Read-at-Home Kids Report: February 2019

Family Read-Alouds

This month, we have gone back to primarily reading chapter books aloud at mealtimes. I did kick off the month with a couple of picture books at lunch time: Rosa-Too-Little by Sue Felt Kerr, Do You Have the Time, Lydia? by Evaline Ness, and Septimus Bean and His Amazing Machine by Janet Quin-Harkin,  during which time my husband was reading America Travels by Alice Dalgliesh, and then The Four Dolls by Rumer Godden at dinner time. Next, we took turns reading Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink at lunch and dinner for about a week. Now I'm reading Miss Hickory by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey at lunch, and he's reading The Moffats by Eleanor Estes at dinnertime. We also took a two-hour drive to a booksale and listened to the entirety of The Borrowers audiobook together on the ride there and back. The girls especially loved Baby Island, and they are really into The Moffats.

Little Miss Muffet, Age 5 

During school time, Miss Muffet and I are reading some longer books for science, art, and history. I took out Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages expecting to read just a few pages, but she has fallen in love with the topic, so now we're reading a section of a chapter each day. We have learned about preparators and paleoartists, taxonomy and preservation, and now we're moving into evolution and the origin of dinosaurs. I like this book a lot because it teaches not just about dinosaurs, but about science in general, and all in terms a child with minimal knowledge can understand.

We're also studying the Stone Age, and the books we've been using are Picturesque Tale of Progress: Beginnings I, They Lived Like This in The Old Stone Age by Marie Neurath, and The Golden Book of Cavemen and Prehistoric People, the last of which she selected for herself at the aforementioned book sale. She especially loved learning about cave painting, and the illustrations in these books inspired her to make her own cave art using oil pastels on a brown paper bag. For art appreciation, we're using Famous Paintings: An Introduction to Art by Alice Elizabeth Chase. We read about one painting each weekday, and we'll keep going until we finish the book.

In terms of independent reading, Miss Muffet continues to be obsessed with the Adventures of Sophie Mouse series, and she has also read Whisper in the Ruins from the Chime Travelers series, as well as The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth, which tied in perfectly to her budding interest in paleontology. She's also read Twig by Elizabeth Orton Jones, Beezus and Ramona, Eddie's Green Thumb by Carolyn Haywood, and My Visit to the Dinosaurs by Aliki. Her current read is Boxcar Children #10, The Schoolhouse Mystery. She is also still requesting to hear the same audiobooks again and again: Muggie Maggie, Mitch & Amy, and The Year of Billy Miller.

Little Bo Peep, Age 3 

This child continues to go through piles of books at a time. She still loves anything illustrated by "Ellowee Wilkin," and she chose a prayer book by her to bring home from a recent book sale. She has also been attached to The Three Bears by Byron Barton, The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, Mockingbird by Janet and Allen Ahlberg, and the newly published The Whole Wide World and Me by Toni Yuly. She also really loved both Rosa-Too-Little and Baby Island when we read them aloud.

Bo Peep does tend to be very particular about her books, and she spends a lot of time flipping through books only to say she's not interested in them because they lack something she feels is important, such as illustrations of babies. She sometimes listens in when we read about dinosaurs and cavemen, but typically she prefers to spend school time looking at books on her own.

Little Jumping Joan, 16 months

This little girl is finally walking, so now she can often be found lugging around a huge picture book as she tries to keep her balance. She is also really into word books, which prompted my mom to send us a few board books of that type published by DK that she had hanging around her house from when the older two girls were this age. Jumping Joan is fascinated by the photographs, especially of animals, and she spends a lot of time pointing at different items and saying, "Whaddat?" She really likes bears, too, and became instantly attached to another of our book sale finds, Love Songs of the Little Bear by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Susan Jeffers.  She's really rough on books if she is left to her own devices, so we have to be kind of protective of our picture books, but it was so sweet to see her kissing the bear and pointing at his face on every page. She still won't sit for a read-aloud of any of these books, but I try to jump in and comment on what she's interested in whenever she has a book in hand.