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My 7 year old daughter is currently finishing up Beyond as a 2nd grader. She will be starting Bigger next month for 3rd grade. We received all of our Bigger materials in the mail about 3 weeks ago. My daughter is a voracious reader (she usually reads 3-4 hours per day) and so I told her she could read some of the extra books I ordered. I accidentally included her science books for Bigger in the stack of books I let her read. I just realized today what I did by mistake. She retains material very well, so I know she absorbed what she read. What should I do when we start Bigger next month? Read it all again? I'm just so upset with myself for making this mistake. I feel like I've taken all the excitement and surprise out of science for the next guide since she's already read all the books.

Sarah

That's great that she's takes such an initiative!

She'll be fine let her read the portions again. She'll need to glean the pages again anyway to complete the science exploration assignments. And if she complains that's she's already read it, you can say something like, "That's great! You should have no problem skimming the pages for the information you need ";) Good luck! We are doing bigger, and the science is really great I am loving that it get my 7yr old thinking!

Maybe, when it comes to science reading then, you could ask her to read the pages aloud to you "so you can learn too" and it will be a fresh thing for her to educate mama. KWIM? Encourage the "Hey Mama, listen to this...". Sometimes it is fun for them to take familiar material to the next level and be the info giver, not just the one who just took it in.
Just a thought.

I would just read them to her again as scheduled in the guides. It will be different reading them slowly and doing the notebooking and experiments along with them.

My kids have ALL done this to me in one form or another and we just do the books again as the guide states. They get more out of it the way the guide has them narrate, notebook, etc. so even if they know the story or the information, there is different context and application that makes it new again. Don't worry about it. Just hide the HOD boxes like I do now...

Thanks for all the feedback. You've all made me feel better and that it's not such a big deal. Notebooking and conducting experiments will certainly add more depth than what she gleaned by reading alone. I will have to be more careful in the future to guard the HOD box when it comes in the mail.

Charlotte Mason advocated that a child "live" with a book, as it then becomes like a good friend or a familiar part of them. You're daughter has just been "introduced" to some good friends!!

She'll probably retain so much more from these books, by going through them again with the notebooking, narration and experiments. Because she's familiar with them she'll be picking up a lot of details that she may have skimmed over in her first reading. Just like when we watch a movie over again, or read a book again later on, we pick up lots of things we missed the first time! I wouldn't worry, if anything her learning will be richer!