RAR #193: A Relaxed, Read-Aloud Christmas

Sarah Mackenzie (00:08): You're listening to the Read-Aloud Revival Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah McKenzie, homeschooling mama of six and author of the Read-Aloud Family and Teaching From Rest. (00:18): As parents, we're overwhelmed with a lot to do. It feels like every child needs something different. The good news is you are the best person to help your kids learn and grow, and home is the best place to fall in love with books. (00:33): This podcast has been downloaded seven million times in over 160 countries. So if you want to nurture warm relationships while also raising kids who love to read, you're in good company. We'll help your kids fall in love with books and will help you fall in love with homeschooling. Let's get started. (00:59): Hello, hello, Sarah Mackenzie here. It is Thanksgiving week here in the United States, so Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American friends and listeners. I'll tell you what, I am so thankful for you, for this community that has risen up around Read-Aloud Revival over the past seven and a half years or so that we've been doing this show. (01:24): I am grateful for all the ways that you listeners inspire me to read with my own kids, to nurture my own family's connections, and really to focus on the things in my homeschool that matter most so that we're loving books and we're loving homeschooling. So thank you, and Happy Thanksgiving to each and every one of you. (01:44): You may have seen, we recently got a new puppy in our house. Yes. Another one, Tomie dePawla, dePawla like paw, P-A-W. I know, he's our Goldendoodle Labradoodle mix. He's only 10 months, and he's named, of course, after the one and only beloved Tomie dePaola, who was a great friend of mine, and I miss very much since he passed away last year. (02:11): So we got Tomie dePawla earlier this year. He's 10 months and 87 pounds of giant adorableness, and he's super social. I mean, he likes people. He loves people, but he loves other dogs, and other dogs don't always love Tomie as much as he loves them. (02:28): So we got him a little brother from his same parents, next litter, and we named him Gilbert after Gilbert Blythe, as I'm sure you already can guess, except I have decided that when I'm in really intellectual company, I'm going to pretend like we named him after GK Chesterton, so I could play both sides there. (02:48): Anyway, he's adorable. And he's just like, when we got him, he's eight weeks old. And so by the time you listen to this, he won't even be three months old yet. And he's kind of noisy, so if you hear barking or noise or adorable yipping, that's why. But I have a feeling if I wait for a quiet half hour in this house of six children and two puppies, I will never ever record this episode. (03:13): And yes, I will put pictures in the show notes of Tomie and Gilbert, of course. And those show notes, by the way, are at readaloudrevival.com/193. (03:23): But we are not here to talk about my puppies, even though I am here for that too. I could do it for a whole half hour if you wanted. (03:29): Today, I wanted to share some of our free Christmas resources with you because I think they're going to help you have a lovely low pressure and read-aloud kind of Christmas. And if that sounds like the kind of Christmas you could get into, then keep listening. (03:46): Before I tell you those resources, though, I wanted to share this snippet from Katrina Kenison's book, Mitten Strings for God. This is what she writes. (03:56): Now as the holiday rush begins to gather speed, I am worrying about deadlines, fighting a sore throat, and overwhelmed by the prospect of Christmas. On top of everything else, I simply cannot bear to think about gifts to buy and wrap. Instead, these days, I find myself thinking about gifts of time, of our family's need to be quiet together in the midst of all the seasonal events and expectations. Yes, I could continue to struggle against the cold weather and short days as I race from one holiday chore to the next, or I could take my cue from nature and accept the Earth's invitation to slow down. I could choose to do less out in the world and to spend more time sequestered inside nestled in with my children, hot cocoa, and books, mail order catalogs, and afghans. (04:46): Man, when I read that, I thought, oh, that's the kind of Advent and Christmas I want. Slower, lower pressure, nestled up with my people, loving on my family, the people who mean the most to me, remembering the real reason for this season and just delighting in the birth of the Lord instead of making it like one endless big giant project of chores and things to do in tasks and memories. We're trying to make these great memories for our kids, right? (05:13): But I know for me, it's really easy to get caught up in all the doings of the holidays, and I just want to encourage