A Picture of My Little Readers

Here's M reading one of our favorites, Boo Boo by Olivier Dunrea to C before wake up time.

Recent Chapter Book Reading

In the last few months, M and I have read all four books in the Mrs Piggle-Wiggle series by Betty MacDonald. I don't know how I missed reading these when I was a child, but I'm glad I got the chance to read them now.

For those who don't know her, Mrs Piggle-Wiggle is an older woman who has no children of her own. However, she adores having children over to play, cook, make messes. and generally have a blast. She knows so much about children that parents call her for help when their sons and daughters are giving them trouble. Each chapter is named for a certain type of cure that Mrs Piggle-Wiggle comes up with like the Won't Pick Up Toys Cure or the Never Won't To Go To Bedders Cure or the Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Taker Cure.

As a parent, I particularly enjoyed seeing how the parents in the book had such similar experiences to ones I've had even though the books were written in the late 40s and early 50s.

We are currently reading The Moffats by Eleanor Estes, another great book that I missed as a child. It's about the adventures of the four Moffat Children, Sylvie, Joe, Jane, and Rufus, who range in age from 5-15, and it was first published in 1940. There are several sequels and I'm sure we'll read them as well.

Some other chapter books we've read recently are:
The Littles by John Peterson
Chocolate Fever by Robert Smith
The Mystery of the Blue Ring (Polka Dot Private Eye) by Patricia Reilly Giff - This one inspired M to start playing detective and asking for more mystery books.

Chapter Book Read-Alouds For 4-6 year Old Girls

M has really gotten into listening to chapter books and she is able to sit for longer and longer ones. I've had a lot of fun searching for book lists and discovering titles that I think she'd enjoy. I wanted to share the links to some of the booklists that have been most helpful.

Here in the Bonny Glen is one of my favorite blogs and Melissa post about Favorite Fictional Families has given us several ideas for books we want to read together.

I also love this list of Cool Girls of Children's Literature from Jen Robinsons' Book Page, another great blog.

During an Amazon search, I ran across a few cool lists:
An Amazon Guide to Children's Series Books
Novel Read Alouds for a Gifted 3 Year old Part 1
Novel Read Alouds for a Gifted 3 Year old Part 2
Chapter Series Books for Six Year Old Girls

In a search for books for a 5 year old girl, I found this post about read-alouds at Little Acorns Treehouse.

And I love the Telegraph's list of the Top 50 Children's Books

Heart of a Child Reading Challenge

Wow! It's been even longer than I thought since I posted here. I've got great intentions of doing more posting but we'll see how that goes :)

I'm going to be participating in the Heart of a Child Reading Challenge. I just re-read The Boxcar Children as a read aloud for M. For the other books, I'm planning to read Dicey's Song , Sister of the Bride by Beverly Cleary and Fog Magic by Julia Sauer. All were favorites of mine when I was 10-12.

Booklist in Omni Outliner

For some time I've been wanting to start recording all the books I check out from the library for M and C. I could have just made a list of them in a Word document but I wanted a way to tag and organize them by categories with some books in multiple categories. What I need is something similar to the way iTunes organizes music with a general library and then the ability to group those songs into different playlists except my playlists would be book categories. I haven't figured out a way to do exactly what I want (working within the constraints of my system and budget) but I have developed a workable substitute in Omni Outliner.

I made an outline of all my books separating them into categories by type: baby board books, short picture books, long picture books, easy readers, chapter books. For each entry, you can make notes so in the notes section I add tags like: Halloween, animals, anatomy, fall, etc. I can then do a search of the document to find all books with the word "animals" in the notes.

Science Exploration

This week we checked out What Makes a Magnet? From the library. It's part of the Let's Read and Find Out About Science series which I highly recommend. On Wednesday morning, I usually keep M home from preschool so we can meet some of her friends from the toddler playgroup we used to have. During C's nap, we have some Mommy and M school time and this week, we did the experiments from the magnet book. We gathered objects in a cardboard box, some that would attract a magnet and some that would not. Then we tied a magnet from the fridge to a pencil and M "fished" for the objects. Then we used the magnet to make another magnet using a needle and turned the needle into a compass. M couldn't wait to tell her dad all that she'd learned we he got home. It was definitely a successful lesson!

Car Survival Kit

I was talking with a friend yesterday about what we keep in our cars so I thought I'd make a list of all the things I've found handy to keep in the car:

diapers
wipes
change of clothes for both girls
first aid kit
poison care kit (added after M ate a mushroom in a friend's yard when she was 18 mos)
towels (good for wiping water off park equipment and many other things)
snacks
water bottles
plastic bags
umbrella stroller
sweaters for everyone (and hats and gloves in the winter)