Books we have been reading
Author :
simrand
Blog :chipsnchutzpah
Date: 8/10/2012 1:08:28 AM
N and I have been visiting the Wellington library pretty often – once or sometimes twice a week.
He goes to school 3 days a week. On his off days – Monday and Friday we go off on our expeditions! We visit the library or the indoor play area Capital E (which also has books, sponsored by Gecko Press) or Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand, which is super kid friendly and has a lot of educational/fun/interesting stuff on display in addition to the museum-y kind of stuff. Sometimes we just hang around at home and step out for a walk or to play in one of the many near-by parks or just for a mommy and son lunch 
We bring almost 15 to 20 new books every week. N chooses some of them and I pick some. So we have a good mix and have been learning quite a lot of new stuff – a good mix of cultural, moral and fun element!
Here are some books that I really liked. Just for your reference (if you don’t know already) N is 3 yrs and 10 mos as of now.
Topsy-Turvy Bedtime by Joan Levine
This could be just the story at our place on some nights! The last-minute requests for a glass of water or choosing which books to read or “not feeling sleepy” etc. It was fun reading this with N and he tried out some of the tricks too and appreciated the routine and effort it took to keep that routine in place! A good read if you want to change your child’s perspective about bedtime routine (hopefully it shall help with that).
Benny’s Had Enough by Barbro Lindgren
This is such a cute lil story about Benny a piggy who is fed up of being at home where his mommy keeps cleaning up his potatoes and sticks and then she wants to wash his dirty little rag cloth piglet in the washing machine (How could she even think of that, huh!). He decided that he doesn’t want to clean up and leaves home to find a better one (didn’t we all want to do that as kids sometime). But once he steps out he realizes that home is the best place to be and cleaning up is not that bad Good read and N sort of empathized with Benny (yes I am a stickler on clean up after play!). But he enjoyed the read and told Benny “Cleaning up is fun Benny, you can sing a song while doing that.” The illustrations are very nicely done too!
Good For you, good for me by Lorenz Pauli
A book about a dormouse and a bear doing stuff that is good for both of them. Also passes on the message about sharing and taking turns
Green eggs and ham by Dr Seuss
I know this is an old Dr Seuss classic and N has read it long back, but he wanted to read again and so we brought it home. N loved reading it again – the whole rhyme and repetition was “awesome” in his words. And here is some trivia about the book.
Alex Did It! by Udo Weigelt
A book about 3 naughty hares and how they keep blaming an imaginary hare Alex for everything they do, till a real hare named Alex turns up. Was one of those books with a moral lesson hidden and it helped. We have just started having a li’l bit of fibbing at home, along with stuff like “Not me!”, “someone else did it”, “pretend friend did it” etc. Reading this book where the hares realized its ok to tell people if something bad happened and not okay to blame anyone else – real or pretend helped!
Waiting for later by Tina Matthews
We really really needed a book like this. N being at the age he is, doesn’t understand the concept of later! It is just now or never. As of now we have to give him clear pointers/reference points like when you are done having lunch and your bath then you can watch a cartoon. Simply saying “Not now, later” does not work, which is fine at this age but eventually he needs to understand. The book helps to learn the concept of waiting via a girl’s story who has to wait, for later, to play with her family and while she waits she understands that later is not that bad at all
We have also started bringing books that N can read on his own. So these are small and thin books with not too many words on each page and a lot of repetition of words. They have different levels to suit self-readers of all types – beginners, intermediate and advanced. He reads one of these series every night (or most nights) and then I or S read 2 other books for him.
We have slowly started the journey to read independently, lets hope N loves that and gets hooked on to it!! Amen.
Filed under: Raising N, Reading, Wellington, What's going on? Tagged: Alex Did It, bedtime routine, Benny's Had Enough, books, books for 3 to 5 year olds, Good for Me, Good for You, Green eggs and ham, indoor play, reading, Topsy Turvy Bedtime, Waiting for Later, wellington library 
