Scheduled Reading

I'm very excited about a plan I came up with to conquer our reading woes. Now, our reading woes are probably different than most. Ours are not related to whether or not we want to read, but the bloomin' fact that we want to read too much. Of course, the idea that there could ever really be TOO much to read seems ludicrous, however we love to read and have a LOT to choose from.

That said, and the very fact that most of our curriculum is literature based, we could easily drown in books. My solution involves using a blank calendar. I've chosen all the books that we will read for each subject based on availability and time. I've recorded one for read-aloud and one for son to read on his own, for each topic. I've assigned them days on the calendar based on the size of the book. Then I've split the number of pages by the number of days to read each title.

Now we know exactly what to read and when. There is no floundering in search of the perfect book. No forgetting I meant to get a certain book and having to settle for something else. And NO letting valuable reading time slip by! There are always two books being read. We've begun using this method over the last month and are very pleased. One thing I have realized though, is that I should keep Saturday and Sunday free for catch-up reading for there are days when reading doesn't happen. (I initially used those days for scheduling.) Of course, I want to bean myself in the head when that happens, but I'll try not to get to frustrated. I've been quite happy how willing he is to read on Saturday and Sunday, too. Reading is becoming more of a daily habit and less of a weekday school task/chore!

I made son his own copy of the calendar for his notebook so he knows exactly what to read and when. I did not break down the pages for every book, but will do so periodically as a gather them a month in advance. Overall, I'm hoping this will add to his ability to self-govern his time and responsibilities. We'll be doing that a lot this year as we add his sister to the fray.

I truly believe that this will keep us on track better time wise. We didn't finish our Truthquest volume last year because of not scheduling the subjects (why we are now reading history!), so I have great hopes.