A Homeschool Mom Confessional: I Didn’t Like to Read

Believe it or not, I didn’t really read till I was seventeen.

Oh yes, I could read, but I didn’t do it if I didn’t have to.

I remember the assignments that I was supposed to read: grade 11 it was Gandhi.

That’s a long book. I watched the movie….actually, that’s a long movie too (truth: I watched parts of the movie).

In grade 12, I was supposed to read Hamlet. Cole’s Notes is not nearly as explanatory as the Shakespeare version…surprise, surprise. So when the English teacher asked us to peruse Macbeth overnight, I giggled “in mental mockery. “No way, I’m not spending my evening reading a full book of anything, let alone some guy’s version of death, murder, vindictiveness, guilt, shame, and jealousy from the 16th century.”

In class the next day, I lucked out as part of the discussion group with the lone overachiever in the class. 

So fast forward two decades and want to guess what this homeschool mama reads?

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“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read”.

–Mark Twain

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A lot. I have made up for lost time.

Perhaps my love of classic literature, and also classic quotes, might reveal my vacuum of need for my previous twenty years of reading.

I’ve done a lot of reading since that time. And I can’t get enough of it.

The home-educating lifestyle has given me loads of time to choose and read books with my kiddos. (Here are a few of our favourites).

I loved chatting with Sarah Mackenzie from Readaloud Revival about making our homeschool a little more beautiful with readalouds too.

This will be one of my children’s most significant memories of their childhood, this homeschooled childhood: all the books we’ve loved together.

Give me Little Women, Little House on the Prairies, Stuart Little, The Littles…gee you’d think there was a trend here…little…

Give me anything Austen, even abridged versions, or Dickens, or Charles and Mary Lamb’s version of Shakespeare’s plays, or poetry from Robert Louis Stevenson.

Then there’s A Wrinkle in Time and Chronicles in Narnia.

Give me modern titles like Under the Tuscan Sun or 1000 Days in Venice or The Forgotten Garden, and I am transported, plane ticket-free, to places far beyond.

And here lies one of the greatest freedoms, greatest privileges of this lifestyle: a LOT of free time to pursue books you want to read and call that an academic initiative for your child’s education!

ps Here are three things I wish I knew before I homeschooled…

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“I was reading a book, ‘The History of Glue. I couldn’t put it down.”

–Tim Vine

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If you’d like to join the Homeschool Mama Book Club and read a whole lotta books alongside homeschool mamas, you’re welcome to join me.

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Books We’ve Discussed…

• Alison Gopnik’s The Gardener & The Carpenter
• How Rachel Gathercole Informs my Homeschool
• Marie Forleo’s Everything is Figureoutable
• Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart
• Gordon Neufeld’s Hold onto Your Kids
• Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness at Home
• Sarah Susanka’s Not-So-Big Life
• Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication
• Amy Morin’s 13 Things Mentally Strong Don’t Do
• Julie Bogart’s Raising Critical Thinkers

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People also ask:

• Beyond your Homeschool Mama Identity
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• the Homeschool Mama Book Club: So we can Show up on Purpose
• a homeschool readalouds family book list we love (& that provides adventure too)
• 7 Effective Tools to Build Boundaries (& Why You Require Them)

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