The girls and I finally sat down last week and made up a list of books we want to read aloud this year. We have a few books left for our curriculum, and the rest we’ll just add on top! You can see my personal reading list for 2013 here and a list of goals for 2013 here.
Our read aloud times vary during the day. We usually do some during the morning. I also read during lunch if John doesn’t come home to eat or if we eat before he gets home. Finally, we do some reading in the evening, too!
My 4-year-old doesn’t always sit and listen, but I do encourage her to play quietly with blocks, legos, or draw when I’m reading. The other girls (ages 6 and 8) enjoy that, too!
We will probably add more as we go through the year, but this is a good start. I will continue to update the list with a brief thought on each book once we finish!
Books for Our Curriculum:
The Trojan Horse(Simple little read, but a good book to use to compare with other stories of the Trojan Horse.)The Children’s Homer(I couldn’t believe how much my daughter loved this one! The language is a bit difficult for an eight-year-old, but we had plenty of discussions about it. It was also a good opportunity to discuss mythology and what we believe.)- Aesop for Children
- Archimedes and the Door of Science
Other Books We Are Reading Aloud:
- Pyramid by David MacCauley
- Courageous Christians by Vollner Brown
- Journeys of Faithfulness by Sarah Clarkson
- The Cricket in Times Square
- Tucker’s Countryside
- The Wind in the Willows
The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh(We loved this! Even the four year old sat through the stories and loved the illustrations!)- Pollyanna
- Just David
- Mr. Poppers Penguins
- The Twenty-One Balloons
- My Side of the Mountain
- Little Lord Faunterloy
*Additions to our list:
You can see some of my favorite read alouds for kids here. You can also find books ideas and reviews in the “Book Basket”.
What books are you enjoying with your children?
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Mr. Poppers Penguins and The 21 Balloons are WONDERFUL! We love them!
Yay! I’m so glad to hear it! I can’t wait to get to reading them!!
There is an excellent recording of “Winnie the Pooh” with Judy Dench as the narrator. We got it from the library and listened to it over and over until it had to go back! By FAR the best audio book I’ve “read” recently, and we listen to a lot of them in the car.
Love “The Wind in the Willows” too!
We are loving Winnie-the-Pooh! Thanks for the suggestion on the audio narrator. I bet that makes it lovely….it’s such a fun story to read outloud!
We’re on the Hobbit now, as our 7 yr old wanted to get started on the Lord of the Rings like her big brother had…we’ll see about that trilogy…. Our 5 yr old isn’t totally listening, but she knows what is going on. Like with Narnia books and others, I sometimes have to double speak the hard/British words so that they can understand it better. Since we have a big age range, (5-10), we switch up the levels for bedtime reading, or I try to read simpler things to the girls at other points in the week, and our oldest reads on his own in bed. At different times, we’ve split into groups for bedtime stories–oldest boy on his own (like when we read him Lord of the Rings) and the girls together for whatever they were choosing, but my husband is away in the evenings a lot now, so that would make bedtime waaay long for me. What do you do for bedtime stories, Stacie? Or, since you read in the day, do you not read at night?
Each of the girls gets to pick out a book at bedtime. Generally, the two youngest will pick a picture book. I’ll read it to them, and John reads a chapter for the 8-year-old from whatever book she wants. They read All Creatures Great and Small together–that was fun to see!
If John isn’t home, then I read a book to each of them. It doesn’t normally take much more than 20-30 minutes though since they are picking picture books and one chapter from a chapter book.
I don’t know if my girls would like the Hobbit yet! I like the idea of reading it to them, but I’m just not sure. They don’t seem to like anything they deem too “scary”!