Joy

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

What We are Reading


Claire loves to read books.   We read a few here and there throughout the day but our nap time and night time ritual is that she choose 4 books (because she is 4 years old) to read before she goes to sleep.   I actually used to dread story time but now that Claire is a little older, her books are more interesting, thoughtful, educational and funny than they used to be.  With all our reading, Josh and I get pretty tired of the books we have and it seems like we've read every one at least a thousand times.  I am SO thankful for thrift stores when it comes to books. 
Most Goodwill and Savers books are 69 to 99 cents. 

Every time we walk into a thrift store we look at books and we have started collecting a couple different series.  The first series I successfully collected was the Moncure a-z books, number books and finally the short story books.  Claire still likes them but they are a little babyish for her now. Joy will be ready for them when she is about 2.

One of Claire's favorites is the Reader's Digest Weekly Little Animal books.  We have several but there are many more still out there that we haven't found so we keep an eye out for those.   
 Each book has a cute and valuable lesson or moral.  My favorite of them is Kitty's Special Job.  
 
We talk about what each member's of our family special job is from time to time and sometimes Claire comes up with interesting things that she thinks are her "special job".

Angelina Ballerina is another favorite.  
 
The books are longer and she is just to the point where she can understand the plots and emotions going on in them. 
 
We just found one we didn't have yet this week -It was the best one yet, so cute and the story was quite heartwarming.

We recently discovered the Alice in Bibleland books. At first I was highly annoyed by them.  EVERY thrift store has "The Story of Jonah"  I was under the impression that there were 3 or 4 in the series but after I reluctantly bought "The Good Samaritan" and "David and Goliath" (desperate for new reading material) I realized that they are really really cute and well done.  One thing that I don't like about them in that they rhyme so sometimes the words they choose are a bit odd to finish a sentence but I guess Claire is learning new vocabulary that way.  Her favorites are Daniel and the Lions Den, Moses, and Esther.  I have found she enjoys books with peril.  I didn't realize that these Bible stories are quite complex when you explain them to a 4-year old.  Esther is so far the hardest to wrap her head around.
  
There is a lot of plotting to kill people in Bible stories.  Today we read Moses and she almost cries at this part.
  
In this picture I asked her if the mother was sad or happy. 
 
Originally Claire said "happy". We talked about how sad it must have been for her to give away her little baby and we imagined if we had to give away Joy.  

The books are a great way introduce her to many of the Bible stories and as she gets older talk about the concepts and take them to deeper levels.

 I have amazingly been able to find 15 of the 28 books in the series in just a few weeks.  
 We are huge fans now. I am actually surprised that Claire likes them so much, if I ever catch her looking at books by herself, she is usually looking at these ones.

We have found countless classics and just plain fun books as well.
My favorites are Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

Wanted: Best Friend



and Lyle the Crocodile is always fun too.


A while back we got 3 different Winnie the Pooh Adventure books on tape (cd).  She loves them.  They are all about 20 minutes long and I love that she can do them herself.
    Well, those are a few of our recent favorites - we are enjoying this stage of books!


3 comments:

  1. I really liked you piece Kathleen. Its really cool that you read to your kids so much. I remember my Mom reading to me and I love to read because of her. Your kids sure have grown. Its weird to think that you're a mom now! Man, time flies.
    ~Sandra Best (from your old Homeschooling group)

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  2. I love Sylvester and the Magic Pebble...I think we had 3 copies of it at one point. If she likes Winnie the Pooh, she might like Beatrix Potter, too...Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Jemima Puddleduck, etc. I remember my mom reading those to me.

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  3. I hope you do the library too. Changes up the selections and it's free. Phoenix public library also has free access to tumblebooks online through their website. It reads books online highlighting the words as it reads and turning the pages.

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