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| "10 books to read to your child before kindergarten" |
- One First Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss. A family favorite. I think we even have two copies. Check.
- One Family by George Shannon. Need to read! Looks great, but I couldn't find it at the library or in digital format online. We did, subsequently, check out a few other books by this author, including Who Put the Cookies in the Cookie Jar? -- Totally was so much more than a song, like I expected. Really incredible book. We already read Turkey Tot quite some time back, but we pulled it off the shelf at the library to read again for fun. If only all our berry picking problems could be solved with tin cans and ribbon.
- Monsters Love School by Mike Austin. Really loved reading this after heading to the library with the list. I'd like to look into other books by this author.
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. A classic, but shockingly... I don't think we've read this.
- Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. The Giving Tree is the only Silverstein book we've read so far. Clearly, I have a mounting reading list developing.
- Bully by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. Found this at the library and the girls loved it.
- Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney. We've read a few from the Llama series including Llama Llama Holiday Drama and Llama Llama Mad at Mama. I expected this one to be brother/sister sharing but it was with the neighborhood kid. So hard to watch the little people struggle with this.
- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr, John Archambault and Lois Ehlert. LOVE this book and it really helped the girls learn their alphabet... when they were 2! I actually preferred Chicka Chicka 123 as it helped them learn to count to 100. There are lots of great alpha books out there but few that help with number counting past 10.
- Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! by Mo Willems. LOVE LOVE LOVE everything Willems has written. We learned to love Pigeon and the Elephant and Piggie books (favorite is We are in a Book! -- hilarious) at Barnes & Noble story time. Highly recommend! Check out the Beastie Toys YouTube channel for several Elephant & Piggie Read Alouds.
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. I remember reading this maybe when I was in the, I don't know, 3rd or 4th grade? Reading this to my kids now never even hit my radar. I'm so looking forward to checking this out and reading it to them.
Not a bad list. Okay, but here's the thing: as I was looking for the link to the Parents article online, I started seeing several other book lists. And, you know, I got curious...
The second, as it turned out, wasn't a book list but a non-profit based in Nevada challenging parents and kids to make the pledge to read 1,000 books. At first, I felt the heat on the back of my neck. But then I started looking at the numbers. Even if my kids had read no books from birth up until this point, we could read 6 books a day and still achieve the goal. Totally doable!
Except... that we have been reading. Lots and lots of books. So I make lists with the girls, going through lists like the 100 books to read, award winners and best children's books lists. Right now, we're just shy of 500 books and haven't finished taking inventory of the books we have at home.
Our children's librarian assured us that there are more than enough books in the children's collection to accomplish our goals, including 700 books in Spanish. Normally, we check out books in groups of five so it's easier to remember how many books we need to find and return. Now we're checking out 10 at a time, in addition to reading up to 10 there before we leave.
Once we get home, it doesn't take us long to consume the ten new library books, and it often takes us a few days before we're able to get back to the library. We have found that there are a number of videos, typically found on YouTube but occasionally on book publisher's website, for us to watch. While some of the videos are simple storytelling with page turning, others add exciting animations of the characters that enhance the story.
Our reading rut has come to an end and their books are spread far and wide through every corner of the house. I'm okay with that.
The second, as it turned out, wasn't a book list but a non-profit based in Nevada challenging parents and kids to make the pledge to read 1,000 books. At first, I felt the heat on the back of my neck. But then I started looking at the numbers. Even if my kids had read no books from birth up until this point, we could read 6 books a day and still achieve the goal. Totally doable!
Except... that we have been reading. Lots and lots of books. So I make lists with the girls, going through lists like the 100 books to read, award winners and best children's books lists. Right now, we're just shy of 500 books and haven't finished taking inventory of the books we have at home.
Our children's librarian assured us that there are more than enough books in the children's collection to accomplish our goals, including 700 books in Spanish. Normally, we check out books in groups of five so it's easier to remember how many books we need to find and return. Now we're checking out 10 at a time, in addition to reading up to 10 there before we leave.
Once we get home, it doesn't take us long to consume the ten new library books, and it often takes us a few days before we're able to get back to the library. We have found that there are a number of videos, typically found on YouTube but occasionally on book publisher's website, for us to watch. While some of the videos are simple storytelling with page turning, others add exciting animations of the characters that enhance the story.
Our reading rut has come to an end and their books are spread far and wide through every corner of the house. I'm okay with that.
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