Tossing out the School Books

I'm not tossing the school books out literally. But I've generally decided that except when I have time or I have to sign a note saying we read the book, I will not have my son read the books the school sends home.

I started my rebellion recently when we read some books I bought for my son at a parent/teacher store, but now I'm convinced this should not be a one time event, but a much more regular one. I just won't tell the teacher....

My son and I will select the books he will read together. We will select more appropriate books that my son is excited about reading than the school is sending home.

We will not read the Bob books anymore (which I had him reading at the beginning of our phonics), because my son has outgrown sentences like "Mat sat on the cat." He is ready for a real story.

We also will not be reading school selected books which teach my son to rely on the pictures or use words that there is no way at his age and his ability he can decode on his own without the pictures or substantial help from me (or resorting to sheer guessing).

I particularly do not find it helpful for my son to read books that have substantially the same sentences over and over again, with the only difference being the last word which is displayed in a picture. An example is "A cat has ears." "A cat has eyes." "A cat has whiskers." There is no story, and no learning lesson for my son in such books other than to spot and decipher pictures to figure out the last word. How is this really reading???

And, as for books that he can't possibly be expected to read at all on his own, here is an example of a made up book from the school - printed out and stapled together, which we found especially frustrating the other night ---

Do You Know about Dinosaurs?
Brontosaurus had a long neck and a small head.
Stegasaurus had spikes on the tail.
Diplodocus was the longest dinosaur, as long as 3 buses.
Protoceratops had a beak. Eggs were found in a nest.
You can see dinosaur bones in a museum.

Ironically, tail, spikes, beak and eggs are not words on the word wall at school. So they are not memorized. Nor has the school taught my son any phonics to help him decode these words. Nor did he read the dinosaur names on his own; he recognized the pictures for two of the dinosaurs, so he supposedly "read" those words.

So, Monday on the holiday weekend, we went to the library and picked out a couple of books from the Biscuit series (about a dog). Monday night we read Biscuit Wins a Prize instead of the boring, unhelpful books from the school. My son was so excited when he finished that book. But we did not have time to read it again last night because the homework from the school (invented spelling exercises) took up all our available time.

And, if we have to read the books from the school, I'm covering up the pictures!! There will be no reading by picture or guessing based upon the first letter of a word - at least not in our house. Unfortunately, I can not prevent what the school does to him during the day. I can only try to immunize him at home the best I can.

In an event, I need all the time I can get to work with my son on his phonics and to teach him his printing because instead of teaching them printing letter by letter in an organized fashion, they had them first printing sight words and now asking him to write stories. My son is just not comfortable yet with his command of printing yet to be doing that. So, I have to supplement that too. Once again, another example of the school skipping over the primary steps of learning and throwing one of my kids in the water without any swimming lessons.

I so much wish I could home school my kids..... It seems like I'm doing quite a bit of the primary education here already -- I just can't do it 17 hours a week as the state would require for me to home school with a full time job.