you right now before they get really ramped up to just remember that more than things and even more than memories that we're making for our kids, more than trying to give our family a wonderful Christmas, what our kids need and want most of all is us. (05:36): What your kids want and need most of all is you, your eyes on them when they tell you a story or tell you about something that happened to their friend, your chair at the dinner table filled with you being completely present. Right? A smile in the morning, a hug that lasts more than a few seconds, just an easy and restful kind of way of being that helps our kids have a lovelier Christmas than all the hullabaloo usually demands from us. (06:04): I'll tell you, this is not a default mode for me. I'm sort of an all go kind of girl. I can imagine my in-person friends listening to this right now laughing. Our Read-Aloud Revival community director likes to say that I'm a can't stop won't stop kind of girl, and it's true. But I know that the best Christmas memories aren't because I planned some extravagant craft or took the kids on the most amazing Christmas outings or orchestrated these memorable activities for my kids that also depleted me and made me feel stressed and overwhelmed and like December was a month to whiz through or to survive. Right? (06:45): But instead, if I can be relaxed and happy and also get some holiday rest myself, then everybody in my home will enjoy it more and will be able to keep their focus on the real reason for this season. (07:10): Well, it's Thanksgiving week, so I'm going to use a Thanksgiving example here, but have you ever had to host Thanksgiving dinner, and it's really stressful. You're going to have a bunch of people over. There's food to make. You want it all to be timed right, so it comes out right. You want to make the table set pretty, the house needs to be cleaned. And then there's all the normal things on top of that. (07:28): That's the part that kills me. I can do the special event prep stuff, but it's the ongoing onslaught of laundry and normal baths and routine and house pickup, vacuuming and stuff that doesn't go away just because you're doing a special event. (07:44): But anyway, so you're stressed, your feet hurt, you've been on your feet all day making food, there're dishes piling up. You've been hustling and bustling about. And by the time the turkey is on the platter, you're sweating and frustrated and snapping at everyone. Yeah, that never happens to me either. (08:02): But if I was to have that experience, or if you were, I bet we know that our kids would rather eat chicken nuggets on a paper plate or leftovers on paper plates with a mother who is relaxed and happy and rested and liked spending time with them, than they would like spending a perfectly prepared Thanksgiving meal with a mom who's stressed out, frustrated, snapping at them, and doesn't necessarily exude the idea of I love spending time with you. Right? (08:37): So let's take the pressure off and just say this Christmas I'm coming as I am. Because the truth is, the baby king is going to be born no matter what you pull off or what you don't, and that is really good news. (08:55): So with all of this in mind, I want to share the resources we have for you at RAR Premium that will help you have a meaningful, quiet, connected, read-aloud kind of Christmas. But whenever I share resources like this, especially a feast of resources, so many resources, I don't want you to try to do anywhere close to all of this. I just want you to know what the table is spread with. (09:21): And sometimes we can hear about everything we could possibly do and that feels more overwhelming, but I don't want this to be another thing to add to our holiday rush, another thing that makes us feel like we're frantically running around in December, trying to do all the things as if all of our doing is going to make sure that the baby Jesus is born on Christmas Day. It's not reliant on that. Right? So as I'm sharing these resources, just keep that in mind. (09:49): Now the resources we have at Read-Aloud Revival are all collected for you. All the Christmas stuff is in one spot, which is super helpful. It's at readaloudrevival.com/christmas. So that's where you can go to get anything I'm going to mention today. And I'll just tell you what's there. (10:05): We have a picture book list. That list has... There are so many good, wonderful Christmas picture books. We've read hundreds and hundreds of them here on our team, and we have selected the ones we think are just the very best, and they're in that picture book list. You can print that out if you wanted to, or you could just use it online, and you could put books on hold at your library, or you could choose a few to add under the Christmas tree or just to your Advent reading. It's a great, great, great list. And that's probably my very tippy top favorite book list