Summer Reading

Carter starts preschool tomorrow so I guess it's time to call our summer book list a wrap. We read some really good books this summer and enjoyed completing the summer reading program. Carter completed it for the 4th time and Elise completed it for the 2nd time! I love that the library encourages children of all ages to participate in the summer reading program. Carter was so proud to tell everyone he got another medal when he received his medal this year. Check out our summer reading list from last year here, 2014 here, and our list from 2013 here. I looked back at the pictures from each year's post and I almost cried seeing chubby baby Carter with his roly poly thighs reading board books while sitting on the floor. I sure do love babies!

 

 

 

Our Top Reading Choices From This Summer:

• Where Is the Cake? by T. T. Khing, This was a wordless picture book and Carter adored it. He read it for the first time with Ty and just giggled over all the words Ty added to the story. Wordless books are so wonderful for children. They help them read the pictures when they are not yet reading words. It is also great for them to start inferring and working through plots. I definitely get the purpose of wordless picture books and think they are absolutely necessary and incredibly wonderful, but they just aren't my thing as a reader. I would much rather read a book with words and rhyme. So Carter's love for wordless books challenges me as a reader, especially reading aloud and I love that. Ty on the other hand loves wordless books and is a natural for telling the story and getting Carter excited about the book. What we enjoyed the most about this book was that each time we read it, we noticed new things in the pictures and new parts to the storyline as well as new characters. We read it every night before bed until it was turned in at the library.
• Goldilocks and Just One Bear by Leigh Hodgkinson, This book was so cute. I'd love to read it to the kids again during a fairy tale learning theme. We could read all the different versions of Goldilocks. It also made me think back to the first few weeks of school. We usually read a version of Goldilocks when we were talking about picking the perfect book nook spot for read to self. Then I would read another version when we started talking about text-to-text connections and the kids would make the connections between the different books. I think it would be a great activity with Carter to talk about how the books were the same, how they were different, and then introduce the term text-to-text connections. Weeks after we returned this book to the library, Carter was talking about it again.
• Poem in Your Pocket by Margaret McNamara and G. Brian Karas, This book is on here for me. I loved it and kept thinking of all the lessons and ways to link into a poetry writing unit. I want to remember it for class and also for learning themes with Carter. It said April is national poetry month so I would love to do a learning theme on poetry with Carter during that month or even just bring in poetry to our learning themes more during that month.
• The Treasure by Uri Shulevitz, Carter loved this book and wanted me to read it to him "over and over until bedtime." I think he mostly liked it because the main character's name is Isaac and his best friend right now is named Isaac. It was a neat story with a good reminder that sometimes we think what we want or need is far away, but often times it's right where we are!
• The Stray Dog by Marc Simont, This was another one that Carter requested to read over and over. It was so cute! I think he liked that the family found a dog and got to keep it. I also liked the illustrations and that there were words, but not very many. There was so much of the story to be read in the illustrations.
• Mother Bruce by Ryan T. Higgins, My mom found this book at a book store and purchased it for Carter. There was so much about it that was just darn adorable! We read it over and over and over and even took it in the car multiple times so Carter could read it again as I drove. His favorite part was that the goslings saw Bruce and thought he was their mom and then a turtle hatched and saw one of the geese and thought the goose was it's mommy. He remembered so many little aspects of this book and continues to talk about it and want to read it.
• Oh So Brave Dragon by David Kirk, Carter loved this book. I think part of it was that the dragon and his friends worked together to overcome their fear and part of it was that the dragon didn't realize he was scared of his own roar. Carter is easy to scare so he tends to like books where the main character is scared of something. I think he likes it because he can relate to it and because it makes him feel better about himself. This was a cute book and I enjoyed the picture of all the animals roaring together.