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Kindle for schoolwork?


ksoika
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Hi all,

 

I'm thinking about buying a kindle for all the girls' reading schoolwork (we're buying the Ambleside year one books). The cost of the kindle would easily be covered by the savings on books. And then some.

 

But I feel like something would be lost by going with digital versions of the books. I'm just not exactly sure what would be lost. My girls are young so the ability to increase font size could be helpful now.

 

What have you done?

 

Thanks,

Kelli

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I just recently bought a Kindle Touch for my 5th grader. She really likes it. My main reason for buying it was the ability to immediately look up unfamiliar words. :001_smile: I also like that it helps keep down the number of physical books that I have to find shelf space for!

 

She's using it at this moment to read a biography of Abigail Adams, and right before that she used it to read a chapter of The Cabin Faced West.

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I haven't bought my son his own Kindle, but I have thought about it. The toy manufacturers are coming out with kid e-readers for the same price, so if you are going to spend the money, I say why not get the real thing. I got mine for Christmas last year and I use it for read-alouds. I have considered letting him use it to read on his own but haven't done it yet. The font size and the dictionary are both advantages. Also the cost of the books, and getting to read old out-of-print stuff are advantages. The only disadvantage I have experienced just with doing read-alouds is the loss of illustrations if you are using free Kindle books. We recently finished the Wind in the Willows and he loved it, but I think he would have enjoyed it even more if there had been pictures to look at. Next time I use my Kindle for a read-aloud I will take the time to see if there is an illustrated version, even if I have to pay a few dollars.

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I have thought about it, but haven't gotten my kids Kindles yet for several reasons:

 

-I've had a hard time finding all of the books I wanted/needed in a Kindle/eReader format. (We use Sonlight)

 

-I would lose the ability to have a physical reminder of how far to read, and when to STOP reading that day. My kids read very quickly (sometimes too quickly), and they'd blow through an entire book in a day if I just said, "Go read it on the Kindle." Right now, I use sticky flags attached to the page in each book with the date written on it, so they know to stop reading when they get to the next day's flag. I don't think marking a bookmark on a Kindle page would have the same effect.

 

-I buy a lot of our books used, and often I can get books used for much less than the cost of a Kindle edition of the same book.

 

If I could work around these reasons, I would LOVE to move to eReader format for Readers or Read Alouds.

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FWIW, I absolutely love my Sony ereader, but I haven't used it for homeschooling yet. DH read the kids Peter Pan from my ereader, and he didn't enjoy the ebook format at all. I just checked out the ebook of The Mysterious Benedict Society, so I'll try that with the kids next week.

 

-I would lose the ability to have a physical reminder of how far to read, and when to STOP reading that day.

To get around this, I'd highlight the first sentence of each day's reading. When I got to a highlighted sentence, I'd know I'm supposed to stop.

Edited by jplain
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I use it a little right now but it's use will be increasing as our future may include some moving that will severely limit the physical books I can enjoy the pleasure of having on hand. I do personally prefer a real book in my hand as much as I love the convenience of so many of my books being in one small place on hand. My heavy use of the Kindle for school reading will be purely out of financial and physical constraints.

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To get around this, I'd highlight the first sentence of each day's reading. When I got to a highlighted sentence, I'd know I'm supposed to stop.

 

How much marking up is it possible to do on an ebook? Is there a program for Kindle that will allow me to just write in the margins, cross words out, make little marks under and around words?

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