Be Excellent! (Loving books, part 2)

I feel like I've learned a lot about how to encourage my kids to love books, especially great books, and I wanted to take a few posts to share some of my thoughts. Any time you delve into parental advice-giving it has the potential to be a nasty can of worms. So, I hope the book recommendations and thoughts on encouraging a love a reading are helpful. I'm not trying to make out like my way of doing this will work for everyone.

Not all books are great, and I strongly believe that there are too many excellent books out there to waste time re-reading lousy ones. We refer to these mediocre books as “twaddle.” 

Twaddle is a term often used to describe books that are dumbed down, especially for children. (For more great information about twaddle, check out this post on Simple Charlotte Mason.) These kinds of books lack strong characters, a meaningful storyline, and often even good writing – you know, the ones with no author and based on a TV show. J 

But a great book stands out above others because it creates feelings in you, even as an adult reading a children’s story.  A great book makes you want to read more great books.

Many times children will ask to re-read a book just because it is about a popular character.  The content of the book is insignificant to them because they like the character. When we surround our kids with twaddle-free books, the simplistic books with weak plots and cartoon characters will naturally end up less appealing.

Great books – especially great children’s books – should be able to be read over and over again.  Repetition is great for children, so be picky and choose books that are excellent to read multiple times. I am a firm believer that it is ok to say ‘no’ to bad books, as long as you are able to offer a better alternative! We always end up with a few “busts” in our bag of library books that looked better than they were.  But I’ve found that these times present a great opportunity for me to talk with my kids about the difference between twaddle and excellence.

Now that we've been doing this for a while, we often chat a little after reading a new book. It's usually a simple "I liked that book, it was great!" or "well, that was a little lame/boring/ect." It cracks me up to hear my kids commenting like this. When we finished a 5th or 6th re-read of The Rainbow Fish my son piped up, "I like that book!" And my daughter likes to grab a "bust" from our library basket and explain to guests that "this book was twaddle so we're probably not going to read it again." They really learn so much from us!

Favorite (non-Thomas) Train Books:
In order from simplest to more challenging, all picture books.

Freight Train
  Few words and minimalist illustrations, which captured my children's attention instantly. I added some sound effects and changed speeds of my reading in this one.
Two Little Trains

  The two trains are doing the same things, but one is a real train and one is a toy. Superb.
My Little Train
  My son has been quoting this one a lot lately. Animals ride the train around and over furniture.
I'm Taking a Trip on My Train
  All of Neitzel's books have building repetition that is great for kids, but sometimes gets old for reading. Her endings make each book.
I'm Fast!
  A car and train race across the country. What's not to love?
C Is for Caboose: Riding the Rails from A to Z
  For the train lover, lots of technical terms to correspond to each letter of the alphabet. 

Disclosure

Part 1: Readers Are Made

Favorite Finds

We are loving this cooler September weather! It's been perfect for baking bread again and we had a delicious sausage, ravioli and veggie (tomatoes, carrots, and green peppers from our CSA) soup this past week.

We've also been eating oatmeal for breakfast a lot more frequently. It's the perfect way to warm up on these chilly mornings. I have not been on my game enough to get Baked Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal in the oven yet one morning, but I have been adding craisens, apples, and brown sugar to our regular oatmeal to liven things up!

I haven't bought any pumpkin yet, but when I do the first thing I'll be making is our favorite pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. These cake-y cookies are moist and delicious!

I am also getting ready to pull out our fall tot school and preschool activities. I love having seasonal things saved from last year, and I'm looking forward to some fun activities with my kids. We are also going to make these fantastic sugar cookies!

(Image via Home Cook'N Newsletter)

Readers Are Made

I love to read, and one of my favorite parts of being a parent is the opportunity I have to pass that love of reading on to my kids! My daughter naturally loved books and has always been willing to sit pretty much as long as we would keep reading to her.

My son was a totally different story. He started walking running at 10 months and could not be bothered to sit for a book. We had to teach him how to love books, and a great tool for that was the Baby Einstein Alphabooks. This is my go-to gift for one-year-olds!

As I’ve thought more about helping kids learn to love books, I have identified four attributes that are important to foster a love of reading in children.

A book-loving parent should be selective. Not all books are great and there are too many great books out there to waste time re-reading mediocre books.

Secondly, a book-loving parent should be critical. Take the time to figure out what makes a good book.

A book-loving parent should also be consistent. Young children thrive on routine, and a routine for reading is no exception.

And lastly, a book-loving parent should be fun. Reading is one of the most exciting and fun activities you can do with a child because it is so easily personalized. And the fun starts with the parent – be a lover of books yourself, and don’t wait to read until the kids are in bed. Let them see you reading your books.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be going into further depth about these four attributes, as well as introducing some of our favorite books.

(Both kids enjoying the Baby Einstein Alphabooks at about 12 months old)

Favorite Picks for Making Readers: Baby Einstein Alphabooks
  A box that holds 26 books, one for each letter. Each books has pictures and words that start with that letter. Both my children learned to recognize letters using these books.
Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?
  We like the board book version so much better than the full. Other Dr. Seuss are great too, but this is perfect for the smallest children.
Tickle One Baby
  Sweet rhymes and easy for children to identify with "baby". Also set up to use for identifying objects, playing I Spy, etc.
Peek-a-Zoo
  A Scholastic touch-and-feel book that grew with my kids. Lots of fun things to feel, plus colors, shapes, and animals.

All Amazon links are affiliate. I get a small percentage of the purchase price if you buy through them.

