How much literature does your homeschool read in a year?

[Nancy Ann]

My son is a 6th grader and we use Sonlight. I am thinking of wandering off the path of Sonlight and doing my own. I have done this in the past and we have just not read as much literature on our own so that is what is making me second guess this decision. However, we are in a nice habit of having Read Aloud time and also independent reading time and so maybe it will work. 

 

How many literature books do your children read in a year?

 

How many literature books do you read aloud to your family in a year?

 

Do you plan the books ahead of time or choose as the year goes on?

 

 

I know it depends on the size of book and age of child and reading level of child, but just wanting to have a basic idea. 

 

I was going to shoot for one Read Aloud a month and maybe 12 - 15 literature books for my son's reading list. We school 10 months out of the year.

 

Thanks.

[MinivanMom]

My son is a 6th grader and we use Sonlight. I am thinking of wandering off the path of Sonlight and doing my own. I have done this in the past and we have just not read as much literature on our own so that is what is making me second guess this decision. However, we are in a nice habit of having Read Aloud time and also independent reading time and so maybe it will work. 

 

How many literature books do your children read in a year? They read 100+ books in a year, but about 20-30 of those could be termed "literature".

 

How many literature books do you read aloud to your family in a year? I read 10-12 books aloud (during school time) and Dh reads 5-6 books aloud per year (in the evening).

 

Do you plan the books ahead of time or choose as the year goes on? I always plan my read aloud books ahead of time so they dovetail with what we are studying and are appropriately challenging.  I also plan out which books I assign to the children to read independently.  Dh just wings it with the books he reads aloud.

 

I know it depends on the size of book and age of child and reading level of child, but just wanting to have a basic idea. 

 

I was going to shoot for one Read Aloud a month and maybe 12 - 15 literature books for my son's reading list. We school 10 months out of the year.

 

Thanks.

 

We also started out using Sonlight, but I now plan on my own.  I find that we are reading slightly less books than we did with Sonlight, but I'm happier with our book selections.  I feel like we are reading higher quality literature and that my children are being exposed to more modern literature.  I think your plans look good for a middle schooler who is a strong reader (assuming those 12-15 literature books are middle or high school level literature).

[Meriwether]

Dd10 will read 40+ lit. books this year ranging from light reading to challenging.  She will read 200+ nonfiction, biography, and historical fiction books. Half of those will be fairly easy for her, many will be at her level, and a few will be challenging. She will also read books for free reading at bedtime.

 

Ds9 will read 15-20 lit. books.  None will be super easy for him.  Some will be a challenge.  He will read 20-40 other books for school. He will read other books at bedtime.

 

Two kids fifteen months apart in age studying the same subjects taught by the same teacher.  Ds9's reading will be a stretch for him.  It would be insane to try to get him to keep pace with his sister. For the Book-It program, I decided they would have to read at least twice as many (appropriate level) books as their grade level.  Dd10 has to read 12/month.  Ds9 has to read 8/month. Ds7 has to read 4/month. So I guess that is what I am officially expecting of them.

 

I will probably read 12-15 books to the kids this year.

 

[madteaparty]

I'm new to homechooling, but i never know how to answer this. Do really skinny and massively illustrated books like the Legend of Gilgamesh ones count the same as a Harry Potter one? And are Harry Potter or Gregor the Overlander or Coraline considered literature? I looked at the list for my son for September and he has read 7 books, which are a combination of the above.

[Farrar]

Yeah, I think it's hard to estimate and I certainly don't keep close track.  But I'll toss out some guesstimates...

 

My 9 yos will read 12 required reading books that are challenging but on level for them.  They choose from a list, so that's planned, though they won't read every book.  They're both currently reading Rules, which was a Newbery honor book.

 

They will read approximately 20-30 books on their own for fun, which will probably include a number of graphic novels, things like Wimpy kid books, series books like Warriors or the like.  They're not fast readers and I don't track this other than that once they finish their required book for the month, they still have to fill free reading time with something.  So that's totally unplanned, though I do suggest things I think they'll enjoy.

 

I'll read 20-30 books aloud for our evening read alouds.  These are almost all fiction.  I plan some of these ahead of time to coincide with history or because I'm looking forward to it for that age.  But others just come up or we pick them together.

 

We'll listen to 20 or so audiobooks in the car on trips and the like.  We often choose light reads for this.  These are always unplanned and we pick from the limited library selection.

 

I can't even begin to estimate how much I'll read aloud and how much they'll read independently for school.  This is usually longer picture books and nonfiction of various lengths.  We read a LOT.  I would say at least an hour a day and often more is devoted to school related reading aloud or assigned, but the length of the books varies so much that numbers don't mean much in this case.  I don't plan the specific books per se, though obviously they're chosen to go with history, science, etc. topics and those are planned.  I plan a few of them.

