Reading out loud is boring me to tears! (turned meltdown) I just hate to do it.. I don't want to hate it, but it seriously makes me want to just go to sleep. I yawn the entire time I'm reading anything to the kids. I get done with a short passage (example, I'm reading CHOW to them, 1 chapter is all I read) and I'm just like done for the day. I have to admit I feel bored with everything lately school-wise. I want to liven things up, move to a living approach for pretty much all subjects, but it's like everything school it seems... I love to research, I even love to put together units or lesson plans.. but when it comes time to do them, I instantly am bored. Is it because the kids are young and need so much input from me? Neither are reading on their own yet. I remember all the fun things I did with Garrett when he came home for 2nd grade.. but he was reading on his own. I could say well read this story and we will do an activity with it (my fav was Horrible Harry and the Green Slime, and we made green slime), now it's like I have to read to them, try to get them to listen to it, try to ask them a few things to see if they listened and then I have no umph for any kind of activity. I have spent a TON of money on fun things.. I have all the Funtastic Frogs books and goodies, all the Family Math books, a bunch of the Mathstart books, a pile of "candy math" books, I have shelf after shelf of science living books and social studies living books. I have tons of board games and bunches of books of games for every subject under the sun. I have Discovery Education Streaming and Brainpop (including JR), I just bought a subscription to the Happy Scientist. I use like NONE of it! Instead I used some cheap workbooks because, well I'm not sure, maybe I'm afraid? Ugggg sorry all over the place, but I have been trying to fight these feelings for a long time, today was supposed to be our first day back at it after an easy peasy only do the basics and some fun stuff break.. and I barely made it through 1/4 of what I had planned, I was so excited about getting back at it.. but lost that excitement in seconds of sitting down
oh I hate it and makes me bored and my kids are bored along with me lol. I think i just dont have interesting voice I leave it to my husband. He does all the reading out loud
This is the one and only reason I absolutely will never be able to really use a CM or lit based curriculum. I hate reading aloud to my kids.(there goes my Mom of the Year award) I read alot faster in my head than I do with my actual mouth, so I am constantly messing up words or skipping entire lines. It sounds like maybe you're having some burn-out. I do that too. Even with all these great things at my disposal, sometimes I just get sick of the day to day. Eventually it passes. Try not to be so hard on yourself. Don't forget, you are a grown up surrounded by little kid stuff all day every day. That does get old after a while. It gets more fun the older they get and you get to learn new stuff.
Have you considered listening to stories on CD's? I have to admit that there are SOME stories that bore me to tears. We recently finished The Cat of Bubastes, which is a real pain in the toushie to read alooud. But with the right book, I really enjoy it!
I am definately suffering from burnout! Feeling like we are already way behind for the year makes it worse because I feel we can't stop to regroup. I am working on regrouping myself tonight so tomorrow I can start a new direction. We are a very audio/visual family,I need to put to use all the great video resources I pay for, my kids respond well to them and so do I. We also need to break out the fun math stuff and other board games.
I second Jackie. I love reading out loud, but some nights I'm just too tired,and then the cd's really come in handy.
I hate reading aloud, also! It's soooo annoying and I love reading. It just takes longer to do aloud. I am doing MOH and Apologia and I'm ashamed to say I just want the kids to read it to themselves!
