DITHOR and storytime questions

[simplepamom]

I think I selected the books I want for read alouds and then which ones I want for my older dd to read for DITHOR.

My question- story time says choose a selection to read for 20 days. DITHOR says 15 days of reading, and gives a few options for pace/# of books.

Someone walk me through how to set this up. I am sure it something basic and should be simple, but I normally assign chapters- read 1 chapter, read 2 chapters-- and I normally read outloud to my kids on this same pattern- 1 chapter, or 2 chapters per session..... I can't wrap my head around how I come up with 1 book with 20 chapters for story time and x nubmer of books for 15 days of reading (like 3 5 chapter books, or 1 15 chapter....) for DITHOR

If I do per chapter, most of the books for storytime are not long enough (though King of the Wind is 22 chapters- easy just read 2 chapters a few days when they are short chapters)- (same with DITHOR- most of the books are around 12 chapters- not quite long enough) For instance our choice for Fantasy is 10 chapters, and I have another book also fantasy I thought ok, this would make enough to cover 20 days.... Same with we were going to do A cabin faced west- it is only 8 chapters! I can't make 8 chapters last 20 days!

Do I simply stretch the book by not reading a full chapter several days or can I Find another shorter book in the same genre to read after we finish the first one??

Is it ok to read 2 books in one genre for storytime or does it work best if I just select something that isn't as short and can be stretched to 20 days better?

Brenda

[WigglesMom]

I'll be honest. I gave up on the 20 days idea. We do it by chapters and we have a reading list for our storytime. I have questions I ask and dd8 narrates back to me. We read the 1st chapter of the book on intro day and then 2 chapters after until the book is over.
We have already read 4 books in a month and are having a great time doing it. They are great stories too for a 4th grader.
I couldn't give up my reading list of books and I couldn't make it fit the 20 day per book time frame so I am just winging storytime with my reading list.
Val

[Kathleen]

Brenda,

I know that the point of reading shorter parts of the books and "living with them" for longer is a CM idea, and really helps the kids know the characters and remember the books. It's more of a savoring rather than devouring approach.

I used Bigger this last year, and we read one book per storytime section. The plans in that box that help the kids learn story elements and character qualities would work better if you keep to one book. There's one "project" per genre that you add to weekly to see the book develop. There's a balloon activity where you add important parts of the story, and pop it when you decide where the climax is the last week. You make predictions with the mystery and check each week to see if you predicted correctly, etc.

For DITHOR, it's specifically set up so that you can choose to read 1, 2, or 3 books, so you can decide there. I chose the level 2 pack last year, and it was set up for me how many days to use per book. If you do that, you will notice that you won't break on chapters.

The easiest thing to do is just take the total number of pages divided by the number of days to read. (It took me a few weeks to get used to the idea of stopping mid-chapter, too. )

If you are a family that loves to read aloud, I'd suggest doing a seperate read-aloud at another time of day and keeping the readings for storytime and DITHOR short as scheduled so that you don't miss the benefit of going slowly with them. I let my son read other books at his own pace, but I set the pace for DITHOR.

Enjoy!! Grant's favorite part of school last year was storytime and science. He loved the books we read!!
Kathleen

[my3sons]

I know that the point of reading shorter parts of the books and "living with them" for longer is a CM idea, and really helps the kids know the characters and remember the books. It's more of a savoring rather than devouring approach...
The easiest thing to do is just take the total number of pages divided by the number of days to read. (It took me a few weeks to get used to the idea of stopping mid-chapter, too.

We've found this to be true too. As with most CM ideas, it takes me a bit to get into them, but then I love them and realize the greatness in their simplicity. Living with books longer has made them more memorable to our dc. They devour books in their rooms on their own time at night before bed, but during DITHOR and Storytime, we savor the books together at a slower pace. We divide the total number of pages by the number of days to read too.

If you are a family that loves to read aloud, I'd suggest doing a seperate read-aloud at another time of day and keeping the readings for storytime and DITHOR short as scheduled so that you don't miss the benefit of going slowly with them. I let my son read other books at his own pace, but I set the pace for DITHOR.

This is an excellent idea, and one we have incorporated as well. We keep the reading purposefully short for storytime because that is key in developing good narration skills, and it also fits with the savoring book idea. For DITHOR, keeping the readings short has been key for learning the necessary skill being taught, as well as having deeper character traits discussions, as we get to know the characters slowly, better and better each read. I've done DITHOR this way now for many, many years, and the books we've done slowly over time with DITHOR are hands-down our dc's all-time favorites.

HTH!
In Christ,
Julie

[simplepamom]

When you say short- how 'short' are you talking about? What is an average amount of time or number of pages etc to cover in one sitting? (avg for story time, and an average amount to have a child cover in DITHOR- say level 3 or 4)

Brenda

[my3sons]

That depends on the age of the child and the DITHOR/Storytime books being used. When beginning DITHOR especially, I'd say short would mean around 3-7 pages (depending on if some have pictures or not). My ds probably first began reading DITHOR books for about 10-15 minutes a day. Reading all of it out loud takes awhile, but it is important to do at that young age, so even though the number of pages is short, it still takes a bit to read them. For the next year, he probably read around 15-20 minutes a day. For Level 4/5, he reads 20- 25 minutes tops.

For Storytime, we read an average of 10-20 minutes a day, averaging closer to 10 minutes with the younger ages. For LHFHG, Storytime took about 5-8 minutes. For Beyond, Storytime took around 10 minutes. For Bigger Hearts, around 10-15 minutes. Last year, when we did PHFHG, our Storytime took between 20-25 minutes.

In Christ,
Julie

[simplepamom]

Ok am I doing too hard of books for my dd- when I divided the number of pages by 15 days most of the genre's are somewhere around 13 or so pages per day, and I thought that was decent- actually the few that were down around 7 pages, I thought I had to add an additional book to.

My storytime readings- mostly came from the Beyond selections- avg somewhere in there also like 12-15 pages per day I think....

Brenda