[lewelma]

I require that my 7th grader reads 4 classics per term, so 16 per year.  If like this term, he reads some long ones (Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations), we then go hunting for some shorter ones like Turn of the Screw or Picture of Dorian Grey to finish off the term.  So about 1200-1500 pages of classics per term, but he is a particularly good reader and has been building up to this for some time. He does not read any other books for fun, as he likes classics and considers them fun.  So this is his total fiction reading.

 

I plan out a list of 30 books at the beginning of the year that he can choose from.  He likes having choice.  So I tell him what each one is about and then he picks his next book.

 

My husband reads history and literature to the boys at night for a total of about 4-5 hours per week.  So they get through what they get through.  Oliver Twist will take them 8 weeks!  I definitely make a history schedule for my dh at the beginning of each year. They are currently a month behind because of Oliver Twist!

 

Ruth in NZ

[Jacqueline]

I don't know the exact numbers because it depends on the child and the year. I would say at least 60 books a year starting around age 7 or 8. Before that it's a little less and most of them are read-aloud.

[My3girls]

Wow, y'all do some reading! I'm not sure how many total books we read or have read. As far as literature, though, my youngers read about 5 a year, and dd11 reads about 7. They read science, history, math, and free read books on top of that. We discuss, draw, write, and other activities with our reading so this slows us down a little. I think it gives more understanding and substance to the book, though.

[Mandylubug]

too many to count. Some fun books, some assigned, some just flipped through and pictures adored.. Last year,I myself read over 100 books leisurely in addition to the reading I participated in with the kids. 

[Desert Strawberry]

My oldest will read 20-40 works of fiction, half literature, half twaddle. I am only beginning to add nonfiction and subject reading for him. No idea how that will go.

My 7yo is still in picture books and early readers, though I'm working to get him to more substantial works this year. He reads 1-4 books a day, often the same ones over and over.

I am not great at reading aloud .if I do it at all, the little ones come first. I read science and history to the olders, and that's all I'm good for. 

I have numerous literature selections set aside, either to read aloud or as audio books. I have 2 months carved out to knock out 2 books.now that winter is coming, I see many more stories in our future.

[Pen]

My son is a 6th grader and we use Sonlight. I am thinking of wandering off the path of Sonlight and doing my own. I have done this in the past and we have just not read as much literature on our own so that is what is making me second guess this decision. However, we are in a nice habit of having Read Aloud time and also independent reading time and so maybe it will work. 

 

How many literature books do your children read in a year?

 

How many literature books do you read aloud to your family in a year?

 

Do you plan the books ahead of time or choose as the year goes on?

 

 

I know it depends on the size of book and age of child and reading level of child, but just wanting to have a basic idea. 

 

I was going to shoot for one Read Aloud a month and maybe 12 - 15 literature books for my son's reading list. We school 10 months out of the year.

 

Thanks.

 

I don't plan ahead, except if it is to pre-buy a whole series as a box set or that sort of thing, or to review a Shakespeare play in advance of seeing a performance of it.  

 

There is rarely any book that I read all of aloud anymore, either because ds does not like it and it gets dropped, or because he does, and picks it up and finishes it himself before I can do so.

 

We also have some audio books that we both can listen to.   

 

   I require about 4 books that are clearly literature (Dickens, Twain, that sort of thing, and often these are the read alouds), more or less in course of year.   He has read a number of books that may someday be counted as literature (Harry Potter), and some that probably should already qualify (The Book of Three), as free reading.   He also reads a bunch of genre books (Sci Fi) that I do not think will ever be considered literature, but that do have a lot of interesting vocabulary--and sometimes seem to be commentary on actual present day earth life-- at least, so I think they have some merit even though not "literature".

 

I have so far not assigned any fiction as required reading, but he has been through several Dickens novels, Shakespeare plays and the like, so that seems to be working all right.  And it seems to have kept fiction a delight to get immersed in, rather than something to get through a certain amount of in a certain amount of time.

[MotherOfBoys]

You may want to check out The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. He gives suggestions for what to read and one chapter mentions discussion is just as important after reading. He lists books in the back by age. We are starting October with most of the grade K books done. We will be moving on to 1st grade books in mid October. He gives some great classics and some that I wouldn't have picked up on my own that were really good. My goal is to read all the K, 1st and 2nd grade books this year that he suggests and, of course, all our SoTW 1 reading list ( which consists of as many books as I can get my hands on).

