A Lovely Tradition

I have been reading to my kids more! I'm excited about that because "not reading to them enough" had been a guilty feeling that clung to me. We would have a huge stack of library books, and only read half of them. Now the stack is smaller, we read more of our own books, and we repeat books quite a bit. Evelyn loves it. Picture books are still her favorite, and she even "reads" the easy ones to herself.

Ever heard of the "Mr. Men" and "Little Miss" series? My sister loaned her books to us and they are definite favorites! There are allot of words to one picture so it's helping to increase the kids' attention span, and they always address topics that are very interesting to kids, like Mr. Clumsy visiting Mr. Fussy and wrecking his house, or Mr. Tickles trying to contain himself from tickling everyone. Oh, good times!

Our library here has a pretty good collection of used books for sale - super cheap. One day I let the kids each pick out one book to buy. John did a blind grab, pulling out whatever his hand touched first. Evelyn looked a little bit, but I saw one I knew she would love, pop-up ABC's! Yup. And then, in a matter of thirty  seconds I saw and grabbed 5 books - I felt a little greedy but I knew I had to have them :

"The Robe" by Lloyd C. Douglas
"Raggedy Ann & Andy the First Treasury" by Johnny Gruelle
"The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame
"The Treasury of Children's Stories" books 1 and 2 

The Treasury books have been a special delight for me. They are filled with nursery rhymes, poems, songs, and the classic stories like "Hansel and Gretel", and "Rumpelstiltskin". They aren't the watered down versions either - when Humpty Dumpty falls and breaks that's it for him, there are no doll hospitals. I love it! They are perfect tools in teaching real life thinking skills (yes, even though they are fairy tales), as well as imagination. And of course there's always a good moral to talk about. I try to read something from these books everyday.

I still have to remind myself to stop whatever I'm doing, sit down and read to the kids. Sometimes they grumble about having to turn off a game or a show, or having to stay quiet. But I've noticed that they really love it. I know we will get better at it with more practice and I am so happy to have this tradition in our family. I am especially excited by reading the classics and seeing how it stretches all of our imaginations and thinking. I used to worry that the kids wouldn't listen to or understand the stories, or that there would be too much other "stuff" that wouldn't get done because I was reading. But really, listening comes with practice, as does understanding, and all that other "stuff" will wait for me.