for you to use is that picture book list. So that's there. (10:42): There's also a book list... So those are on, and I should say all of those picture books are basically single sitting picture books, books you could read in a single sitting. But we also have a book list of Christmas novels and short stories that are great for reading aloud. And those are all stories that take more than one sitting to read together. So if you're looking for something longer or a novel that you can read with older kids or a collection of short stories that are just longer. Some of them are actually picture books on that list, but they're not single sitting type picture books. They'll take longer than that to read. (11:16): So we've got a list of those at readaloudrevival.christmas, as well. We have a list of our favorite audio books. You can listen to those, especially if you're taking a road trip at Thanksgiving or Christmas or anywhere in between. If you are running around doing errands, if you're working together with your kids on a puzzle, that's my very favorite way to listen to audio books. You can, if you're doing a craft or something or working on Christmas cards, you guys can listen to Christmas audio books. And we've got those on a list there as well. (11:47): We have a gift idea list. So if you're looking for ideas for the bookish kids in your life or people who love bookish kids like you, you can go to our gift idea list and see if anything there stands out to you. (12:02): We have a very special episode of the podcast to listen to with your kids that are Christmas stories told by Jim Trelease, that came out last year, and we've got a quick link for you there at readaloudrevival.com/christmas. It's an excellent episode where he reads several or tells several Christmas stories. It's just a really good family thing to do together. You could make some hot cocoa and work on a puzzle, like I mentioned, and listen to those, or you could listen to them in the car or you could listen to them during dinner. Or here's another great trick is if you are doing breakfast or lunch, and your kids are snapping each other and not getting along and bickering, and you just think, oh my goodness, I just want like 20 minutes of quiet. Turn on that podcast episode. It's Jim Trelease. You'll find it at readloudrevival.com/christmas. It'll be a great thing to listen to. (12:52): And then there's one other podcast episode I've linked there on that page, and it's all about having a read-aloud Advent. It's one of the very earlier podcast episodes here at Read-Aloud Revival, so we must have recorded it six or seven years ago with my friend Elizabeth Foss, and it's very inspiring and will totally put you in the mood for a read-aloud Christmas. So that one is there as well. (13:14): The big thing we do at Read-Aloud Revival in December in Advent Christmas is Christmas School. So this is something that is available to all of our RAR Premium families, and they use our Christmas School guide for their school in December, usually also adding in math. So a lot of our ladies will do just Christmas School. They kind of take everything else off the calendar for the month so they can really connect and have a wonderful, joyous learning time together, and they do Christmas School plus math. (13:45): We use Tomie dePaola books for Christmas School because we adore Tomie dePaola. And also, he has the biggest, most robust and excellent collection. His body of work is heavily influenced by Christmas. So many Christmas books. So last year we did a Christmas School with four of his books. This year, we have a brand new Christmas School with four different of his books. The Cat on the Dovrefell, which is a Norwegian folk tale. And I will tell you, that one's my favorite of the four because that book was dedicated to me. (14:17): If you open it up to the dedication page, you'll see, oh, Sarah written on that dedication page. And the story behind that is that a couple years ago, a couple summers ago, I was sitting in Tomie's barn with him and a bunch of my picture book manuscripts I had written, and he was critiquing one of them. Actually, he was critiquing several of them, but did a deep- dive critique on one of them, the one that's coming out this next year actually. More on that later. (14:42): And he is, if you think of Tomie dePaola or if you've seen me talk about him before, you know he's this effervescent, joyful, enthusiastic person. And he totally is, but when he's critiquing and working, it's like he goes into work mode. It's a serious thing to behold. (14:59): And he kept saying, "Oh, Sarah." He'd be reading a line, and then I would say, "Okay, well what about this? What about that?" And he'd go, "Oh Sarah." And so at dinner that night, his assistant was commenting about how many times he heard oh, Sarah. And so that is the dedication to The Cat on the Dovrefell. It says, oh, Sarah. And