Day 80: story time

Only twenty more days till I hit 100. I feel like I should have a party on that day or something.

Anywhoo...

I realized today that I don't read to Avery that often.  She is around when Sam and I are reading but she doesn't really sit still and wants nothing to do with sitting in my lap for books.  When I try to make her sit still for some reading she tries as hard as she can to tear the book apart, which makes Sam mad and usually results in the end to reading time all together.

So today while she was having her mid-day bottle (which means she is more willing to sit still and her hands are already occupied) I grabbed the books that are a part of the September Monthly Challenge giveaway and started reading. Sam of course got jealous and had to join us!

We started with the "Usborne Complete First Book Of Nature".  This book for me is all about the pictures.  There is text, actually kind of a lot, but it is in text bubbles, labels of plants and animals and facts sort of randomly placed around the page.  At some point I know that my girls and I will read these types of books just like any other books and there will be tons of great information in there for them.  But right now I love this book because there is a ton of great detail, realistic images and biologically correct pictures of plants and animals.  I point out different plants or animals or birds.  Talk about what they are doing, what color they are or tell stories about times we/I have seen them in real life. 

This book as sections on birds, trees, flowers, butterflies, moths, wild animals, fishes and creepy crawlies (their titles, not mine!).  Each section has lots of information, great pictures, a flip book style game and a picture puzzle. 

After we had flipped through this book a bit we moved on to my absolute FAVORITE book.  I love this book so much it was actually a HUGE part of my graduate Master's Thesis.  I designed a whole preschool-family program for the nature center that I was working out around this book.  Yes, it is that good. At least I think so.  "Lost in the Woods" by Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick.  This is a "photographic fantasy" which basically mean that they took REAL nature photographs and created a story around them.  The pictures will blow you away. But the story is also adorable.  There are tons of animals that come to visit a fawn that they all believe is lost in the woods and the story is all about this fawn and the doe just doing what deer naturally do.  Within the story it deals with predation, camouflage, fledging, baby animals growing up and the natural history of white tail deer.  But the concepts are not introduced in a scientific kind of way but in a subtle, cute and captivating way.  Okay, I have raved enough. 

Avery didn't last through this second book.  The bottle was gone and so was she.  But I was glad that we even had a few minutes of reading time today and I will be sure that we do this more often from now on.

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The Nitty Gritty!

Gave WAY more detail about the books then I probably needed to up there so I got nothing to put down here! HA!  But don't forget to enter the September Monthly Challenge so you can have a chance to win these two books and two others that you will hear about soon!

Comments

[gina]

Did I tell you that L finally stopped crying at the end of that book and ended up loving it? :)

[Angela]

It is too funny trying to read to babies. I too had to sneak and find a time when my babe can sit still for a story. Usually she tries to take books from me. It's awesome that you got in some good reading time! :)

[cry]

I still love to read to my 11 year old daughter. I have read to her while pregnant with her.I am not one to be able to listen to someone else read to me but she is and I think it is because I always read to her. Before you know it she will bring you books and want you to read to her all the time. I hope you post on the day that, that happens.

[Foxglove Spires]

Thank you Abbie for visiting my blog today, I am sorry you missed the give away but I am planing to host another one when I reach 50 followers, if you are interested my sisters blog shop-FMSeymour (where I brought the candels from) will be hosting some special things in the future as well.

I love your post about reading, my daughter absolutely loves me reading to her, she will sit there for ever so long while I read to her....

Have a beautiful day. xx

[Janet]

Ooh, I'm not familiar with Lost in the Woods, but I will definitely be checking it out now!

[Minivan Mommy]

I realized recently that I wasn't reading very much to my kids, so we've started reading every night after dinner. We ended up having to join the library because I got sick of reading the same ones over and over!