Word of the Week: Atrocious

I have found that when my kids learn a new word, it comes up many times throughout the next few days. Having a daily vocabulary word is too much of a commitment for me, so I’m going to shoot for a word of the week, to give it time to be absorbed into our everyday vocabularies. I’ll share them here on this blog, as it relates to being a “Literary Child”. Just so that there’s some semblance of order, I’ll go alphabetically from A-Z.

Atrocious

Adjective
Dictionary: Very bad or unpleasant. Extremely savage or wicked. Shockingly brutal or cruel.
Thesaurus: disagreeable, horrible, objectionable, woeful, horrendous, cruel, iniquitous, villainous, fiendish, monstrous, inhuman.

Of course no new word is complete without using it in a sentence. That’s always the best part. So I think I’ll give the pleasure of that responsibility to my 5 year old son every week. Before I explained the word to him, I asked if he knew what atrocious meant, and to my complete surprise, he did! He answered, “Atrocious means, like, vicious, mean...terrifying.” I asked him to give me some examples and here’s what he came up with:

“Somebody who took a match and put a fire on the match, then put the fire on somebody’s butt and burned them. That’s atrocious.

If someone took your Bible and ripped it into pieces, that would be atrocious.

If a dinosaur killed a person, then that would be vicious and atrocious.”


Bonus Related Word: (Basically “atrocious” in its noun form)
Atrocity
Noun
Dictionary: Extremely evil or cruel act. Extreme wickedness.
Thesaurus: outrage, crime, villainy, offense, violation, evil, enormity, iniquity, infamy, cruelty, heinousness.

Book Review: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

I can review this book in two words: Buy It. But I will elaborate just a bit. This book teaches your child how to read and write using the Distar method. This book is nearly perfect. It’s simple and easy to follow. They literally tell you the exact words to say during each lesson. The authors say it takes 20 minutes a day, and within 100 days your child will be reading on a solid second-grade level. We have found it usually takes even less time than that.

Why I say the book is nearly perfect: The only objection I have is regarding some of their choices in words to use as examples. There are plenty of words in this world that would fulfill the needs of learning particular sounds put together...why they have to have the kids sound out the words “gun”, “shoot”, and “hunt” is beyond me. Both of my kids, individually, have made a sad face as those words came up, and we moved on. It was a small price to pay for such a quality teaching tool.

My son learned to read at 4 and my daughter is reading at 3 years of age, as we are working our way through the book with her. I would not recommend to everyone that those are the ages to start a child reading. In my opinion, those are very early ages. However, I believe in child-led learning. I allow my children to learn what they want, when they want, according to their desires and passions. That being said, the two ages I mentioned above are the times when my kids came to me on their own, requesting to be taught to read. Both times I used this book, and both times have met with unwavering success. With my son, we didn’t even finish the book, we stopped about 10 lessons short of 100. (The last few lessons seemed unnecessary to us.) Now he’s five years old and reading on a 4th grade level.

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, by Siegfried Engelmann (and Phyllis Haddox and Elaine Bruner), is a book I can recommend with much enthusiasm. I can’t remember how I first learned about this book, but I’m certainly glad I found it. Teaching a child to read can be a daunting concept. Much rides on a child’s ability to read, and being the one to teach such an important skill is a large responsibility. I am very grateful for the authors of this book for making the process painless, effective and fun!

The Birth of Literary Child

Once upon a time there was a lazy mama. Well maybe not so much lazy, but a mama who loves her sleep. The kids would wake up at an ungodly hour of the morning and want to start their day. I wanted to remain in bed as long as possible. I began creating code puzzles for my then-4-year-old son to entertain himself with in the morning to give me a little more slumber. Even if for only ten more minutes...every second counts when you’re laying in a cozy bed.

So every evening I’d crank out a puzzle (the ones where “ 1=A, 2=B, 3=C, etc., and you have to substitute the numbers with letters to decode the sentence.) I started out using numbers, then graduated to symbols. I’d leave it on the table for him to find when he got up. My son was so excited every morning to get his new puzzle. He’d come in and wake me up after he’d finished it, so happy with his “present” that I’d left him! I was happy for the extra sleep. Everyone was happy.

