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The truth is I always felt guilty about not doing literary analysis…. I decided early on that my goal in teaching the Bible was for the kids to LOVE their Bible. So I finally decided that my goal for literature would be the same – teaching them to LOVE literature. I didn’t want to “beat the love of books out of them” with analyzing everything.
In retrospect, it all ended up great. They are able to do college literary analysis in their honors “great books” class without a problem, and getting A’s. Great 20/20 hindsight, but at the time I really stressed over “reading comprehension” more than just about anything else.
Keeping the focus on “love of learning” is so hard, though, when you are faced with a kid who may only answer “fine” when you ask them about their reading 
Blessings,
Lee
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Linda says:
This is good to know, Lee, because I have worrying over this lately. I was thinking of buying the Teaching the Classics DVD set and just letting Landon watch it himself. LOL! I have 3 other children (13, 9 and 2!!!) besides him. I cannot do it all!
March 2nd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
The HomeScholar says:
Hi Linda,
Great news – NOBODY can do it all, LOL! I think the DVD set sounds like a great solution. We spent on year in English doing “Learn to Write the Novel Way.” It covers setting, characters, etc., and I think that was all the literary analysis they needed. I always *wanted* to have those great and meaningful book discussions that others talked about, but it just didn’t happen for us!
Blessings,
Lee
March 2nd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Sue Ann says:
I’m glad you mentioned this. I have a senior this year and I was stressing over not having those “meaningful” discussions also. He reads like a madman and I can’t even keep up to begin to have those “meaningful” discussions except for one here and there. So, we began a “literature club” for these homeschooled high schoolers to discuss the books themselves. Do you think this is a good ideas or should I have foregone this? ~Sue Ann
July 31st, 2009 at 5:21 am
Lee says:
Hi Sue Ann,
Starting a literature club sounds like fun to me! As long as it sounds like fun to your child, I think it will work out great. In retrospect, I think my children might have enjoyed that. Then again, they spent a lot of time talking about the books just between the two of them, so maybe we had a built in literature club at home….
You know that phrase you used, “He reads like a madman”? I think it might be worth repeating that to yourself now and then. In my opinion, that’s the sign of success already
Blessings,
Lee
July 31st, 2009 at 7:38 am
Kenisha says:
I am so glad that you wrote this. It was in my inbox just in time too! Last night we had our moms homeschool meeting to kick off the school year and I started feeling insecure about not requiring my son to read certain books or doing a comprehension sheet after reading. He also reads like a madman(he’s 11 yrs old). I decided not to attach work to his chapter books because I remember public school sucked the love of reading right out of me with all of the analysis, and required books to read. Because my son loves reading, he is free to discover that some of the classics are good stories. More importantly he is free to enjoy them instead of looking for a break from literature b/c of projects and questions. Through this method he has read all of the Narnia books, Black Beauty, etc. He told me that he was going to start reading books with boring looking covers because they turn out to be good stories! Prior to that when I tried to convince him to read classics he automatically tried to avoid them. This year, I decided to make sure he reads across the genres by having an incentive chart that lists all of the genres of literature and their definitions. Everytime he reads a book, he can classify it and earn a reward for reading in each genre. There is a maximum or 4 books/genre. This helps him explore on his own. It’s working out great so far. I think that the basic elements of plot and literature can be taught using simple childrens stories (i.e. 3 little pigs) or bible stories. That way older kids are free to enjoy literature at a higher level. I also decided to sharpen comprehension skills for standardized tests by using a good reading comprehension workbook with short stories and passages (ie Spectrum or Steck-Vaughn). This helps ease the anxiety of standardized testing while keeping the love of literature in tact. Atleast it does for my family.
August 26th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Cindy K. says:
I can relate to sucking the joy out of reading. That happened to me in high school when I took AP English for 10th through 12th grades! I was reading SO much for that class, that I stopped reading for pleasure and didn’t realize until my 2nd year of college that I did used to like to read – especially at bedtime!
Then, our first year of homeschooling, when the boys were 8 years old and in 3rd grade, I started doing it to them! We were using a “rigorous” curriculum that required them to read a short story everyday AND answer questions about it, in writing, in complete sentences. An entire worksheet of at least 5 questions and answers. They were discussing plot, point of view, characters, personification, and a whole gamut of things that I don’t think I was formally introduced to until 7th or 8th grade! When I started to hear groans every time the subject of Literature/Reading came up, I finally realized what I was doing. They actually told me that they hated having to do questions about every story they read. They just wanted to read the stories!
Well, due to that, and many other things about the “complete curriculum” we were using (including grammar workbook burnout), we got rid of it right after Christmas that year!
Since then, I have only required that they read everyday, but I let it be something of their choosing. Anything that we have discussed since, and not in literary terms but rather in more “relating to the story” terms, has been from our copious read-alouds. And we have not done any serious grammar since then, either. It took at least a year for them to not cringe any time they heard the word “grammar”!
My boys are 11 now (fraternal twins) and do read most everyday on their own. I do like Kenisha’s idea of an incentive system to read from different genres of literature as a way to get them to choose other kinds of books. I will keep this idea on the back burner for a little later. But I don’t want to push too much since I have one boy who has struggled to enjoy reading (due to mild LDs) and I just keep looking for things that HE is interested in enough to read. So far, that means it has to be dragon-related or other similar fantasy novels. But he IS READING! And at a 5th-6th grade level, which is awesome! The other son is quite an avid reader and hates not having something to read at bedtime, but is currently focused on teenage spy novels, and I am running out of ideas for him! After he reads the books he gets for Christmas, I will keep trying to get him to try other subjects for his reading to stretch him a bit out of his “rut”.
Living and learning!
December 16th, 2009 at 9:54 am