Connecting with Picture Books

There have been a few sweet books (and one funny book) that has helped me to connect with my kids in the past few months. Books are fun. Books are informative. But one of the best things about reading books to kids is that it provides opportunities to connect with them.

After reading You’re All My Favorites (McBratney) to Clara, I think it really helped her understand the truth of a parent loving all their children the same, even though they are all different. She really loved this book and has commented on it numerous times.

Harriet You’ll Drive Me Wild (Fox) made us all smile. Harriet is just one of those kids who makes lots of messes and gets into trouble. Harriet’s mom is one of those moms who is having a hard time dealing with it. This is a sweet story of a mom and daughter who love each other despite their flaws.

How to Clean Your Room in 10 Easy Steps (Huget) is simply the funniest book ever. It totally describes our life! Although it is absolutely hysterical and very true to life, there are a few parts where the young girl is not very respectful. Just a caveat! But we really do love this book.

You are Special (Lucado) is a very touching book that really highlights the truth of self-acceptance. This book helped the kids understand that we are made in God’s image and we should not compare ourselves with other people. God loves us just as we are.

Nothing to Do (Wood) is a wonderful book about making sure to have unstructured time in our lives. The illustrations are great and I think the topic is something that is important because we adults have a tendency to fill up all the hours and not stop to smell the roses. But this is so important. Life goes by too fast. We need to stop and take time to “do nothing.”

Reading to Your Kids

This is something I posted on my other blog for young moms in my MOPS group. Since it's something I'm very passionate about, I thought I'd post it here too!

During last meeting’s Mentor Mom Moment, Debbie encouraged all of us to read to our kids. Let’s face it, when you have preschoolers your day is often hectic and this is something that you have to be really intentional about or it doesn’t happen.

In our house, we place a high priority on reading every day. I love books and want my kids to love them too. In order to maximize the literature my children are exposed to, I have become a very liberal library user! We usually bring home at least a dozen new library books every week. And we usually have about 80-100 materials checked out at one time. My kids love having so many interesting picture books in our house.

If your goal is to read more books to your children, it’s absolutely crucial to have books out and available.

Here is what I do to ensure that we have a wide variety of quality children’s books in our house:

1) Get an annotated list of books for children. I personally love Honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt. Debbie mentioned The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease and I’ve heard that’s good too. There are also lists of books you can find online. Here is one, here is another, and here is one more I found through doing a Google search.

2) Take a pencil and draw a line after the 10th book on the list. You can also section off only one or two books and then do a search on other books written by that author. It’s fun to get all the books by a particular author at one time so kids can learn more about him/her!

3) Go to the library’s website and search (by title or author) for the books you want. The library will do all the work of finding those books. (You’re a busy mom! Take the help!) Then, a few days later, you can go to the library and pick up the pile of books that is waiting for you on the shelf. It’s easy!

4) Plan for a regular day at the library where you can return books and pick up new ones. Pretty soon, you’ll be cycling through lots of new books and discovering new favorites.

5) Once you’ve read through all of the books in the first section of your list, pencil-off another section. After a year, you’ll have read hundreds of new books to your children!

Happy reading!