yeah, kind of makes me a little happy weepy, sad weepy, both at the same time. Bittersweet every time I open that book. So the first book we're doing is The Cat on the Dovrefell. (15:28): We're also doing Tomie dePaola's The Christmas Tree Book. We are doing, what's the third one? Oh, Christina's Carol, which is a brand new Christmas book from him. It's the newest book. The last book that he published. And it's like an illustrated version of Christina Rossetti's In the Bleak Midwinter, so it's lovely. And it's actually the cover image for that one, the cover of Christina's Carol. The last time I was at Tomie's house, that piece of artwork was on his work table. He was actively working on that cover piece when I was there, so that one means a lot to me too. (16:07): And then that fourth book for Christmas School is Jingle the Christmas Clown. (16:13): So what Christmas school is, is it's basically four weeks of Family Book Clubs. You get this amazing guide, and all you need to do is print that guide and then get those four books. And we try to make activities and crafts and stuff where it's probably stuff you have around the house, or basic stuff that you could grab at the grocery store, nothing that you have to order special art supplies for anything. (16:34): Anyway, so it's the Family Book Club guides. Basically what it is is there's a Christmas Carol that you can learn to sing and maybe memorize if you like that, or possibly use as copy work. We have treats and recipes to share related to the book itself. We have art lessons. We have crafts. We have nature study ideas, so that you can pull in your science and get to do some science. We have cultural connections that help us link the Christmas book with art. I'm sorry, not with art, with history and geography and just cultural studies. It's so much fun. It's very robust. (17:12): And a lot of our families for the month of December do Christmas School and math. That is what they do for homeschool. And it is a joyous, joyous time. And if you are feeling like you're not loving your homeschool right now, I would highly encourage you to join us. It's kind of hard not to love it when you're doing Christmas School because it's really fun. (17:32): Anyway, that is available only to RAR Premium members. So members, you can log into your Premium dashboard, and you'll see your Christmas School guide because it's there now. And if you're not a member, you can join us rarpremium.com. (17:47): Another thing we do in December is an annual Mama's Christmas meetup. This is a Zoom, a virtual meetup where the mama's in our community get together. We do games and surprises. It's basically the most fun I have on Zoom all year. (18:00): You're not on camera, so you don't have to worry about being on camera. The chat box is open. We're given stuff away. It's so fun. And so anyway, we're doing that the first Friday in December, and then we've got... I'll just tell you what the rest of the stuff we're doing for the winter since I already started. (18:16): Circle with Sarah. So circle with Sarah is I always want to say homeschool training, but that sounds kind of stiff. If you've read my book Teaching From Rest, A Homeschooler's Guide to Unshakeable Peace, Circle with Sarah is like Teaching From Rest live in community, in a live class, every single month, month after month. It's just a way for you to breathe life back into your homeschool. Our goal is always for you to be more in love with your homeschooling life than you were the last time. (18:45): So every day for you to wake up and be like, I'm really glad I get to do this, which is honestly, not the way most of us feel about our homeschool. And that's normal. That's fine. We are just trying to help you harness more joy and help you create the homeschooling life that you really want for your kids and your family. (19:01): In January and February in our Circle with Sarahs, we are going to be talking about easy rhythms and routines in our homeschool because as this is true for me. I don't know if this is true for you, but jumping into homeschooling after the holidays can feel a lot harder than other times of year. And so we're going to talk about how to make it easy and delightful to do just that. (19:23): We hear from RAR Premium members consistently that Circle with Sarah is their favorite part. Actually, several of them said if that's all they got, if that's all they did here, it would still be worth it. So if you're feeling like I don't love my homeschool right now, and I'm not sure I'm going to love it more when it's the dark of winter, you're probably right. And come on in and see if we can help inspire you and breathe some life into your own excitement about homeschooling because our community is really good at that. (20:13): For book clubs, we do a Family Book Club every month and December is our Christmas School. I already told you about that. One in