Holidays with Audiobooks

These holidays, as with previous holidays spent at home, our days have been ordered around two activities: swimming lessons in the morning and Individual Quiet Time aka Audiobook Hour after lunch.

We spent an hour a day for four weeks in the local pool and Sam passed Level 1 and Anna passed Level 4 and Level 5. Abigail practised Level 3 and Joshua struggled with floating and perfect form in Level 4. The physical exercise has been great for the kids.

Meanwhile, the quiet provided by an hour of kids in separate rooms reading their own books, or together in the lounge listening to an audiobook, has been great for me! Having something interesting to listen to has helped us all cope when 30+ and even 40+ temperatures have kept us cooped up inside for all but the very early and very late hours of our days.

(Jeff has also finished - after the better part of 2011 - reading aloud the Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkein, and I've begun reading the Borrowers sextuplet. Our after dinner read alouds sometimes get missed in the business of term time, but we really get into them during holidays.)

This summer, we have enjoyed the following audiobooks, for most of which we are very thankful to our local public library:

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The BFG by ditto
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by ditto
Charlie and the Great Glass elevator by ditto

Clarice Bean Spells Trouble by Lauren Child

Cry of the Cat by Emily Rhodda

Anne of Avonlea by LM Montgomery

We're finishing the holidays with The Incredible Journey by Shiela Burnford. It has indeed been an incredible literary journey.