Reading Habits

We are a family of readers. We literally have bookshelves in every room of the house even the kitchen.

When my children were small, I would read aloud to them everyday and their father would usually read to them at night. We read many books together and now they are part of our family bond. After lunch we would read the Bible together, usually in English, unless we had Venezuelan visitors, then we would read in Spanish. If we had Ye'kwanas with us, we would read the Ye'kwana New Testament.

While growing up in the jungle, my children were able, through literature, to travel and experience many things outside of their life in a small indian village. We read classics, we read fiction, non fiction, anything we could get our hands on. I read many classical books aloud to them while they were still quite young, including Homer's 'The Iliad and the Odyssey'. We read Shakespeare and many others.

I remember reading 'The Hobbit' and the 'Lord of the Ring' trilogy as they rested in their hammocks. Their ages ranged from 2 -11, but we all enjoyed it.We read 'The Chronicles of Narnia', 'Little House on the Prairie', 'The Indian in the Cupboard', which was a big hit as well as the 'Anne of Green Gables' series. And many, many more.

We also read a lot of history aloud during school time and every student wanted to hear what the other students were reading. I rarely used history text books for anything more than a basic guide, or for cutting out maps and charts to use in personal note books. I find history text books to be BORING. I much prefer to read real stories, biographies of people of the time period we are studying. Each child had a Notebook Timeline in which to plot everything we studied, whether it be Science, History, Literature or Bible, it would be added to the timeline. This allowed the child to see the continuity of history and to compare people and events.

Our children grew up seeing that their father and I were both avid readers and they each picked up on the habit of reading at night before bed. Often times this was done by Coleman lanterns or even flashlight. If you fell asleep while the kerosene lantern was still burning, you would wake up in the morning to find yourself covered in a black, oily coat of soot.

The habit of bed time reading still continues. I must read at least a few minutes every night before I sleep, no matter how tired I may be. It is my way of unwinding. Each of my children also have the habit of reading each night.

I went around my house and snapped these shots of our bedside tables (sorry for the poor quality. I think my grand daughter had made some 'adjustments' to the camera). Can you tell by the pictures, which photo corresponds to each family member?

1)Spanish Bible, Cherokee Nation, The Works of Watchman Nee,
1491-America before Columbus.

2)Spanish Bible, journal, notebooks with writing projects.

3)Spanish Bible, English Bible, Midwifery Manuel, journal.

4)Christian Counselor's Manuel, Darwin's Black Box,
The Answer Book (Creation), The Simple Church.

So, which is Jungle Mom's stack of books? Yekwnanman's? Jewel's? and Jayde's?

UPDATE! That was obviously too easy!