My house is overflowing with books. I’ve craigslist-ed the baby blankets, the toddler blocks, and plenty of Melissa & Doug, but I can’t seem to part with the books. One of my great joys is hearing my boys, up in their rooms, flipping through stacks of well-loved stories and reading to themselves.
We all know how important reading is as a life skill. We read for information, we read for entertainment, we read to help us dream, connect, grow, feel and think. Did you know that there are many well-regarded studies connecting music and reading? Research has revealed a strong connection between participation in music instruction and increased reading comprehension scores. Music is a wonderful vehicle for teaching vocabulary, for story telling, and for dissecting and understanding the sounds that make up words, also known as phonemic awareness.
Our Kindermusik classrooms strive to be word-rich and print-rich environments where children will interact with text and language in a variety of forms. Our homes can be word-rich and print-rich, too: conversations, songs and rhymes, bulletin boards, refrigerator magnets, lists, signs…For me, though, nothing beats cuddling up with a good book. Here are just a few favorites from our house:
Board books
- What Shall We Do With the Boo-Hoo Baby? Cressida Cowell
- Little Gorilla, Ruth Bornstein
- Bunny and Me, Greenspun and Schwartz
Picture books for limited attention spans
- My Favorite Bear, Andrea Gabriel
- Whose Mouse Are You? Robert Kraus
- Too Many Bunnies, Matt Novak
Picture books with more text (that won’t make grown-ups lose their minds)
- the George and Martha books, James Marshall
- Officer Buckle and Gloria, Peggy Rathmann
- Just Like Abraham Lincoln, Bernard Waber
Chapter books for early readers or to read-aloud
- Nate the Great series, Marjorie Sharmat
- Cam Jansen series, David Adler
- Henry and Mudge series, Cynthia Rylant
Chapter books for independent readers or to read-aloud
- Homer Price, Robert McCloskey
- Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryrie Brink (this is my all-time favorite book)
- Any classic book that has been made into a movie. You know how we always say, “The book was better than the movie?” I so want my children’s first experiences with these stories to be in the print form, rather than film. The first chapter book that I read to my oldest son was Stuart Little by E.B. White. He was 4 years old and was spellbound. We’ve also loved reading C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia.
Daddy’s recently-read books
- Who’s Your Caddy? Rick Reilly. I think this is the second time my husband has read this entertaining take on golf by the Sports Illustrated and ESPN magazine writer.
- Bad Blood, John Sanford. Personally, I don’t care for what I refer to (with a tad bit of negative bias) as the serial-killer-sexual-deviant-crime-novel genre, but my husband devours these books.
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel H. Pink. One thing I admire about my husband is his interest in reading “work” books for pleasure.
- Remarkable Creatures, Tracy Chevalier. I enjoy this Girl with a Pearl Earring author’s style of taking real historical people, places, and events and turning them into a fictional story.
- Bossypants, Tina Fey. So, so funny. The kind of book that makes you wake up your spouse to read him the part that just made you laugh out loud.
- The Des Moines Register. One of my simple pleasures is skimming the headlines and reading interesting articles as I sit at the breakfast table.
Grandpa and Grandma (who are visiting) are currently reading
- (Grandpa) Half the Way Home: Memoir of Father and Son, Adam Hochschild.
- (Grandma) Déja Dead, Kathy Reichs. (The TV series “Bones” was based on this series, but my mom says she likes the books better.)
What are some of your favorites??
-Posted by Molly Hagkull (a.k.a. Miss Molly)
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