How to Love a Book!

This might not look like learning. It wouldn’t have looked like learning to me two years ago. Kids running around with robes and magic wands. Sitting on the couch reading a big, colorfully illustrated book about wizards. Coloring pictures of pretty plants and flowers. There might even be a little figuring out of how many wands were sold in a week if 14 were sold each day. Or how about designing a shopping mall for wizards? Does that sound like learning? Or fun? Are learning and fun mutually exclusive? Not in my house. Not anymore…

We are reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling aloud as a family. There is a recently released illustrated edition that is simply exquisite! When the sun goes down and bedtime is approaching, my children beg to get this book out! It has so profoundly captured us that we have decided to toss out the curriculum for a while and enroll in The Hogwart’s School of Wizardry! After all, there is no better way to love a book than to dive right in and let the pages take you where they may, to become a living part of it.

At this school, we don our robes and learn things like Herbology, magic spell writing, and wand making. We write articles for the Weekly Prophet. We looked deeply inside ourselves to help the Sorting Hat decide to which House we belong. I happen to have two Gryffindors and one Ravenclaw.

I got most of my inspiration for activities from Emily Cook at Build your library. Emily’s unit studies are spectacular! We are for sure loving the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Unit Study! There is also a plethora of Harry Potter math activities that one can find doing a simple internet search.

It is so wonderful to bring a beloved book to life by becoming a part of it. By living it. It becomes a part of you, too, forever…

(This post contains a link to Amazon.com. Should you decide to purchase the book, Thankfully Home will receive a small commission. This will not cost you anything at all! It helps us buy books for our family, so thank you!)