January, our premium Family Book Club is Red Sled by Lita Judge. It's nearly wordless. It's such a delightful picture book, and it's great for all ages. So I'm going to tell you this right now. It's a nearly wordless picture book, like I just said, yet in our Family Book Club guide, we will have ways for you to dig into that book with your kids of all ages. And I bet there will be some things in there that your older kids and even your teens will be excited to find and learn. (20:49): We teach you how to read picture books and catch the nuances and all the beauty a picture book offers that we usually pass if we just open it up and read it, that we just miss if we don't know to look for it. So we'll have ideas in there for your kids of all ages. Lita herself is coming to Read-Aloud Revival to teach a WOW, Writers on Writing workshop to teach your kids how to start and keep up a journaling practice, so that will be fantastic. (21:21): And then in February, our Family Book Club is Sweet Home, Alaska up by Carole Estby Dagg. This is an absolutely wonderful family read-aloud novel set in the depression era about a family who moves to Palmer, Alaska to become pioneers as part of President Roosevelt's Palmer Colony project. The best way I can describe it is The Year of Miss Agnes meets Little House on the Prairie, or like if you were to put Little House on the Prairie and plunk it into Alaska, it's just a delightful book. I really adored it. (21:58): And of course, like always, we'll have our Family Book Club guide that will help you dig into the book and really enjoy it and connect with your kids of all ages from your younger kids to your teens. And then we'll meet the author, Carole Estby Dagg, so your kids can ask their questions. (22:13): Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you about our Mama Book Club for this winter. So we do a Mama Book Club every season in RAR Premium, and really, our Mama Book Club is created as a way to help you nurture your own reading life. For so many of us, we're busy mothers, we've got a lot going on. We're not reading as much as we either want to or as we used to, and we miss it, and we want to figure out how we can breathe more life into our reading lives again. (22:40): So our Mama Book Club guides have ideas for if you're reading a ton, what to do. If you're not reading a ton, what to do. If you are finding it very difficult to even find any time to read, what to do. If you want to become a book journaler who keeps track of your books and saves passages in a commonplace book, we'll help you do that. If you want to be the kind of reader that talks about it with friends, we've got a place for that. So anyway, it's sort of a choose your own adventure type of Mama Book Club. And our pick for this winter is Mitten Strings for God by Katrina Kenison. That's the book I read to you from at the beginning of this episode. It's a collection of essays that really nourishes the soul. I enjoyed it so much. I think it'll be nourishing for us at the beginning of the school year. (23:22): And then what we do is at the end of our Mama Book Club, we have these weekly forum conversations that you can participate in if you'd like that are excellent, led by our community director, Kortney Garrison. And then at the end of our book club, we spend an evening with the author Katrina Kenison. So she'll join us on Zoom for an hour, and that will be just delightful. (23:44): So that's all that stuff from Christmas School to our Family Book Clubs and WOW Writers on Writing with Lita Judge and the Mama Book Club and all that good stuff. That's all happening in RAR Premium. (23:59): And because we're coming into the holiday season, I'll remind you, you can give RAR Premium as a gift. You can get it as a gift. So if you'd like to join us, tell your other half that it's what you want in your stocking. It's what you want for Christmas. Or if you're looking for a meaningful gift that's not affected by current supply chain issues, for example, and you know, this gift is going to give a family that you love, bookish, warm family memories, RAR Premium is a perfect way to do that. (24:26): So gifts can be purchased at readaloudrevival.com/gift. So head there if you would like to buy RAR Premium for another family. Our gifts are not automatically renewing, so you just buy one, either a three month subscription or an annual subscription. So either three months or 12 months, they don't automatically renew, so it's a one time gift. So it's very tidy. So anyway, that is at readaloudrevival.com/gift. (24:57): Now we're about to take a break here on the podcast so that we can enjoy that upcoming Christmas School I told you about with our own families and with the RAR Premium community, so we won't have any new podcasts here for you until late January. (25:13): However, to keep up to date on what we're doing in the meantime, because we still send out our