About a month ago I adjusted the daily schedule to include reading aloud to all three children every day. This is a bit of a challenge as they are all at different cognitive and sitting still levels so the books can be very varied. F and Su enjoy similar things but react to them very differently and I like to discuss and explain as we go along. W is still in the board books/ books in which Mama makes lots of interesting noises stage and the other two sometimes find that amusing but mostly think it’s kind of boring.
Anyway here’s what we’re reading right now:
W: board books of all kinds, the current favorite is Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? I’m starting to read some Little Golden Books to him and he really likes The Large and Growly Bear, grinning and growling along with me.
Su: We just finished Little House in the Big Woods and started Little House on the Prairie. I’m surprised by how much she enjoys these and remembers.? The other day I was working on a dress for her (she has grown again!) and she told me she would like pockets in her dress, but that she wouldn’t put rocks in the pockets and rip the dress. This was a reference to an incident in Little House in the Big Woods which we had read about a couple of weeks earlier.? She relates on a much more emotional level with the book characters than F does.
F: We are almost done with On the Banks of Plum Creek (the fourth book in the Little House series). We have also read most of David Macaulay’s Underground, because F wanted to know why there were different kinds of man-hole covers. He gathers information from books but doesn’t often get wrapped up in them emotionally. He wants to know what happens next in Plum Creek to know what happens not because of concern for the characters.
We read aloud either before naps, or before bed (sometimes both). Right now we don’t have a couch so the two big children sit in chairs on either side of me and W sits on my lap.
I like to read things that I can dramatize somewhat, suggestions are always welcome!