[EKS]

In sixth grade, this was the breakdown.

 

Read by my son (who has dyslexia, so he is slower, but at this point was reading above grade level):

 

Classic literature:  8

Other fiction:  9

Historical fiction:  11

Fiction to supplement geography: 2

Fiction to supplement science:  2

Total read by student:  32 (all novel length books)

 

Read aloud by me:

 

Classic literature:  6

Supplemental reading for history:  45

Supplemental reading for geography:  8

Supplemental reading for science:  3

Total read aloud by me:  62 (mostly novel length books)

 

[Mom22ns]

I won't estimate and don't count, but I like for my kids to read an average of an hour a day. When we did SL, we probably read more books numerically, but we didn't spend longer on reading. SL includes a lot of short easy books. We enjoyed them, but when I assign literature or use other lit curriculums, the short easy books are left behind. I still encourage my kids to read on their own time as well. They can pick anything they want.

 

While both of my kids like SL when we did it, in one it made a life long reader. The other doesn't want to read anything that isn't assigned now and won't read for pleasure any more. I think an overabundance of assigned material contributed to if not completely caused that breakdown. I'm still trying to fix it.

[brownie]

Well right now we are wrapping up our first classic read aloud Tom Sawyer.  DS11 is reading Cat of Bubastes.  This is our 6th week of school so we will probably only get in 6-8 classics.  We study short stories in a lit club every 2 weeks.  Between fun fiction, historical fiction, and assigned books on scientific and historical topics (most of which are short), he will read over 100 books this year that I will allow to count in our required reading log for the state.  He will also re-read many favorites.  But he is an incredibly fast reader.  For school he spends 30-60 minutes reading a day.

[*Lulu*]

 

How many literature books do your children read in a year?

 

Punk- reads around 250 books/year. Probably 25-30 of those I would consider substantial.

 

Sister- reads in the neighborhood of 150 books/year. I would say 20-25 are of more value than Goddess Girls style series.

 

Bug- is still learning to read. He gets between 400-450 books/year, but most of those are still picture books.

 

How many literature books do you read aloud to your family in a year?

 

I rarely read aloud anymore because of other issues that plague our little school, but we listen to tons of audiobooks. I would say we listen to at least 15/year that I would be willing to consider quality literature.

 

Do you plan the books ahead of time or choose as the year goes on?

 

I have a reading list for each child at the start of the year and have them choose from it from time to time. Sister has not read from her list in two months because she is reading the Harry Potter series on her own right now. Punk needs a new list because I severely underestimated where he was, ability wise, when I created the current list. I usually have a rough plan for our group reading each year, but tend to happily follow whatever the group interest is. We are currently listening to The Hobbit, which was from our reading last year, but they found it on the iPod and wanted to hear it again.

[duckens]

How many Literature books do your children read in a year?

 

Disclaimer: I do not have a 6th grader YET.  Only a 6yo and a toddler.

 

Philosophy: We read good books

--for the sake of being exposed to complex ideas

--to be well read on current ideas

--it creates "shared history" with everyone else who has read these books

--as preparation for reading adult classics/award winners 

 

We read Caldecott and other award-winning (or nominated) books: Geisel, Zolotov, Goldfinch Awards.  Last school year we read 80 of them (2/week).  I printed off a copy of the awards we wanted to read, and we read backwards, starting with the most recent winners. We check these books off the list, and I hope to read ~80 books/ year through 4th grade.

 

Dd6 also evaluates the books a la IEW, with a discussion of characters, setting, problem/surprise (crisis), resolution of crisis, what happens afterwards, and a clincher sentence.

 

-----------------------

THE PLAN (if we are still homeschooling):

 

Newberry Award winners by 5th grade.  I will expect my daughters to read a chapter a day, and to evaluate the chapter in a literary manner.  (List characters, be aware of setting, record in writing 2 things that happened in each chapter, theme, and a book report at the end of at least some books). 

 

Classics beginning in 9th or 10 Grade:

--70 to 100pages/week, with and extra week between books for written book evaluation.  While reading, I will encourage my daughters to record 2 things from each chapter, and other notes (symbolism, striking passages by page number, theme/lessons learned, characters).

--two Shakespeare plays/year.  Any play.  Just pick one.

--guided by Cliff's Notes.  This also gives me (who does not have natural Literary abilities) a one stop guide for authorship, symbols, theme, and a summary if we miss anything in the original reading.

--because of the Cliff's system, my daughters will be able to choose from hundreds of books.  Pick one.  Pick any one. 

--we may also be guided by recommendations for peers on the college track.

