Candles for you and your wife while the children listen in their beds to wonderful audio books (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Do you and your spouse want to have some private evenings of relaxation without having to leave home or hire a babysitter?
Audio books to the rescue!
Your children can listen to captivating unabridged voice-acted stories in their bedrooms while drawing quietly, playing Legos, or just lying dreamily on their beds. Here are some 50 hours of suggested audio to stock up with in your arsenal of date-night tricks. This should give you room to relax at home for about 25 date nights worth while your children get deliciously transported into other worlds:
My list of fun fictional books in English for boys 9 to 12 who might be living in Paris and missing a bit of our crazy Americana! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Recently an expatriate friend living near Paris, France, was wondering what kind of fun and interesting fictional books their twin 12 year old boys could read in English to keep them in touch with American culture.
In response, I put together a list of books here below that I thought boys from ages 9 to 12 might enjoy trying to read. Girls might like them too, but I chose this compilation especially for boys who want something to kick start them into reading. There are many other books I could recommend, but if you are looking to get them jump-started on something easily accessible and fun, these below I would recommend first. Note that all the links go to my Amazon affiliate program.
Books that have a special Americana bent to them: Hank the Cowdog series (down-on-the-ranch humor)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (school kid humor that will open the doors to understanding modern American boy humor)
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (classic American outdoor adventure; the outdoor part is the story might as well describe the outdoors of where we currently live in California)
The series of books “Freddy the Pig” by Walter Brooks (anthropomorphic animal stories, with some gentle humor, that does a good job explaining through elaborate plots the different aspects of how American life, culture, and politics work – they were a big hit with my twelve and under crowd)
The animal stories by Thornton Burgess (nature stories that my daughter Noelle absolutely loves; shock full of real facts about nature in the context of fictional animal stories)
The Wizard of Oz series of books (the boys liked this as the books are far more interesting and gritty than the movies)
“Lawn Boy” and “Lawn Boy Returns” by Gary Paulson (humor about a boy running a successful business – this one really gets the American obsession about being successful in business life from a kid’s point of view; it had Gideon (age 10) laughing all the way through the books)
I’m listing a few Non-Americana books here below, but I include them because they are very popular in the United States and easy to read with good story lines:
ALL the books in Chronicles of Narnia series (I think that even though this was written by CS Lewis, a British writer, it is probably more popular in the United States than in Great Britain. An absolute MUST read.)
For 11 and 12 year olds, I recommend ALL the Artemis Fowl series of books by Eoin Colfer (it is the kind of science-fiction humor that made me smile and laugh as an adult; big people get the humor too and it is not inappropriate humor; a lot of advanced vocabulary, but accessible because the writing is so good, that in context, you understand it)
Thanks to Daniel, a reader of this 10ktotalent blog site, I am adding to this list the Redwall series of books by Brian Jacques. Several other friends over the years have highly recommended these adventure books of a mouse-warrior in a medieval setting.
Does your child have his prioritized list of specialty books picked out? Use the Book Blitz Method (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In this article I will show you how you can quickly build a reading list based on trusted sources and instantly find out which books are the most influential in your field.
So you had a few books recommended to you by someone you trust. You read them. You greatly enjoyed them and learned a lot. You want to learn more about that particular niche. But how do you go about finding the top books?
Read on to learn a quick and easy way to remember all the books you want to read, find related books, and prioritize your reading based on which books are most prominent in your defined niche.
Step 1 – Get a Recommendation from a Trusted Source
Starting with a trusted source is the key to making this system work. You have to know where to start so that you’re not just reading “best-sellers.”
Read all the books suggested by your trusted source.
Step 2 – Find Related Books
Go to Amazon.com and find one of the books you just read. Click on the book’s page.
Look for the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section. This will serve as a list of follow up books.
Step 3 – Add the Books to Your Reading List
Log on to GoodReads.com. If you don’t already have an account, create one.
Search for one of the related books from the above step. To save time, just type in the author’s last name and a keyword from the title. Press Enter.
