Is it just me, or has this been a short month? Whew! It seems like March’s Read Aloud Thursday was just a week or two ago. We’ve been reading, of course, but I haven’t had a whole lot of time or energy for blogging this spring. Life is happening! 🙂
Because it is National Poetry Month, my focus this month has been on sharing a poetry book each Friday. We have read and enjoyed poems from these books (and others!) during our poetry tea times this month:
- Rutherford B., Who Was He? by Marilyn Singer
- My America: A Poetry Atlas of the United States
- Little Poems for Tiny Ears by Lin Oliver
We also finished the fourth book in the Chronicles of Prydain, The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander. This one picked up almost immediately where The Black Cauldron left off and took Taran on a quest to rescue Princess Eilonwy. There’s obviously the beginning of a romance in this one (or at least one-sided feelings of affection on the part of Taran), and that tickled my almost-ten year old. I don’t really particularly like reading books with a romantic element to my girls just yet, but somehow this one seems okay. I think it’s the theme of honor and nobility that runs through the series that gives it a very mature and upright feel. After we finished it, I gave my girls the option of picking up with the next book in the Little Britches series, the Melendy Quartet, or the next Prydain book, and they both chose Prydain. It’s a winner!
I also read aloud My Father’s Dragon this month. I read it to my girls 4 1/2 years ago (!!!), and it is this month’s mother-daughter bookclub pick, so it was time to revisit it. Plus, I really thought it time I give the DLM some intentional read-aloud attention, and what better book to start off with than My Father’s Dragon? (I’ve shared some chapter book picks for the youngest listener here.) Truthfully, the DLM listens along with the girls to whatever I’m reading to them, but I have a pretty massive amount of mama-guilt over what I’m not doing with him that I did with the girls (lots of things!), so My Father’s Dragon helped assuage that just a tiny bit. 🙂
I’m not sure what’s next after we finish Taran the Wanderer. I’d really like to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland because the Huntsville Botanical Garden is featuring Alice’s Garden of Wonders this spring, and we hope to visit. I also still have the next Little Britches and Melendy books waiting in the wings. 🙂
What have you been reading with your children? Please link up your blog posts below or share in the comments!
Happy Read Aloud Thursday!
I’m putting Little Britches on the list for next year. I’m eager to try that series out after all the raving I’ve heard on it! We are reading Wolves of Willoughby Chase right now (is that your book for RtK bookclub?) I had a window and wanted to read it with the girls and decided to jump ahead to it now while we had a small window. : )
No, Wolves isn’t my book (101 Dalmatians is), but I KNEW there was a book coming up I wanted to share with my girls! That’s it!
I think about what I did with my older kids that I am not doing with Little Sister. I will say that I am glad my oldest is a girl bc my son, 5.5, enjoys ALL the books we read aloud, even when no male characters are present like in the Betsy-Tacy series. BUT MFD series was one that I was excited to read to HIM in particular. 🙂
I read My Father’s Dragon to my boys this year…they liked, but not quite enough to want to hear the subsequent books immediately.
Early in the month we finished “Elephant in the Garden” which was an excellent World War II book set in Germany with a family escaping west following the bombing of Dresden — the mother worked at the zoo and saves a young elephant, who comes with them on their journey.
Since we have read a ton of historical fiction this year my daughter requested something different. We decided to try The Princess and the Goblin since it is often listed among the classics. Madeline loved it but I felt so-so about it…I remembered that fairy tale is not my favorite genre. She is going to read the sequel on her own.
We just started, “In the Year of The Boar and Jackie Robinson” (now that we are finally ready to move on from WWII after 2+ months lingering there). I think we’re going to like that one too.
I clicked through to your chapter-book list for young children…eager to get started on some of them! Thanks for hosting Read-Aloud-Thursday. I love it!
Sounds like it was a good time for My Father’s Dragon. I’m always looking for ways to decrease my guilt levels when it comes to Things I Don’t Do With My Baby That I Did With My Eldest. 🙂
What did he think of it?
He liked it, I think. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to “enjoy” such a “babyish” story when you’ve been listening to the high adventure of Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper in Prydain for weeks on end. 😉
Read-alouds with my 7-year-old daughter this past month have included finishing up “The Borrowers” series, “Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass,” and we’re currently in “Pippi Longstocking.” I don’t know that I would have done “Through the Looking Glass” if it hadn’t been included in my copy of “Alice.” Still a lot of silly fun, but a tiny bit more complicated than Alice — especially for a family that doesn’t play chess so misses all those references! She is loving Pippi, and will sometimes read a chapter to me, but still wants me to then read the same chapter back to her later. I think we need to find a book actually set in the U.S. for our next choice, though: not only am I explaining words and concepts, but also a bunch of Britishisms. 🙂
The Little Britches series is so good! But I always read it aloud so I can edit out language issues.
We’ve been enjoying well-written biographies. Henry Hudson was wonderful, and now we’re reading Joyce McPherson’s book about Albrecht Durer. Both are wonderful and suitable for a wide age-range.