WE ♥ BOOKS.

hello there. today i wanted to talk a little bit about books... the kids come home on saturday (i can't even begin to tell you how excited i am to see them) and that means that school will be starting very soon. in our case, home school will be starting very soon. i am both excited and equally nervous... home schooling is a new journey for us. i have been working hard finding the best curriculum and lesson plans for each of them. one of the things that i am most excited about when it comes to home schooling is really concentrating on the subject matter that my kids enjoy. they love math, history, english, music, and art. of course we will be learning all of the subjects, but it will be nice to really focus on the ones that they love and make the ones that they don't love as much as fun as possible so that they find some affinity for them.

my kids LOVE to read. even gemma bird loves to "read." she often opens up her little books and flips through the pages "reading" out loud in her own baby talk words. it is very cute. we have always had reading time in our house. a quiet 45 minutes where we turn everything off, grab a good book and curl up in a chair or on the couch and read together. through home schooling i plan on having several fun book activities along with an age appropriate novel a week reading target followed by a mini book report or project, recapping and highlighting the books that they have read. i thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite reads with you from time to time and i thought i would start today...

 for younger kids (3-7 age groupe) we love Bedtime for Frances by russell hoban.

Bedtime for Frances is a great book for littles. frances is a cute little badger who is not tired at bedtime and can find every excuse under the sun to stay up. a glass of milk, extra kisses and her fear of tigers and giants. it's a fun little story that most kids can relate to. the book does mention "spanking" which we do not do in our household and while frances is not actually spanked, it was a good conversation topic. 

another fave is Madeline by ludwig bemelmans. we have several madeline books. plum loves them and i really enjoy reading them too.

"in an old house in paris, that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines." this book is incredible and is a great bravery encouraging book for children. we have the series. they are all great, but this one is our favorite. every little girl and boy should have a copy.

a great book for babies that birdie enjoys is My First Words from dk publishing. we have owned three copies of this book. i bought one for julian when he was a baby, one for milla plum when she was a baby and again for gemma bird. this was each one of my kiddos favorite books and serves as a great learning tool to help build your little ones vocabulary. it is filled to the brim with real life pictures of things from around the house, to animals (gemma's favorite page), to things in the grocery store and many other things like shapes and colors. a must have!

a great book for older kids 8 and up (one of julian's favorites) is The Mouse and The Motorcycle by beverly cleary.

the first in a series, The Mouse and The Motorcycle is about a tiny mouse named ralph s. mouse who lives in a hotel and befriends a little boy named keith.  keith teaches him how to ride a toy motorcycle and makes him a mouse sized helmet out of a ping pong ball and then the story begins... ralph goes and explores the world (the other floors of the hotel) and has to dodge danger like vacuum cleaners and dogs. such a cute story!

lastly i will share a new book series favorite of ours... Clarice Bean: The Utterly Complete Collection by lauren child. (the same author of the charlie and lola books that we love so much.) these are the only two that we have at the moment but there are more and we will be getting them soon.

these books are so fun. i have heard that there are pictures books that came out before the novels. i have yet to have seen them in stores but will be looking them up so we can add them to the collection. they are some of milla's favorites. a little mystery solving along with the normal happenings of family life is something any big kid can relate to. Clarice Bean is a delight and i encourage you to read these ones along with your kids. they are great for adults too. ;)

well, that's all for now. i hope you enjoyed this little book tour of sorts. i had a lot of fun sharing! if you guys enjoyed, please let me know, i would love to share more of our favorites from time to time. xo.