Now that my daughter’s reading skills have improved, we’ve begun reading a chapter from The Children’s Illustrated Bible from DK as part of her reading lesson each day. Right now, I’m reading it to her, and then I have her narrate what happened in the story and I write it down for her reading notebook. (Those of you familiar with The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer will recognize this technique.) As her reading and writing improve, she’ll gradually start writing her own narration.
I’m not a particularly religious person, but I think that regardless of what religious path my daughter chooses, it’s important that she be familiar with the stories of the Bible, if for no other reason than so she can understand references in literature and do well when she watches Jeopardy! or plays Trivial Pursuit.
Wednesday we read the story of Cain and Abel. Here is my daughter’s version of the story, as dictated to me (note that the line, “This punishment is greater than I can bear!” is in the version of the story from the Children’s Bible):
There were two sons. And the youngest, Abel, was a shepherd. His brother, Cain, he was a farmer. And God had them to give him nice things. Abel gave him the nicest things. And Cain got so angry that he killed Abel with a rock. And God came back and said, “Where’s Abel?”
And Cain didn’t want to say, so he said, “I don’t know.”
“But,” said God, “who could have killed him?”
“I think maybe a bear could,” said Cain.
He put him into a city of Nod. It’s a place where people are so nice that Cain would not want to kill anyone else.
The end.
Imperfect Happiness 
This is GREAT “bear!” (it took me two reads to put that together!) Alani is doing a much simpler version of this, connecting a three word “story” with a picture. Today there was a dog wearing glasses and reading, one question “Why is the dog reading glasses?” “Because he’s a gramma?” I don’t know which part of this response is the funniest! LOVE the kids!
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