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Hello Wonderful ladies.

I have a question regarding pre-reading books. My daughters are doing WH and RtR, and my son is doing Preparing. Should I be pre-reading the girls history books? I try to skim the reading, but I am not very good at this. I am a pretty slow reader. Their narrations are really good, but I am just wanting to do a good job of grading them. I am trying to figure out when I can get to reading their books.

Any advice would be very helpful.
Stacey

Obviously everyone is different. I do not preread any of my kids stuff because I honestly don't have time. My dd will ask questions when she has them so I haven't worried about it. I do check it as well each day when she is done (she reads it to me) and it usually sounds very cohesive and complete. I have good solid mental picture of what she is describing. The nice thing with CTC is that I am familiar with most of the stuff this year already. That helps. But she also did so well on the narrations last year that I know she is writing what it is asking. With my second child, I think he will probably have a harder time with the narrations. I plan to probably preread some of his stuff until I can trust that he is doing it correctly. My youngest, I do not plan to preread anything for her because she reads very well already and can orally narration fantastically well now.

I do preread my children's books. I find it hard to teach without doing so; that is why I combine my children. It is not required with HOD to preread, but skimming is encouraged from what I have read. Yes, it is hard to find time to preread! Thankfully, the books are great! I think you will get answers on both sides of the fence with your question. Some of us do preread, some do not.

I have tried to pre-read or read alongside my DD in Preparing and am already starting to read CtC books (we only have 5 more units in the Preparing guide, so it is coming). I think this helps me teach her, she is a child who will shortcut and skip through and her narrations are not always good. If I don't really know the content I don't really know if she's doing a good job or not, or I can't help her when she needs help.

Then I talked to a friend who said she did not pre-read books and just trusted what was in the teacher's guide to help her with the answers. So yes, I think you don't HAVE to pre-read everything but I am not really sure, it probably depends on the child and how good they are at narrating and how much you trust their answers.

I do like reading and can read reasonably fast so it is not really a chore for me. I have learned a lot from reading the books myself.

I do pre-read but I am only schooling one now and I pre-read over the summer. I don't think it is necessary though. You can read the key idea and if the narrations seems to not flow or doesn't have enough detail then you could skim the reading. I can almost always tell with my ds if he missed something important or if a fact seems off just by listening or reading his narration.

Thanks for the help ladies. I am trying to read ahead a day or two. I know the books are great and want to read them all, but just haven't got it done.
thanks again.
Stacey