What is with all the twaddle?

My son age 2, Curious George Party
"Having A Ball"

Recently I was in an online homeschool group who named certain book series as twaddle. What is twaddle? Twaddle to me is books that lacking meaning and are useless. Some of the books they listed as "so called" twaddle were great classics that my son and our family have greatly enjoyed in both the current, as well as when we were children. I guess if I thought hard on the subject I could give a long list of books that I would consider twaddle, but regardless I ask what does it really matter? If your child is reading and enjoying the book does it really matter that whether the book is classic, filled with big important words or has a lesson?

For our family the answer is no. For us it is about the love of reading not content so long as it's healthy. If my son enjoys reading endless amounts of stories about mischievous monkeys or superheros galore or more books on robots I raise the point, HE IS READING. It is not playing xbox or Nintendo. He is not watching television (not that there is anything wrong with any of this either). I think sometimes we as humans develop such strong opinions on what is and what isn't and how this or that should be or shouldn't, but the fact is our reality is not always the reality of others and sometimes it does us a great deal of good just to let go sometimes and enjoy what is actually good in that moment without questioning every detail of whether it conflicts with our personal opinion. Learning can happen anywhere and anytime if we let it happen.

Curious George
image found on google

Where We Are Now

I think it is pretty easy to see where you have been and sometimes pretty easy to plan out where you want to go, but sometimes it can be a bit daunting to figure out where you are. I feel like we live in a place that is all of our own and don’t 100% identify with any other learners exactly. And the more I realize that the more I am okay with that.

We usually start our day reading. We have a book of the week (from Five In A Row) that we read 5 times, not necessarily 5 days in a row always. We go to the library 1-3 times a week. We play educational games on the computer, we participate in some of the library activities and my son picks books out that he likes and I pick out some that I think will appeal to him on things I know he is currently interested in learning about or that have to do with upcoming activities that we have talked about doing. We do a lot of nature walks and discovery (Charlotte Mason inspired), we collect things we find and draw pictures of things we see. We love to bug hunt. We have a lot of interesting pets too. We also our very involved as Bible students and teaching and preaching, and helping others. On the weekends we usually go on nature hikes and lots of learning play activities.