Tool Talk
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: bird on November 04, 2011, 02:40:39 AM
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I'm surprised how many persons I know that haven't read more then a book or two in their life. I have several friends that have read the Bible, and quote anything within the Bible. That is quite an accomplishment. In order to quote the Bible, you have read a LOT of text. I have no opinion about the Bible..... just that someone that can quote the Bible has read through a large amount of text!!!
This isn't the site for religious opinions.
Anyhow, does anyone have a strategy for making a kid like/ learn to read??
I just found this previous "blank book" that I used to keep a running record of every book I had read and rated it on a scale of one to five. Five is the best score you could give a book. I've read about 180 books!!!!! I'm 34 years old. I started keeping this "record book" of the books I've read when I was a senior in high school. so, I guess I read an average of ten books a year??? I majored in English and History... not math!
It's never occurred to me that someone would not like to have a book read to them, or read a book on their own. If someone tells me they don't like to read (both adults and children), I don't know what to say to them. I can't imagine what I'd do if I didn't spend time reading!!!!!!
But, I've learned that a lot of persons don't read anymore. If persons do read, I see them sitting in a store with some computer thing that downloads books. I can't read a book without feeling the paper pages, writing all over the margins, and feeling the thickness that starts with the beginning of a book, and ends with the thickness of a few last pages until the end.
cheers, bird
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I think the key is to find a book that is of interest to them. For some that may be a comic book, sports, western, romance, history etc. Not many people will be willing to wade through Shakespear if they are not avid readers. I also prefer to read the book rather than see the movie or read it on the computer.
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I am astounded daily by the number of people who have not read books, especially since school. They say they don't have time, or they don't see the good in reading when they can get all they want from Google or such.
Reading, aside from being necessary, is a joy to me. I read all sorts of books, including the simpering "Romance" novels my wife brings home. How else will I see how women see things?
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Neals is right, If you want to help a person read find out what they like!
I learned to read for 2 reasons.
First I wanted to see what the hell they were saying in Mad magazine!
Second, I wanted to know what they were saying in Popular Mechanics!
It was only later I found out, no movie or magazine article can ever be 1/2 so good as the real thing.
If they are barely reading, go for Nobel prize winners! They give prizes and best seller status to romance novelists and every 4th rate hack on the block.
But they don't mess around with the Nobel prize too much.
John Steinbeck - Kurt Vonnegutt - Pearl Buck
I liked Bob Heinlein too. :)
yours Scott
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> the simpering "Romance" novels my wife brings home. How else will I see how women see things?
I have this horrible vision. 300 years from now, historians will be trying to reconstruct a picture of how we lived our daily lives.
Their only evidence will be a few ragtag battered romance novels.....
"It must have been the chemicals in the water...
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I can't stand people who watch a movie without reading the book!!! I don't know why it bothers me, but it does. The local gas station/ grocery store is a place I frequent. My friend, Richard, works there. Every time I see him, he's staring down at something. Finally, I asked him, "WHAT are you DOING?"
He said, "What do you mean? I'm reading a book."
"Well, where are the pages? Where's the paper? How do you write notes in the margin?"
"It's on the computer. It's more compact and easier to carry around. I don't write notes in books. Flipping pages has always been a nuisance."
UGHHHHH.... what's this world coming to? I have a bad feeling libraries will eventually cease to exist. They'll go by the way of records, tapes, and soon to be CDs. They'll go by the way of cooking, turned into microwave cooking. They'll go by the way of personally harvested seeds to Monsanto seeds, by the way of small farms to huge industry farms. They'll vanish the same way the steel mills have. Books will disappear just as writing letters has disappeared. We now contact each other via email. Oh, so much is changing, and I don't like it.
Onto a different topic---- I've been getting popular mechanics for years. I love that magazine! I was over at mom and dad's one day while I was reading the magazine.
Dad said, "Whatcha got there?"
"Oh, it's this magazine I get, Popular Mechanics."
He said, "Are you kidding me?!!! I started reading that magazine when I was a little kid! YOU subscribe to that magazine? I didn't know it was still around."
"I didn't know Popular Mechanics has been around as long as you've been around!"
He said, "Oh, yeah.... that was the magazine that every boy wanted to have/ read."
So, that's my story about popular mechanics...... you know I have to have a story/ rambling about everything!
Back to the actual "subject" of this post, reading a book is difficult to get persons of any age to do. I'm not sure what's happened. I guess the computer and TV have taken over. I told T, "Don't you want to jump into a world that can be anything beyond your wildest dreams? Reading a book can take you all sorts of places."
