Master Class to help us mammas with youngers how to engage with a book if ai heard that right. Hmmm…when do I
renew my 3 month gift membership. So many good things coming down the pipe!
Kortney-
you mentioned something about a drawing “class” to help kids draw when being read a book. Did I hear that right? Is the information in the show notes?
Nichole–that’s the Graphic Recorder link in the show notes. That’s just a general link because Doug Neill has a couple different programs and I wanted you to be able to find the best one for your family. Here’s a link to the notes he made while listening to the On Being podcast: http://www.onbeing.org/search/site/doug%20neill
I’ve also written about how we use Drawn Notes in our family…http://www.kortneygarrison.com/2013/07/20/drawn-notes/
Nichole, you’ll want to contact Kortney to renew your membership when your gift expires. You can do that by emailing kortney@readaloudrevival.com and she’ll get you all squared away. :)
Sarah!
Okay. I KNOW you mentioned cutting back on podcasts, and I even had that very same issue myself, but since you mentioned Fr. Riccardo’s homilies, I just have to ask if you have ever listened to Fr. Mike Schmitz? If not, you seriously have to give him a listen. They are also recordings of his homilies….and they are insanely awesome.
Okay- looking him up! Thank you! :)
Another providential podcast! I listened to this one while I was organizing the kids’ closets and was, as usual, pleasantly surprised to find so much information that I really needed to hear. Thanks so much in particular for that link to Dr. Meg Meeker’s lecture- the best parenting advice I’ve heard- and Fr. Riccardo. Though I’m from Michigan and am a frequent visitor to Traverse City and know Fr. Riccardo’s parish, I’d never listened to podcasts by either one. Keep up the Providential work, Sarah and Kortney!
The Audio-Technica Microphone link – it seems to be broken? Can you let me know which model it is?
It was really fun to hear the behind the scenes of the show – I was stunned at how long it takes to edit an episode after it has been recorded.
I was hoping to hear about the music you play – it is some of my very favorite music of all the podcasts I listen too. And it perfectly, perfectly suits your show.
Yep, it’s the ATR2100. I found the music on jewelbeat.com :)
I loved this episode! I’ve long listened to your podcast and am in the process of doing the same thing for parents of kids with disabilities. I clicked on your audio technica link to see your mic and it was a false link…just an fyi. Thanks for letting us peek behind the scenes :)
Oh, please tell me what is that lovely, happy music you use in the intro, transitions and background of all your podcasts? I need it in my home! Thx. – Claire