harry pottery barn

we recently embarked on an adventure i made up called, 

reading aloud/reading allowed.

 we have all different levels of reader in the house that i need to cater to. one of my kids likes to throw books and scribble in books and rip books. another one of my kids LOVES reading and being read to and reading on her own and she finished her BOOK IT! sheet for the month in about 2 seconds flat. another of my kids recently wrote on an adjective/verb/noun finish the sentence school assignment, "i DO NOT like reading!" full points for the correct verbage and nounage, but a little disheartening as reading is my absolute favorite thing to do. 

confession: i actually do not enjoy reading aloud very much. reading all alone-YES! reading with kids climbing on me and asking a bajillion non-sensical questions about things i could not possible know the answer to-NO THANKS! so, i decided that as a family, we would read a whole entire, big, long book together. i chose a lesser known title, harry potter and the sorcerer's stone. the book gave a few of us false hope as none of the spells actually work and not everyone appreciated my use of a britishly southern accents but, even the child who "hates" reading, would ask if it was time to read again. we revamped our bedtime schedule and set aside about 30 minutes a night most nights of the week. it was fun to see reading as an incentive to hurry and finish dinner/clean up bedrooms/takes baths so that we could pick up where we left off the night before. we started the night before school started and we finished it last night. 

it was one of those experiences that i will reflect upon in the future when i am having moments of kid overload or mom failure because it was such a success. reagan and i can now claim that reading aloud is not the worst thing ever. i can't wait to start the next book.