Books

I love books, we have lots in our house all on built in bookshelves.  Pretty much every room has a bookshelf in it the bathroom is the only exception.  There are shelves in the kitchen for cookery books, in the hall for our outdoor books on climbing, canoeing, wild flowers, birds etc, in the living room they are low down for the children's books and higher up for bigger adult type books.  Our house is not overflowing with them but people do notice them when they come to visit.  Both my children love to read books, my eldest taught himself to read and often leaves a trail of books he has read in a day around the house.  Although they take me a while these days, I always like to have a book on the go.

We are home educating at the moment and I feel that books are an integral part of how we learn as a family.  We meet up at a different friends houses for various activities, play, fun and learning and I am always interested to see what they have on their bookshelves.  Most of these houses are like mine there is a good collection of children's and adults books and a pile somewhere of library books too, all except one.  Even though I have been visiting this house regularly I have never noticed until recently, it is interesting how we don't notice until we actually look, how few books there are, now they seem noticeable by their absence.  I have been pondering their absence recently especially as the eldest child, now nine, is not yet reading and is not remotely interested, I can't help feeling that the lack of books has a part to play.  His mother is becoming concerned that he is not interested.  If we are to encourage a love for books and reading is it not important that they are a part of a child's life,  that they have a collection of their own.  Ones that they can look at at their leisure or have read to them by someone that can read.  That they are accessible to the the child and they have somewhere that they can sit comfortably to read and look.  I realise that there are many many ways of learning but I do feel very strongly that books should pay an integral role.

We have been reading lots about the Romans in this last week as we going off for a trip to Hadrian's Wall, we are camping in the area and will be visiting many of the sites along the wall.  We will update you once we return in the middle of next week!