Our Read-Aloud Log for 2015

We have had a good year of reading aloud in our homeschool. We finished fifteen books altogether ... I'm noticing that the speed at which we are getting through books is decidedly slowing down as our books are getting bigger and taking longer. But, oh, we've read some good ones this year.

We started off January participating in Reading to Know's L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge and diving deep in with Sara Stanley and the King cousins in The Story Girl (blogged here and here) and The Golden Road. To copy my friend Amy, I asked my girls individually what their favorite read-alouds were from 2015, and these two books came in first place with the oldest girls. N1 has since listened to these two books over and over (and over) on her iPod this fall. That makes me very excited for the 2016 L.M.M. challenge which kicks off today! Reading L.M.M. is not for the faint of heart - it took us over two months to finish these two books, but it was time well spent. 

Our handy-dandy chart to keep the King cousins organized!



In March we finished Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates. I shared a quote from this story here. In April, we fell hard in love with the rabbits of The Green Ember. If you have still not read this story, do it. Make it a 2016 resolution!

All of a Kind Family by Sydney Taylor (blogged) was a quick read for us at the end of April / early May and another huge hit with the girls. According to B, this was her favorite read-aloud of the year - enough that she requested more books in this series of the stories of five sisters for Christmas, which we were happy to provide!



In May, we also tackled The Secret Garden. This was a book I had tried to read with N1 when she was 5 or 6 and ended up setting aside for the time being. This time, they ate it up, as evidence by the fact that it came in second place for N2 as a favorite for the year. (She also mentioned how much she loved The Little Princess, but I had to remind her that was one of our reads from 2014 so I couldn't include it in this summary). : )



Our read-aloud time slumped mightily this summer - older kids, lots of time spent at the pool, travels and summer camp cut into our days more that I expected. Not bad things, but it is a different season. We kept with our standard summer plan of moving on to a few sequels of ones that we loved during the school year - All of a Kind Family Downtown and The Castle of Llyr (Book 3 in The Prydian Chronicles). I don't recommend waiting as long as we did between books 2 and 3 of this fantasy series. One girl in particular wasn't a fan of it, mostly, I think, because it was hard to keep characters straight after such a long break.



We started our back to school read-alouds with Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. We picked this one with the boy in mind after the girls made a list of their not-to-be-missed read-alouds that they wanted to make sure he heard ... and the fact that we were going to see the play at the local children's theater and wanted to refamiliarize ourselves with the story. After that, we dove into our first read-aloud that would tie in with our year of ancient civilization study and read Tizrah. (This might have been one of my favorites for the year, but I don't know that I can commit to just one!) It brought the book of Exodus alive for me in a new way, and since I'm not a huge fan of fictionalizing the Bible, that is saying something.

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss was another LONG read-aloud, lasting almost all of the month of September for us. It was a classic that I had never read, and I thoroughly enjoyed (as did the girls), though they will be quick to point out that it was NOTHING like the Disney movie. (I know, shock). We needed a short (easy) read after that and chose the The Black Star of Kingston by S.D. Smith, prequel to The Green Ember. Have I mentioned you should read The Green Ember?

The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis Wilkins took most of October into early November and it was another great tie in with our history studies. Another one that I thoroughly enjoyed as I found the main character extremely sympathetic and well written.

We finished up November and December with The First Four Years, The Secret of the Old Clock, and The Family Under the Bridge. The First Four Years was one that I had put off for a couple of years now as it was the end of our (first) time reading through the Little House books, and because it is so much sadder that the other books (in my opinion). The Secret of the Old Clock was a fun (and much lighter) read after that, though I have said that I wouldn't highly recommend Nancy as a read aloud. One book was fun, but I'm glad we aren't making it a goal to read-aloud the whole series! We ended our year with The Family Under the Bridge and it was a sweet tale of Christmas in Paris and how hard times brought together an unlikely family. A short read and we finished it before we took a Christmas break from school.

I continue to be thankful for the wonderful books that we get to read-aloud together in our homeschooling journey. We actually took a big break from reading aloud over Christmas (three weeks!) As a consequence, we are all excited to pick our next book. As we had breakfast this morning we made some January plans for the book that we will start on Monday (hint: it's written by L.M. Montgomery!) and I'm also hoping to get us back into an evening read-aloud time routine at least a few nights a week.

Wishing you all a very happy new year and loads of good books in the coming twelve months for you!