resources, our favorite book recommendations... Oh, we're doing our 31 day read-aloud challenge that we do every January. That starts January 1st. It's a challenge for your kids, not for you, for your kids to read-aloud for about 10 minutes, most days in January. (25:35): And you don't want to miss it. It is really excellent. It's free. It's fabulous. It has your kids reading aloud in a new year, which puts them into a great habit of sharing books with others right at the beginning of the year of practicing their reading skills. It comes with so many fabulous benefits for them and for you. We have so many families tell us year after year that their kids reading went from a struggle to awesome or something that we're resisting to something they're excited about, or even just decent reading skills to really smooth, fluent reading skills during this challenge. (26:12): So it's totally free, and you don't want to miss it, but we're not doing any podcasts between now and the end of January. So if you want to participate in that, you want to make sure that you're on the email list because that's where I send it. So what you want to do is text the word books to the number 33777, and that'll make sure you get on the email list, so you don't miss anything. (26:35): And if you don't text, you can also just jump on that email list by going to readaloudrevival.com/subscribe. So either text the word books to 33777 or head to readaloudrevival.com/subscribe. (26:55): Now it's time for Let the Kids Speak. I love this part of the podcast because kids share the books that they've been loving lately. Ronan (27:13): My name is Ronan. I am nine years old and from Georgia. A favorite book series of mine is the Pride Wars by Matt Laney. I like it because there are a lot of different stories inside the story. There's a lot of action, a lot of conflict, resolution, everything you need for a good story. Luke (27:35): Hi, my name's Luke. I am seven years old. I live in Mississippi, and I'm seven. And my favorite book is The First Firehawk. Levi (27:48): Hi, my name is Levi. And I'm nine years old. And my and I live in Mississippi. And my favorite book is Hank, the Cowdog, and this is why I like it because my dad makes funny voices when he reads it to me. The end, Matten (28:13): Hi, my name is Matten. I am 10 years old. I live in Mississippi, and my favorite book is the Hobbit because I like the part when Bilbo and Gollum play riddles because it taught me a lot of fun once. Abigail (28:31): Hi, my name is Abigail, and I'm six years old. I'm from Ohio. And my favorite book is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The reason I like it is because it gets my imagination running. Ruth (28:47): My name is Ruth. I live in the United States of America, and I'm four years old. And my favorite book is a Magic Tree House because Daddy reads to us and they go on their adventures in the magic tree house. Verea (29:03): I have a story with a small bear. My name is [Verea 00:29:09]. I'm three, and I'm in Ohio. Speaker 9 (29:08): In Ohio, very good. And your favorite is A Story for Small Bear. Why is it your favorite? Verea (29:19): Because I like it so much. Molly (29:21): Hi, I am Molly. I am eight years old, and I'm from Scotland. My favorite book is The Last Bear. It is a book about a brave kind girl who finds a lost, hungry, and sad polar bear, and she tries to rescue it. It is a fantastic book. Speaker 11 (29:39): What's your name? Verity (29:41): [Verity 00:29:41]. Speaker 11 (29:41): And how old are you? Verity (29:42): Three. Speaker 11 (29:44): And where do you live? Verity (29:46): In Louisiana. Speaker 11 (29:48): And what's your favorite book? Verity (29:49): Peter & Ernesto. Speaker 11 (29:52): And why do you like Peter & Ernesto? Verity (29:55): Because I like when they act like they're down. Can you read it? Speaker 11 (30:00): Yeah, I can read it. Verity (30:02): But don't skip. Speaker 11 (30:05): I won't skip any parks. Malachi (30:09): My name is Malachi, and I am from Arkansas. I am nine years old, and my favorite book is Narnia. Anna (30:18): Hi, my name Anna. I am six years old. I'm from Arkansas. My favorite book is Pinkalicious. Elizabeth (30:30): Hi, I'm Elizabeth. I'm from Arkansas. I'm three, and my favorite book is with baby Jesus. Sarah Mackenzie (30:39): Thank you so much, kids. Everybody, have a wonderfully blessed Thanksgiving, a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. I'm not going anywhere. You'll still see me in your inbox every Wednesday, but this podcast is on a little break for a bit. We'll be back at the end of January. (30:54): For anything I mentioned in today's show, head to the show notes, readaloudrevival.com/193. (31:03): I hope you have a absolutely lovely holiday season. I'm so glad that you are here and you're a part of our community, and until next time, go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.