Hahah, it’s interesting how some stories take and others do not!

I read with voices for each character! I don't film my life in real-time (protect the kids and the sacredness of our quiet, ordinary life together) but I have mentioned tips and fun things for read alouds in many resources!

You're not alone!

Oh my goodness, YES! Hello again! I absolutely remember and now all of the literary elements make perfect sense. (I doubt hearing "Charlotte Mason" or "classical" would've stuck with me then!) What a delightful connection.

It was such a help to me to have a better distinction between childish selfishness (I can't yet see beyond myself) and selfishness, and delighted-by-myself (I have fingers and toes!) and conceited. I really can't recommend it more to moms of sons!

Ah, I'm so bad at doing that! I will add them!

It is so good! He completely captured and pained and delighted my children's hearts!

I don't know that one! Thank you for the recommendation!

I wish I had known Nesbit earlier in life! I adore her! And yes, boys are delightful and otherly.

Please report back if you are, in fact, related to Owen Barfield.

I hope you find a new favorite!

The best kind of conversation! I also love reading with accents/voices. I tend to get voices confused after awhile, so I find accents work better for us-ha! I'm hoping we're on track to read the whole Little House series but, if not, there's always Narnia...

Maybe we should tell everyone they actually need to start with Farmer Boy! It's the magic fix! And thank you for the encouragement! So happy to have you here.

Hey there! Sleep deprivation is no joke. Whenever I was in a hard season (before we started formal schooling which has some special responsibilities), I always focused on: getting outside as much as we could, reading the best books (for the kids and myself), and keeping the good habits we could keep. I didn't start anything with the CP until my youngest was almost a year and I started very small (just the podcast every other week). But I did work through the "early years" and time-blocking was very helpful for me. Every season, every new baby, etc. grows your capacity. If you had tossed all that I do now at me when my oldest was 11 months, I would've cried. But those muscles have grown slowly over the last six years, with a little more weight here and there. Lastly, I do have the Benediction Table Guide and the Way of the Will Guide on my website or in Common House. The BT is what I started when my oldest was about 18 months and was my first major "implementation" of Mason's principles in our home. The Way of the Will is how to get your house back on track after a big shift (like a new baby).

Hahaha, love the loooong to read list. Ain't that the truth!?

Lots of tea breaks definitely helped but cozy reading aloud all day to my kids was a dream realized!

Enjoy! I hope you find a new favorite!

Ah-ha! Yes! Good books are for *persons*, you know?

Oh, I haven't come across that one yet-thank you!!

@@thecommonplacehomeschool "Five Children and It" is the first in the series. I highly recommend it!

Please do!

Oh good to know! I hated the Disney movie so much as a child, I haven't considered reading it. So good to know!

*adds to cart*

I'm itching to buy the next one in the series!

@@thecommonplacehomeschool me too!

Oh thank you! I don't know this one!

Read fantasy all my life and didn't stumble upon this until my fifties. Hey! where has this been? (said I).

I don't have them all together anywhere but they are peppered throughout the resources in Common House. We've made up little questions, over time, for our sons and our daughter to help them grow in who they are. For example, we ask our sons, "Who do you protect?" And they yell, "Ladies and babies!" I've done this with them since they were toddlers and they do take this job very seriously now at 6 and 4.

I wasn't classically educated and while also a lifelong reader, I still feel the same way! I usually point people towards this list from Dr. John Senior and then add *follow the footnotes. Most great writers are stealing from/inspired by past great writers and so on. I like following that trail. seascs.net/documents/2017/10/John%20Senior%20The%20Thousand%20Good%20Books%20List.pdf

Depends on the child! By three, all of my kids are listening to chapter books like these (My youngest is three!) but that's because my oldest set the norm by having a great habit of attention to longer stories when she was a toddler.

Oooh. I was just talking about this with my next interview guest (releases on the 11th) before we recorded. She covers many illustrations as not to disrupt her children's imaginative work when listening to a story! I buy very old books now so they usually come with less than five illustrations but they're incredibly beautiful, so I do let my kids look at them. I am open to an illustrated version if the illustration is beautiful; otherwise, no thank you!

Fall vibes? Into it.

I know that CM talks about children not needing to know all the words when they are reading literary-quality language, but I wasn’t sure quite how early that would apply!

