John is full of questions like never before, making reading a book to him an exasperating experience. Sometimes I even set the rule that if I'm going to read to him, he must be silent and ask no questions--which doesn't sit right with me considering he's three years old! Yet I am so exasperated otherwise! A reading might go like this:
K: "One summer day the Little Red Hen . . ."
J: "No, 'once upon a time'!"
K: "No, that's not what the words say. The words say 'one summer day.'"
J: " But I say 'once upon a time.'"
K: "That's fine if you want to say that. That's just not what the words say. May I keep reading?"
J: "Yes."
K: "One summer day the Little Red Hen found a grain of wheat." [K. reads through the duck, goose, cat, and pig saying 'no.' before John interrupts again.]
J: "You forgot the cat!"
K: "No, I didn't forget the cat. You weren't paying attention." [Mother and son argue a bit about whether she really forgot the cat, which she did not. We get through reaping the wheat.]
K: "She reaped the wheat, and it was ready to be taken to the mill and made into flour." [Then follows question about what a mill is, what those are (the wind propellers on the wind mill), and whether Mama also bakes her bread with flour (yes). We then move to the next page in which the Red Hen makes dough and John perseverates on whether the Hen "spilled" her dough, as the picture seems to indicate.]
We're now one-third of the way through a book with very few sentences per page and it's taken at least five minutes. I'm glad John is so inquisitive, but it is exhausting!
Oh my goodness...I can so relate, my friend! And I'm with you, as much as I delight in the inquisitiveness, one of my biggest pet peeves is to be interrupted. It's so exasperating!
ReplyDeleteJaneane: John just can't contain himself! Even (especially?) with a story he already knows by heart, he'll burst forth with questions about what is going to happen next. So I say, "Let's be quiet and keep reading and then we will find out!"
ReplyDeleteMy friend and fabulous mother and home educator, Elizabeth, read this post, then emailed me off-blog to tell me I should deeply investigate the Charlotte Mason method of education. That reminded me that when I did research on home schooling methods a couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to start with a hybrid of Montessori and Charlotte Mason, then transition to a Classical Education. But then I never deeply investigated Charlotte Mason. Just ordered two books on it, and there is gobs of information online. Apparently when I investigate CM, I'll learn how to handle John's inquisitive nature during story-telling!
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