March Books

Very funny. Ferdinand and Captain Cook. My kids love this book. So do I. Witty, quick and memorable read. Like father, like son. My son has been looking at the globe we have to find the places Ferdinand traveled to and the places he saw Penguins. If you want to follow up-you can read a book about Maghellan, about captain Cook, about the age of exploration, about the Galapagos islands, about Darwin, about people and animals, how different and alike we are. And of course, how fantastic it would be to have a kiddy pool ice skating rink in the house! Or what about getting a shark or jelly fish from the aquarium or some other animal from the zoo?!

This is our read aloud this month. Ballet girl and I read it as part of a school-wide read last spring. She loved it and recommended we read it to Sunlight boy too. OK. It is a fine recommendation that I would most gladly honor.Update 3/22/2013: this book is not going well. I liked this book when we first read it but my kids are not showing interest. Oh well, we did give it a chance. I will bring it out another time.

Tonight was also board game night. I decided to skip school for something more fun.

Chutes and Ladders is Ballet Girl's favorite game. She and grandpa and grandma play it all the time. It is not on my best-liked games list yet every once in a while I will join. Tonight, while they were playing I was having my dinner, and without much thought into it, I suggested they play it backwards, going from the end to the beginning, keeping the function of the chutes and the ladders, but reversing their roles-while the ladders were good before, now they are not:)

Then there is Animals over Animals which is very funny.Sunlight boy pulled this one out and while we only briefly played it, he went on to entertain himself with his own, alternate rules and configurations.

Ballet girl played with the circuit snaps while Sunlight boy and I played with the robot turtles.

Sunlight boy does understand the rules and can follow them, but being the free thinker that he is, he thinks of his own rules and configurations again. So, this was a very tame and non-competitive, very imaginative and creative board game evening.




Update 3/6/2014: we are re-reading the Twits at Sunlight boy's request. It's a short and funny book. 
Update 3/10/2014: Ballet girl liked this book; she was able to make predictions (such as the Greggs building a nest, and carrying the sticks with their mouths). Sunlight boy couldn't care less about the book. He loves the Twits and the Enormous Crocodile.  

Update 3/11/2014: Sunlight boy requested Ali Baba tonight.

Update 3/20/2014: We read all the books we picked at the Book Fair. The last week, we have also read a few books about the Galapagos islands and the Penguins who inhabit some of these islands. This topic came about from reading One Cool Friend

I loved this book and I read it to my kids but they did not find it as amusing as I did. So what I have decided to do is show them the film and then read the book. Hope that works.

Since we were not getting anywhere with the Mouse on the Motorcycle (nobody was requesting it and whenever I pulled it from the bookshelf nobody was interested in hearing it), I decided to introduce some old favorite books. We read these two last March-April. The kids remember them along with itty-gritty the details! This is a win for any book!