Click on the “Want to Read” button next to the title.
Repeat this process for every title from the Amazon.com page.
Step 4 – Find the Most Prominent Books
Your reading list will grow large very quickly when you follow the trail of related books. One way to prioritize is to find the books on your list that are most widely read. This will often indicate which books are most authoritative in the field.
Click on “My Books.”
Then click “to-read” from the side panel.
Click on “shelf settings.” Check “num ratings.” Sort by descending. Click “save current settings.”
Click on the “num ratings” column to sort by that field.
Your books are now prioritized by prominence.
Step 5 – Pick Your Books
Scroll through your sorted book list and pick out the ones that meet your criteria. For example, you could pick out all the books related to theology.
You can use the rankings to help prioritize your reading schedule. Since the list sorts automatically, you can add as many books as you want and still know which ones are the most widely read.
Conclusion
You can apply this method to any niche. Have your child ask for some book recommendations from an expert in his talent area. He can obtain this information from a online forum, a personal contact, or even by directly writing to an established expert. Most experts are more than willing to help a young novice get on the right educational track. Once your child has those first few books, he can begin a lifelong pursuit of learning and development through reading.
About Levi Heiple
Levi Heiple is a writer/entrepreneur who specializes in electronic training and support systems. He connected with Jonathan Harris after being asked tutor his son, Caleb. You can sign up for Levi’s free weekly tip on “reading for innovation” at BookBlitzMethod.com. You can find his professional website at LeviHeiple.com. You can find his web design service at WebPromoPackage.com.
In his adult life, your child will likely be acting mainly as just ONE of the three types of people that Gerber explains are needed to make work life function. (Photo credit: Aleksandar Ratkovic and Altiona.com)
Guest Post by Levi Heiple:
In 1986, Michael E. Gerber wrote a groundbreaking business book called The E-Myth. This was later revised and published as the more famous E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to do About It. The book is regarded for its insights on how to plan, manage, and grow a small start-up business and turn it into a franchise business. “Work on your business, not in your business” was the key motto.
However, one insight that is just as powerful, yet often overlooked, is Gerber’s insight into human personality.
Gerber writes that inside each of us is really three different persons:
The entrepreneur – dreams and plans for the future and sees opportunities
The manager – craves order and pragmatically solves problems
The technician – enjoys work in the present and loves to get things done
The idea of three persons in one should sound familiar to anyone acquainted with biblical theology. The Scripture teaches that God is trinitarian: the Father who plans and wills all things (the entrepreneur), Christ whom was given all things and brings all things under subjection according to the Father’s will (the manager), and the Holy Spirit who carries out the will of God in the present (the technician). Since humans are made in the image of God, it should make perfect sense to biblical thinkers that we find a trinitarian aspect within our own personhood.
Though we each have a three-in-one aspect to our personalities, we will find that people tend to have a dominant “person” that directs their behavior. Identifying which aspect is dominant in your child can be a critical component in structuring his education process.
About Levi Heiple
Levi Heiple is a writer/entrepreneur who specializes in electronic training and support systems. He connected with Jonathan Harris after being asked tutor his son, Caleb. You can sign up for Levi’s free weekly tip on “reading for innovation” at BookBlitzMethod.com. You can find his professional website at LeviHeiple.com. You can find his web design service at WebPromoPackage.com.
Learn More
For more of Levi’s tips on teaching young entrepreneurs:
Cover scan of a Great Comics comic book (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Is your son reading lots of books about his talent, but reading them with only the goal of being able to say he’s read them? This is mistake. If this is so, most of what he reads will be forgotten and unusable in the abundance of details he is acquiring over time. Instead, he must treat books in the spirit of an action hero who has a mission to accomplish (see the Book Blitz Method by Levi Heiple). Your talent driven child must learn to scan his books with an eye to interpreting key information into immediately applicable rules of action within his specific talent focus. The rest of the otherwise good information, he must learn to judiciously gloss over.