--I am open to other award winners, too.  If dd proposes something that has won the Nobel prize for Literature or something on the NYT Bestseller List, we will discuss it.

 

By writing two things that happen in each chapter, I am hoping to train my daughters how to "read literature in preparation for writing a paper."  If she has a rough outline of what happens in each chapter, she will have a framework to "write a summary of the book."  This is preferred to reading a 300p book, then figuring out where to start.

 

Likewise, popular questions of high school/college lit teachers are:

Quote X number of passages that show blah blah blah (symbolism, examples of rising conflict, examples of how character feels about Y or Z).  "Find and discuss three passages where Amy feels ambivalence toward a character."

 

Again, if my daughter has a written framework, she can easily find scenes she needs.

 

Chapter 7: "Amy rides the train to Chicago.  She meets Mrs. Spencer on the train." 

Chapter 20: "Amy attends a party at Haversfull House.  Mrs. Spencer gives her a red scarf, but makes her feel mad by her comments" 

 

So, dd will have a jumpstart on what to skim to find 2 of the 3 passages.

 

 

Most high school students only read 1-2 Shakespeare plays in a high school career.  Imagine if yours has read 6-8.

 

Most high school students only read a handful of classics.  Imagine if yours has a list of 20-30 as they leave for college.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FriedClams]

My kids read all the SL books plus, and this is a guess, 3-5 books a week for fun. Some weeks it's less, some significantly more (like a road trip, plane flight, etc.). Some of the extra are "literature" some are kid beach reads. I think they need both but we minimize twaddle.

[mamatohaleybug]

Hard to adequately answer. My DD (not a strong reader) is required by me to read for 45 minutes a day. She is assigned 9-10 "literature" books a month (such as Because of Winn-Dixie, Shiloh, Toliver's Secret), in addition to her daily science, weekly biography and rare history reading. She also spends at least an hour a day listening to audiobooks (In the last two weeks she's done The BFG, Peter Pan and Tuck Everlasting). Additionally, my DH reads aloud every night for about 30-45 minutes. Right now we're reading Pyle's Robin Hood.

 

My short answer: LOTS of books. About 20-30 a month on her own, 6-8 per month on audiobook and another 2-3 a monh read aloud by dad.  

[MerryAtHope]

Hi Nancy--Going off-Sonlighting (like off-roading!) has worked well here. I took the pace that we generally use with Sonlight (not Sonlight's pace, but our pace) and just kept that up. Sonlight generally had too many books for us--not by a lot, but we do like a day or two to just "digest" a book, talk about it more, sit with it...rather than just jumping from book to book to book. Also my kids are good readers but not incredibly fast. So for those reasons, Sonlight as written hasn't always worked for us.

 

What I have done is to make up my own 1-page schedule. Sonlight used to always have this at the front of their IG--I believe it's in section 3 in the new IG. It lists all of the history, read-alouds and readers according to the week they are introduced. After years of doing Sonlight, I can look at a book and make a pretty good guess about how many pages/chapters we'll read aloud or how many my kids will read, and I can roughly map out our year and just check off books as we go. I usually buy a few extras, just in case we need an optional book to fill in with (or I choose optional books from what we have)--and I list them on my 1-page guide as "optional" too, so I don't have to go looking for more books if we get ahead of my plan for some reason.

 

Each day my kids read for half an hour, and just get as far as they can with their readers. I still read to them (just finished Huck Finn!) daily, anywhere from 20-45 minutes, depending on the book and the day--just whatever we'll enjoy together.

 

Our Read-aloud schedule for the year has 11 books and 4 optional (keep in mind that several are longer--I think we took 5 or 6 weeks on Huck Finn, for example).

 

My son's lit. schedule has 12 books and 5 optional. He'll also have several historical lit. books for a Japanese History course he's doing.

 

My daughter's schedule has 23 books and 5 optional, but many of her books are shorter ones (she's a Freshman and is doing a lot, but not all, of the Sonlight 100 books, while my son is doing selections from Sonlight 400 and Notgrass, which tend to be longer or more difficult reads).

 

If either of my kids don't get through what I've planned, that's ok--I can simply cross a book off or adjust as we go. Sometimes I'll have them choose between 2 books if I really don't care which one they read. Sometimes I'll just save one for later, or change it to a read-aloud. Having that 1-page guide really makes it easy for me to adjust as the year goes and add or subtract guilt-free.

 

More isn't always better, so go at a pace that works well for you and your kids. If they have daily reading time, they'll make it through a good number of books (and they can still read extra if they want to). I really like the freedom to go at a pace that works well for us, rather than cramming books in just for the sake of cramming them in.