I was on my tablet in the tub earlier.. reading and thinking and planning my next move, reflecting on the past. I have really been in a funk this year, things were going great until public school started for Garrett.. and I began a fast steep spiral down into the dumps. It's crazy, I hate fighting with him about his work, but him not being here feels wrong... oh and guess what, I still am fighting with him about his work... every. single. night! He tested into advanced classes at the school and is not maintaining the GPA he needs to stay in them, he is really resisting having to sit in a classroom or a schoolbus for 9 1/2 hours and then at the table for another 2-3, I don't blame him, but in the end he made the choices to not listen to me, so I guess he needs to face the consequences. I'm bored with the things the littles are doing... I was using SL, and I'm not even sure why I stopped.. oh yeah, we all decided we didn't care for many of the read alouds.. my kids HATED The Boxcar Children, I hated trying to read The Wizard of Oz, it was one nightmare after another when it came time to read them.. but we liked the history.. but really I didn't need an expensive guide to tell me what order to do that in, we did it pretty well on our own... but we soon dropped it too. We have been muddling through our days, mostly watching Nick jr and Mighty Machines.. sigh. I am starting anew tomorrow.. dropping the boring read alouds.. if my kids want to hear about what Junie B Jones is up to then that is what we will read aloud, we will start a course of living math guided by the seat of my pants and the worldbook standards. We are going to go back to the Core Knowledge stuff, I'm going to follow the Baltimore plans as best as I can, and try to get the k stuff done this year yet.. I think we can do it, then move onto 1st grade next year and try to get into 2nd by the end of next school year.... but if we don't get that far, no big deal. I'm going to write the lessons on index cards.. mostly just the title of the lesson and what I need and put them in a box and start working our way through them.
Sommer~ I could have wrote your post! I don't like to read much less out loud. However, I want my kids to love books and to read so what I have started doing has really helped me. I tried to read out loud during the hardest times of my day.:? For example: We eat lunch at 12:30 and then the little guys go to nap at 1:30 from 1:00-1:30 was a hard time because they would be so crazy and I wanted them to settle down and find something to do without getting a lot of stuff out. So, I began to read out loud to them and they enjoy it soooooo much. I also try to read out loud for the first 30 min. after dinner, that is a hard time here too, they just go crazy, but this has helped. I much rather read out loud to them then they be crazy! They beg me to read and that helps too. Hope this made sense!
I don't mind reading aloud, but it is sooo hard to stay awake sometimes. My kids are used to nudging me awake. Today I had to stop reading a story about the 12 Labors of Hercules. We had made it through the 6th labor and there was no way I was going to last. I finished later in the day and I didn't even make it all the way through the last 6 labors.
I know what you mean. When we do read aloud first thing in the morning I'm fine but in the afternoon-forget it! My youngest is still learning to read so I have to read practically everything aloud. By the way, who else dislikes teaching reading? Oh my goodness, its so tedious. I love all the other subjects but reading is by far the most tedious to me.
I have to agree, the reading lessons are tiresome, especially the kids stories. I love to read, but boy are those kids books boring. I like the CD, or audio tape ideas, for the days when you just do not have the energy to sit down and read.
I am doing thematic units with my daughter so when read alouds become too much for me I just change things up - this week we are doing some history stories from my own country (South Africa) and there are almost no children's books written for these stories so I had to research them myself and then just tell them to my daughter (African folklore style) Its been a good change for me and a relief from the constant read alouds and then because I just told her the story there is more time for fun activities related to the story. Of course I did not get away from read alouds entirely but then it was my daughter requesting certain books and had nothing to do with our curriculum. It also seems to have helped her reading to have a break as she picked up a book all by herself today and read it to me (she is 4 years old and this was her first independent reading)
Sounds like what you are saying is your curric comes with read alouds. Drop them if they bore you and pick up a more interesting book to read to them. I love reading to my kids because they love listening. I make cool voices and we really get into it. But if it was mandatory and not a spontaneous read then I think that would change to mood of reading aloud.
I hate reading literature aloud, too. Little kid books are fine, but otherwise - Nah! LOL I say change up whatever you need to in order for you all to enjoy it.
Wow. Reading aloud is my favorite. Maybe it's the book choice? My older two don't let me do read alouds with them much anymore....but it sure is fun to listen to them read to my youngest! Sometimes they do her read alouds if I'm in the middle of something! There are so many books I never read as a student that I've gotten to experience!!! Hope you find a way to make it more fun for yourself! Or find a good substitute.
I don't mind reading "fun" stuff.. you know Magic Tree House, Junie B., Amelia Bedelia, cute picture books, even fun "better" books like The Rats of NIHM or Charlottes Web. I just really am dealing with burn out... but I'm working on changing things