And suddenly, life sped up!

Well, I completely fell behind over these last few weeks. Not only did I miss the Stuart Little book club meeting, I had several other posts planned that never were finished, and I have even been MIA from posting on my family blog as well. We've been in the midst of our foster care classes, traveling, and much more, but this week I'm hoping things will final slow down a little.

I hope you enjoyed Stuart Little! My daughter loved it, and especially loved getting to do the activities that went along with the book. I can only find this one photo of her with her cat mask right now, but hopefully I will find the others soon and be able to post as well.


We've read several chapter books since finishing Stuart Little: Ninja's at Night, the next Magic Tree house book, and The Doll People, which was fantastic! Right now we are reading Harriet's Hare, by the man who also wrote Babe. It's been cute so far, and is a lot shorter than the Doll People, which is a nice break.

We will be finishing Harriet's Hare this week and moving on to the next book club selection - The Littles, by John Peterson. This is the first book in a series about a little family that lives in the walls of the big people's house. I remember reading these when I was little and loving them. They are short books, which will make for a quick read. Books about little people and animals seem to capture a child's imagination in a way that is special, so I hope you and your child will enjoy!

Sautéed Mushrooms...a favorite with our kids!

Yep, you read that right. Our kiddos ask for mushrooms at the store and get super excited when we serve these at dinner. Maybe lots of children like mushrooms? I always associated them with one of those under-appreciated and not kid-friendly foods.

The way I cook mushrooms is so simple and easy that I can hardly even call it a recipe. I guess it's really more like a method. These mushrooms first won over my husband in the early months of our marriage. I only made a serving for myself and he decided to "give them a try." That was the last time I sautéed mushrooms for one!

It took several times of trying mushrooms for our kids to really enjoy them, and even now my son is hit or miss. Some nights he has seconds and some nights he only eats one or two mushrooms. On the whole, this is one of our favorite meal sides, and I often serve it as a second or third veggie since it is so easy to make.

I start with about a tablespoon of butter and a non-stick skillet set to medium-low.

While the butter is melting I chop my mushrooms quickly (my family preferes chunks to slices), and dump them into the pan of heated butter. I usually use about 8-10 good sized mushrooms, but on this occasion I probably used about 14. I give them a little stir with some tongs and let them sit.

About 8-10 minutes later they look like this. I give them another stir, making sure that any raw ones end up on the bottom.

After this stir I usually add some seasoning. We like salt and pepper with parsley, but also enjoy this seasoned salt.

One of our favorite seasonings was this sample pack of Sazon Tropical by Badia. The free sample is all gone and I need to hunt this down next time I'm at the store. It was fantastic on mushrooms and our roast chicken.

After another 8-10 minutes I give the mushrooms another stir and toss with another round of seasoning. Depending on how they look, I may turn down the heat to keep them warm while I wait for the rest of the meal to be ready, or I may let them cook a little longer. Only a few of the mushrooms were golden, crispy brown at this point because it was a larger batch, so I let them be for another 5 minutes or so.

At which point I ended up with this delicious pan of mushrooms just begging to be eaten!

Does your family do mushrooms? If not, maybe this would be a way to try them!

Book Club Activity: Stuart Little, Ch. 11-15

This is the final set of activities for Stuart Little! I hope you have enjoyed this book and the little ideas I've included have been fun for your and your children.

In the last chapters of this book, Stuart's adventures kick into high gear as he searches for Margalo. We had a lot of fun talking about Stuart's little car and how funny it would look to see a mouse driving a tiny car. I found a Stuart Little car game that you can play online at Kiba Games. This may be challenging for your preschooler, but I'm sure it will be fun too! Its very cute.

Stuart sends Harriet a very thoughtful and kind letter. Take time this week to make something special to mail to someone. We are going to make another pop top can to send to someone!

Depending on what I can find at the store, we are going to try some Sarsaparilla too! We may end up just using Root Beer.

Join us next week for some discussion questions, as well as photos of all the activities that we've done throughout the book. I can't wait to hear what your kids thought about this story!

Favorite Finds and Re-Pack Bags Winner

Whew! It's been a whirlwind few days around here, and the rest of the week should be no less crazy. I'm planning to get the last Stuart Little activity posted tomorrow. Our virtual meeting is next week!
We had a delicious salad for dinner recently...we used up some leftover pork that I had made a cilantro-citrus and cheesy breading for, and then I added a homemade avocado dressing which brought the meal together nicely. I got the inspiration for the dressing from The Teenage Taste's Cilantro Lime Ranch recipe. It was excellent... definitely on the menu again soon!


I love my morning coffee (and afternoon and evening sometimes too!). Check out this awesome coffee bar that The vintage Wren created. I love how functional it is, but also a great piece of decor. I wish I had space for something like this...maybe someday :-)

My kids love playing with cardboard boxes and other empty food items. Next time we have some large boxes I'm going to try to do something like this washer/dryer combo by A Mom with a Lesson Plan. My kids love helping with the laundry (helping is their word, not usually mine!), so I'm sure this would make for hours of great pretend play.

I recently made this Bacon, Egg, and Cheese crescent by Bacon Time with the Hungry Hypo wrap for our Sunday breakfast for dinner. It was delicious and I opted to use my homemade crescent roll dough, so I had everything on hand. Yum!

Finally, the winner of the Re-Pack Bags giveaway is Kristy, comment #11. I hope you enjoy your new bags! I'm excited to be able to offer another great giveaway soon...stay tuned!