As unschoolers, we don’t follow any sort of curriculum or schedule, but we do a lot of reading. My son learned to read at 4 and my daughter is reading at 3. (The kids learn according to their own interests and passions, and I never suggested learning to read at those early ages. They both came to me, each at their own time, asking to be taught.) My son is rarely without a book in his hands. I wanted to encourage his love for reading with fun exercises, so I soon expanded the homemade puzzles to include word searches and silly fill-in-the-blanks stories. Then came the logic problems and “uncoloring” pages. One by one, new activities were being created.

I was soon running out of theme ideas. There are only so many pirate and insect words I could come up with! So I came up with the idea of incorporating the word games with the literature we were reading. (My son reads on his own all day, but at night I read to the children aloud from a chapter book.) So I started making the word puzzles to go along with whatever we were reading at the time. It soon graduated to include other activities, crafts, games, recipes, and any other ideas I could come up with..letting the inspiration come from the books themselves. Again, a big hit! The kids seemed to love tying the activities we were doing in with the stories we were reading at night. And anything I can do to encourage the love of reading in my children is well worth the time! (And yes, it did turn out to be more time consuming than I had expected!)

For awhile, I had been interested in creating a children’s reading club after searching online and not finding much. I finally decided to start one, and along with selecting a book recommendation to read each month, I would also offer the activities our family had been enjoying. I figured if my kids loved them, it was likely other families would as well! I wanted to keep the reading selections mixed up a little, thus the reason for alternating between the classics and contemporary literature. Some of the selections are above my kids' reading level, and those I read to them aloud. But others, like Literary Child's second book selection, "Pippi Longstocking", have been read aloud (to me and my other kids) by my 5 year old son. And sometimes he and I alternate, taking turns reading (either pages or chapters, whatever my son wants).

I wish I could end this story by telling you how I now get to sleep in everyday. Unfortunately, my 2 year old wakes up earlier than ever. She doesn’t seem to understand that you’re not supposed to get up before the sun does. She’s very lucky that she is astonishingly adorable.

So ends the story of how Literary Child was born. (Everyone, of course, lives happily ever after.)

The End

What Is Your Favorite Children's Novel?

Do you have an all-time favorite children's novel? Of course you do! Everyone does! If you'd like to see your favorite featured as the theme of an issue of Literary Child, let us know! Send your suggested book selection (and the reasons why it's so fabulous) to: info@literarychild.com and we'll check it out!

Your favorite could be next on our reading list, and a potential candidate for all the frolicking good times had in Literary Child magazine! (Please send only recommendations for chapter books...no picture books please.)

Happy Birthday, Jules Verne (and other tidbits)!

Today is the anniversary of Jules Verne's birthday. He was born on February 8, 1828. Reading up on the author of this month's book selection, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, I found a few other interesting tidbits I thought I'd share.

• Twenty years before his death, Verne's nephew went mad and shot him in the leg! The story goes that the nephew asked for travelling money and when Verne refused him, he fired two shots, laming Verne for life. The wound pained him for the remainder of his life. (He eventually died of "old age" or complications due to diabetes.)

• When he was eleven years old, he tried to run away to sea. Upon his return, he vowed to his mother that from then on he would only travel in his imagination. And that he did, writing many adventurous novels.

• He married a widow (with two children of her own) and later had a child with her.

• He is said to be the originator of "science fiction".

• There is a restaurant named for him. Jules Verne Restaurant, located in the Eiffel Towel in Paris, France! It is a popular tourist spot and used for many movie settings.

Jules Verne also did quite a bit of travelling in his lifetime, and seems to have had an extremely intellectual and adventurous imagination.

Professor Lidenbrock vs. Hardwigg

It wasn't until after we finished reading Journey to the Centre of the Earth and I started doing some research online that I realized there are two versions of the book. The translation we have features Axel, his uncle Otto Lidenbrock and Grauben. In the other version their names are translated to Henry (or Harry), Professor Hardwigg and Gretchen. And I believe the first chapter reads differently as well.

So where names are mentioned in the current issue of Literary Child, the names Axel, Otto Lidenbrock and Grauben are used. From what I've read, those are the German names that the author originally used, and is the more authentic version of the book.

I also wanted to recommend that you read an unabridged version of the book. I picked up a copy that was adapted for younger children, and it definitely dumbed down the literature and left out a lot of the content as well.