 

I like to follow Sonlight's model of alternating harder books with easier ones, or harder themes with lighter or funnier books, as that has worked well here.

 

Have fun with it! Merry :-)

[Soror]

My son is a voracious reader. I couldn't begin to count how many books he reads. As to read-alouds we did not do too great in this department last year, especially compared to previous years. I was exhausted and pregnant and then exhausted w/ a newborn. We are trying to get back into the swing of things this year.

 

As for read-alouds I'm aiming for about 1 a month for ds and 1 every other week for dd for Literature- for dd. I just started chapter book read-alouds for dd and for ds I will be reading longer chapter books- like Heidi, Narnia, Hobbit etc(ds nearly always listens to whatever I'm listening to for dd but she doesn't have the attention span to listen to all his books). I have a shelf stocked full of good books for ds to choose from for his literature reading. I generally do not dictate to him how much he reads as he reads so much on his own, if anything I'm more apt to tell him to stop reading as he can become obsessed with books (a good problem to have!).

 

I read a lot of good picture books as well to everyone. I also read non-fiction, I've got a read-aloud going for Science and History right now and ds is reading science and history on his as well. Ds reads and listens to a variety of levels of books. I notice at times when he finishes a longer or more challenging book then he'll take a bit of a break and read a shorter easier read. We love audio books but since the library reorganized them they are really hard to find so we don't listen to near as many as we previously did. I hope I can get to the library more this year to hunt them down but we will see. I'm aiming for at least 1 hr a day read-aloud time.

[Julie Smith]

My son is a 6th grader and we use Sonlight. I am thinking of wandering off the path of Sonlight and doing my own. I have done this in the past and we have just not read as much literature on our own so that is what is making me second guess this decision. However, we are in a nice habit of having Read Aloud time and also independent reading time and so maybe it will work. 

 

How many literature books do your children read in a year?

 

How many literature books do you read aloud to your family in a year?

 

Do you plan the books ahead of time or choose as the year goes on?

 

 

I know it depends on the size of book and age of child and reading level of child, but just wanting to have a basic idea. 

 

I was going to shoot for one Read Aloud a month and maybe 12 - 15 literature books for my son's reading list. We school 10 months out of the year.

 

Thanks.

 

The number of literature books, I haven't a clue. I do keep a list of all the books we read. To get on my list the book has to take an hour or more to read. That is my only requirement, I had to make the cut off mark at some point. Occasionally I would record something like, "All the Ricky Ricotta Books" as a single entry on my excel spread sheet. 

 

I keep track of books according to the calendar year. 

 

So far this year I have 171 books read aloud. This could be me or Dh reading, or one of us adults listening to a book with the boys. Or the boys listening by themselves if Dh or myself already read or listened to the book with them. They are focused on listening and not playing.

 

Eldest read 60 books to himself.

 

Eldest and I read 7 books together. (The Percy Jackson series and the Phantom Tollbooth. We are now working on another series by Rick Riordan)

 

Youngest listened to by himself 22 books. With the rare exception he listens to books that I read aloud in previous years.

 

Youngest has read 9 books out loud.

 

We talk and discuss books when and if we want to. For example, "Number the Stars" got a lot of discussion. The 3 rereading of the Rats of Nimh - not so much. 

[MistyMountain]

My older kids both still read a lot of short books or picture books so they read a lot of books yearly. There is no way I could count. I keep track of page numbers for the school. Last month she read 2000 pages and this month she is getting a better start then last month. I try for a minimum of and hour a day of reading. My oldest daughter picks mostly fluff to read. I wish she picked more substantial reading but I don't want her to hate reading either. I read to the kids every night to and I try to read more substantial books but I don't know what would count as classic literature. My son has broad interests on the other hand and he does like to listen to the classics. He can't read on his own yet but he is interested and enjoys things more then my oldest. My youngest is ready for chapter books and she seems tp pick all fluff too. I try to slip in the newberry and calicott picture books but she has been all about listening in with her brother to the truck books, books about butterflies and the magic school bus picture books.

[Vida Winter]

We read all of the SL core books (unless there are ones I choose to sub out) but we also go to the library and choose extra "fun" books. I don't have an actual count but we are keeping track for the first time this year.

[Melissa in Australia]

my kids read 8-10 books form the WTM list per year.

 

ds10 hasn't made that reading level yet(Dyslexia) He is still doing reader type books read aloud to me.

 

 

I also read aloud probable 15-25 classical books per year. some of them are quiet thick, like the Lord of the Rings.so it slows me down some. I also read a short read aloud just about every day, usually a non-fiction book about animals, biographies,  history text books or something like that.