It would be nice to give her a book to read due to her interests. The problem is, she doesn't have any interest in anything.... she's never had the chance to become interested in anything. So, as I've said before, I'm trying to get her interested in something. She'll come around, the idea of doing anything but watching TV is foreign to T. But, I have faith she'll realize that there is a world, a REAL WORLD, that exists beyond the scope of a TV.
Well, that's enough rambling for one post.
cheers, bird
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Get her a copy of Vonneguts, The Sirens of Titan.
She may -think- she's tough, and maybe even a little psychotic???
but Kurt will kick her butt right proper, and make her glad she is exactly who she is.
Oohhh crap, we in the Big League now.......
Rented a tent,.... a tent.... a tent
heeheheheheh
Popular Mechanics started in 1908 or so.
I have a copy of the golden anniversary edition. Jan 1952, same as me.
Articles by Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Isaac Asimov.
yours Scott
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Scott, you can always make me smile, even on the worst of days!!!! I do love you!
cheers, bird
Get her a copy of Vonneguts, The Sirens of Titan.
She may -think- she's tough, and maybe even a little psychotic???
but Kurt will kick her butt right proper, and make her glad she is exactly who she is.
Oohhh crap, we in the Big League now.......
Rented a tent,.... a tent.... a tent
heeheheheheh
Popular Mechanics started in 1908 or so.
I have a copy of the golden anniversary edition. Jan 1952, same as me.
Articles by Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Isaac Asimov.
yours Scott
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i got started in readinh in 4th grade and we read "where the red fern grows" as a class. after that i got hooked into the harry potter phase then lord of the rings, alvin maker series by orson scott card.. theres also the immortal nicholas flamel series by micheal scott, the inheritance cycle by christopher paulini.. twilight series.
its really all about finding a genre or type of book kids get seduced into reading...
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There is absolutely not logic or predictability what will get a kid interested in reading. Some kids have been totally turned off to reading by the schools by age 10, until they find the books that interest them. Harry Potter turned a lot of kids on when adults were clever enough to say 'if you thought the movie was good you should read the book, the movie left a lot of good stuff out'.
My experience is girls often get hooked on the Jane Ayers (?) series. I may be off on the name of the series.
Best solution in my experience is to watch the kid, see what the kid's interest is, and make printed literature available to fit the interest. Be honest enough with yourself to admit you aren't always going to get a kid to do what you desire too. You can lead a horse to water, but making him do the backstroke or the butterfly takes one hell of a trainer.
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Find out what interests her and start her reading about it. Doesn't much matter what it is reading is reading. I started reading as a kid and have continued through life reading quite a bit. I started with car magazines and science fiction.
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As always, thanks for the response/ info..... I'm in the beginning stage with this kid.... I'm trying to get her interested in anything or something.... but, I value all of your opinions and input into questions that I have which are not tool related, but, I suppose , friend related.... something like that.
cheers,
bird
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Jenny, I have a suggestion for you that may help both you and T.
I'm guessing that your friend that is going to help you with your tool pictures is her guardian. If so, and even if not, let T use your camera and help with the pictures. I bet she knows her way around computers, so she might be able to help you see the picture posting troubles you have from a different viewpoint.
She could also benefit from taking the camera on her own and shooting pictures of things that interest her. Then she will need to read more to find out more about those things. Digital photography is wonderful in that one can shoot thousands of frames at little to no cost, study the results, and throw away the bad shots.
Maybe she would like to shoot a demo of you doing a woodworking project or two.
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I have a couple thoughts on the question. The first is you can't make anyone do anything, best you can do is make them wish they had or hadn't, and that ain't a walk in the park in the world where scores aren't kept at kids soccer games any more because it might hurt somebody's feelings. Seems like the concept of achieving got left in the closet any more.
The second is you're dealing with a kid who is already in the rebellion phase of growing up. That ain't pretty, she knows you can't MAKE her do diddle, so the only shot you have is your accumulated life skills against her lack of experience. You have to remember kids operate from the standpoint of every new thing they learn being new to the whole world. Experience generally wins out over time if the experienced person can just wait it out.
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Again, you folks are always so much help, whether it comes to tools, or life lessons I have to figure out. I love all of you for both of things.
cheers, bird
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You touched on part of a strategy already. The library. Drag her with you to the library, show her to the area appropriate to her age, and tell her "Have a look around, I have to find the book I'm looking for." And then give her a good half hour or more to get bored, and start actually looking at what is on the shelves. Very quickly she will find SOMETHING that catches her eye, which is the perfect time to show up and say, "Oh, you found something interesting? We can check that one out too."
Second best would be the same kind of strategy in a book store.
For me as a kid it was the Tom Swift series of books. Those gave way to the C. S. Lewis Narnia series, The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Ann McAfree, Marion Zimmer Bradley, R.A. Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, and then on and on ever since.
For a young girl, possibly the Ann McAfree crystal singer or dragon rider series.