Hmm. I'm not sure I've ever considered it in that way: gained from chapter books versus picture books. I don't think I have a great answer for this except that Narnia specifically is the foundation of the house's moral imagination. All of our fairytales and living books build out from the scaffolding Narnia (and scripture, I hope!) built in their minds/metaphors to interpret the world. My guess is this gift will be immeasurable as they grow! But note: I didn't start reading chapter books over picture books for any reason other than I loved these stories and wanted to share them. Had my oldest been a different kid who didn't take to them/wasn't able to "digest" in small doses, I would've waited! The rest of the kids were baptized into Narnia and our rhythms from birth so, in a sense, it's all they've known but still, they've each had their own way of coming to the stories.

So in those early years, "understanding" looks different than we think. Instead of an analytic understanding, we're building out a poetic understanding, which is more like a sensory-emotional understanding of Reality. Little children may not express deep thoughts on cause and effect, but they "catch" the vision of justice, courage, and love. They see-in their imaginations-what is right and wrong, good and evil. These images become metaphors by which they understand their own everyday realities, so giving them really great images and language from the start helps strengthen that non-analytic understanding and builds a foundation for analytic understanding later! It's really amazing. I have an interview coming out very soon about this very thing!

I didn’t realize that there were different versions either. I would love to know how to find the play version.

It looks like this is the original book version: www.amazon.com/Peter-Pan-Illustrated-Original-Illustrations/dp/9916987041/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=1K6B9K2HC9SLH&keywords=peter+pan+original&qid=1693692085&sprefix=peter+pan+origina%2Caps%2C110&sr=8-2-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1 I also have a collection "The Plays of JM Barrie" which has the play!

If you find it, I already called dibs on it so it's mine. Thank you for alerting me to it!

I've never read it! I can't even say it! Ha!

@@thecommonplacehomeschool It's rich with theology :)

Lovely to have you here! It's been awhile since I recorded this one and I rarely have notes before I start! Can you remind me which catechism you heard?

@@thecommonplacehomeschool Question: Who do we protect? (to your sons) Answer: Ladies and babies.

@@damiajasa3786 thank you! Yes, we made that one up when my eldest son was a toddler!

That is so sweet!@@thecommonplacehomeschool

This is one of my special gifts in life: deadpan jokes.

It may be in Orthodoxy or Ethics of Elfland...gah, I can't remember now! I'll see if I can track it down!

I know you didn't ask me specifically but I thought I'd share my 2 cents as an elementary teacher. Maria Montessori theorised that before the age of 6, children are in the phase where they create the little boxes in which they will sort the information they encounter in their life. Therefore they are attracted to very concrete, factual stories that are perhaps less exciting to us literary romantic minds (I'm guessing you're a bit like me in that regard 😉). After 6 however, they start filling the boxes like maniacs, and they want to learn, explore, imagine, create... and indeed are much more interested by imaginary stories such as fairy tales, magic, etc.

@@abigaelmacritchie1365 Thank you for that! That's really helpful to know.

I feel like around 4 my daughter personally was just starting to sit for longer stories, but really we did some more like the Thornton burgess “adventures of series”, we did do fairytales and my daughter loves them (usually we did a Paul galdone illustrated type), but there are so many great books out there and usually when the oldest is engaged I feel like the others follow. My current 3 year old will sit through some of the books that were mentioned here because her 6 year old sister will, so it just depends on the age of your kids and the family make up. AO has a great year 0 book list, but CMEC has a great kinderlieben program with tons of book recommendations too. Totally worth the $300 even for “just the kinderlieben” program, because you get such an education in the philosophy before starting school 🙂

Lots of help in the comments-thanks everyone! I'm not familiar with Montessori but I started reading Narnia to my oldest around 18 months. (I always felt rude not engaging her-ha!) We did very small chunks but she loved being cuddled and having a "special tea" with me. I think because this was our habit, when the boys came along, they were thrown in and it's our norm. I'm of the opinion that what children need most from the very beginning is the Bible, classic fairytales, folk tales, and myths. But some may need very short forms, some may need the literary language in the form of picture books, etc. until their attention can be commanded for longer stretches (around 4-6 yo). If it's a subject matter problem, maybe pick a classic novel based on something he has an interest in? Space, bugs, mechanics, etc.?

Which one? This exact video list or did I mention the threads/literary lists too? The latter are in Common House, yes!

Did you see it's actually on Amazon now?

I recommend the Ambleside Online Year 0 reading list and the "One Thousand Good Books" by John Senior! Great starting places!

Whaaat? You didn't like book Peter?! It wasn't a Disney version, right? Reading Heidi right now actually!

I hate Peter Pan and Pinocchio- all versions. I love Heidi though- so did my children. A beautiful story of love, redemption and goodness.

It should be written by JM Barrie, not based on JM Barrie.

Congrats.

Oh yeah. A GOOD book.