- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
The summer months flew by and sitting down to read together just didn’t happen. We did listen to quite a few audiobooks while driving back and forth to the pool, but otherwise – well, we were having summer fun!
With the weather cooling down and having our school routine back in place, we’ve started reading together in the afternoons or evenings.
A few weeks into the our school year, Raiders from the Sea by Lois Walfrid Johnson was pulled out for one of the girls to use as her daily assigned reading. At first, there was a lot of whining and crying. There may have even been comments like, “This book is dumb!” or “Why do you make me read these books?”
After four chapters, the complaining stopped and a little girl disappeared into her room, curled up with a book that she just couldn’t put down. As soon as that book was finished, she begged and pleaded for us to get the four other books in the series.
She may have been a little hooked.
The other four books in the series were all ordered, and a little girl finished the series much to her delight. Now – since we own all five books in the series – it seemed only logical to read them together and find out what all the fuss was about.
Breeana O’Toole didn’t realize who it was that she rescued from drowning in the river. The term ‘Viking’ puts fear into the hearts of everyone. Bree’s peaceful family life is about to be disrupted in ways she never even fathomed.
Set around the year A.D. 1000, Raiders from the Sea follows the story of Bree and her brother Devin as they are captured by Vikings and taken from their home in Ireland – and into slavery.
*Note – contains faith-based elements
As a family, we’re about halfway into the story together. A few children are building LEGO Viking ships while we read, but everyone is listening and guessing what will happen next.
One thing that I love from reading out loud together is hearing how different children interpret a passage based on their age. We came across this one line that prompted a fun conversation – “At first, a thundercloud passed over his face.”
There was a puzzled look for a moment and then a ‘lightbulb’ moment – but just so fun to watch! Books and styles of writing give us so much to talk to our children about and to learn together.
If you’re interested in peeking at any of the books, just click on the widget below. They are available in both paperback format {around $7 each} or the entire series is less than $14 on the Kindle.
Books We’ve Previously Read Together
Here are a few other books that we’ve read together and blogged about. Click over to see our thoughts on them!
- The Mysterious Benedict Society
- Darien’s Rise {Adventures in Odyssey Passages}
- The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss
- Homer Price by Robert McCloskey
- The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins
What book or books are you reading together right now?
Leave a comment and share a good read with us!
The printables shared on this site are FREE of charge unless otherwise noted, and you are welcome to download them for your personal and/or classroom use only. However, free or purchased printables are NOT to be reproduced, hosted, sold, shared, or stored on any other website or electronic retrieval system (such as Scribd or Google docs). My printables are copyright protected and I appreciate your help in keeping them that way.
If you download and use some of my printables and then blog about them, please provide a link back to my blog and let me know - I'd love to see how you are using them! Please be sure to link to the blog post or web page and not directly to the file itself. Thank you!
We use Drawn into the Heart of Reading, and I bought The Invisible Friend (#3) for our mystery selection (recommended by the program). I was afraid my son wouldn’t like it since the main character is a girl, but he actually loved it (so did I). Eventually I’m going to buy the rest of the series!
We just finished reading Mystery of the Missing Liberty Bell. I’m using Milk and Cookies posting of reading around the USA for picking out our read alouds right now. Our next one will be The Boy who Saved Cleveland.
I’ve been homeschooling three years and am just now picking up on the genius of read-alouds. *shakes head* Well better late than never. We’ve started out our school year with Mr. Popper’s Penguins and have plans to do The Toothpaste Millionaire next.
Do you just read the books, or do you do activities after to extend the understanding? My child is almost 11, so I’ve placed a new expectation on her to do a book-report-alternative on all the books she reads. It can be something simple or elaborate, depending on how inspired she is by the book. I’m undecided if I’m going to keep our read-alouds in that category or do something a little different since I’m reading it with her.
That’s the second mention of Toothpaste Millionaire today – how funny! We read Mr. Popper’s Penguins last year. Sometimes we do activities to go along, but typically if it is a family read-aloud, it’s just for fun. The girls work on book reports and such on their independent school reading {like when McKenna had to read this as part of her school assignment}.
I’ve heard a lot about these books! We may have to look into them for this year. Right now we are reading Crispin: Cross of Lead aloud and will soon be starting The Toothpaste Millionaire. I adore reading aloud! Thanks for this recommendation!
Oooo – I’ll have to look into The Toothpaste Millionaire. I have a feeling this series will keep us busy for a few weeks at least! :)
What traditional grade level would you place these books on? Amazon doesn’t say. Thanks for the recommendation! Always on the lookout for good, godly literature.
Hmmm…I would say middle school reading level. :) But our 7th/8th grader is loving them too!
I was going to ask that question too. Would it be an okay book to read to my 4yo and 6yo? Or just the 6yo reading on her own? She has a 5th grade reading level. Or any recommendations on good books for her to read? She is currently interested in The Boxcar Children and American Girls books, but the rest of the book I seem to see all over the place for younger girls are about magic animals or fairies. Thanks!
So far what we’ve read aloud hasn’t been violent at all, if that’s what you are worried about. It’s written from the perspective of a 13 year old and the series takes place over 5 years, so I have a feeling that somewhere along the line a little ‘romance’ might develop. :)
Got it. :) This bookworm mama will just have to read the books first then. :p
My guys read these to accompany their Viking studies last year, and LOVED them. Like yours, they were a little bit hooked! It’s a shame the author hasn’t written a set of books for every historical period -my little homeschool would be set to go then!!
Claire – I know she has two other series that are historically based. :) I’m going to see if they are on the kindle, because the Viking series was only $13 for all five books on the Kindle! Hoping the others are the same.
Thanks for the suggestion. We are enjoying read alouds, but I must confess that I like to use YouTube. CC Prose is a cool channel that has the words on the screen too.