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