Sibling Read- Aloud

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My middle daughter started reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe to her younger sister one afternoon just because they wanted to read it for fun. I was thrilled. Adele needs to be read to more. Avril needs to read more and practice reading aloud more. They continued reading like this the next day.  The next day, I noticed they weren't getting around to it... so I just told them to do it, gave them time to do this, and handed them a 30 minute timer.  And ever since then, I've made thirty minutes of reading aloud a formal part of their homeschool day.  At first they would complain a little on some days, but mostly they submitted willingly, since it was something they already liked doing.  Now that we've been doing this, they have read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and the Usborne Illustrated Stories from Shakespeare.  I learned a lesson about nurture and discipline from this. The two go together hand and hand.  I saw what they were doing on their own and I wanted to nurture it, so I brought it under a gentle discipline, so as to nurture it. A few weeks in, and now they ask to do this first and they have gotten so much reading done together this way.

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