My rules are simple:
I count as one a book which lasts at least 5 mn (not a simple picture book), and chapters count as one.
We read books more than once but those extra readings don’t count.
When we’re finished reading at night, I simply put the books on the floor and write their titles on my litle booklet the next day or the day after.
I’ll be sharing our favorite books, and am always on the lookout for suggestions.
So far, Aangeles and Waterdreamer are on board, and NadiaD is considering it lol
It’ll be an added motivation to share this challenge with others
Yep I’m in, but we started a chart in June, so I’ll be going from June/11-Jun12. Its just easier to go from my little man’s birthday.
I count any book that we read together, I read to him or he reads to me.
Repeats are allowed because he is learning to read and repetition is good for that.
I’m in. I don’t think this will be a problem. When I tell my son we have to stop LR the next word out of his mouth is “book”.
I am posting a link put together by the classical homeschool loop. I have posted it before, but I do think it is a wonderful list of books separated by age. http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/celoop/1000-primary.html Many of the primary 1-3 books are fine for an advanced 2-3 year old.
One of our favorites is The Egg by M.P. Robertson. The illustrations are delightful.
Wow!! 1000 books! Home made books count don’t they? How about book apps like omBooks and Touchy Books?
I think I’m also going to try, but I’m not as organized and baba sometimes sits for close to an hour with reading stories, other days he’s not really interested.
Good luck to everyone trying, but don’t suck the fun out of it, I’d say having fun with one book over and over is better than pushing for 15 odd books a week.
By the way, you guys get books from the public library?
Great to see everyone joining in!
Kimba, I always enjoy reading your blog.
@Mamaofwill: I use mainly my own childhood books and books from the library (although their collection is very limited, and I’m quite picky with what we read)
I must mention that I no longer follow recommendations but read the content of the book before buying it and reading it to my kid. Someone mentionned “The five chinese brothers” as a great read and I ordered this one, among other recommended books. I had to stop reading it to my kid as the book spoke about a brother having his head cut off, being drowned, burned alive and cooked in an oven.
Or you can have books on the top of the charts list which won’t appeal to you. I’m not a fan of ‘The Wonkey Donkey’ for example.
To source English books, I download them on the appstore. (Don’t forget to count digital books)
If you want free books, you can use htpp//appshopper.com
It offers a daily list of free apps and sometimes you’ll get free books.
You can also browse through their “200 Best app list” and tick the ones you’re interested in but don’t want to pay full price for, and when there’s a price drop, you’ll get an email.
You can make your own rules of course! We constantly re-read books, but that’s a pattern which prevents us from trying out new ones. My aim is to read chapter books (which we don’t do enough), English books and unknown French books.
Little Reader is a great help for this, as we read stories from the Chinese curriculum, the English one and, best of all, Aesops fables. Seeing the books we just read animated on a screen was a lot of fun for my daughter.
Hi All !
What a challenge for 2012 ! I just wondered when I should start reading a real book to my 15 m/o girl.
Because she will bite into whatever books i give or show to her, even thick small booklets.
I would like to start her on LR 25 story books but worried that it will all be torn before she can read them.
Any advice ? BTW, she has been on LR, LM & LC for 4 months now, half an hour, twice a day.
Fantastic idea. I read the rules and am onboard too. I am aiming for 1000 by her 5th birthday - including books of other languages. So I am doing English, Hindi, Spanish and will ultimately include Chinese as well.
Latreia you need baby bug magazines! Goggle it or search this forum for the link and info. I just ordered 50 of them 2nd hand on eBay. We get the next levels up for older kids but baby bug is baby friendly paper.
1000 books won’t be much of a challenge for us. We would be close to that probably 800 a year as a standard. I will join the challenge but I think I may add some rules for myself. What I don’t do enough of is get books specifically catered to my sons interest, he has two vocal older sisters! He is an expert on fairys and mermaids!
Also my kids love non fiction, we often borrow them from the library but rearly read them together, so I will add more of that too. I will aim for 300 of Jaykobs choice and 200 non fiction reads as part of my 1000 books. I will even keep the list separate so I am accountable.
As a teacher I highly recommend re reading books especially for children working on learning to read and building vocabulary. Also be sure to add poetry and a few old fashioned story’s or fairytales ( check the content first!) in their original writing style for ear and vocabulary development.
I loved wonkey donkey! All those beautiful descriptive words we just don’t use anymore! The laughs, the poetry, the music…
No I don’t really use the Ipad at all. I’m kickin’ it old school lol
I read out loud to the girls while they are playing to get in my 3 books per day. I have a stack of books up in my ‘office’ storage centre and I borrow about 60 books from the library per month and read those to them as well. I am building up to ‘harder texts’ I read Thumberlina today and some poetry. Thanks for the Noddy suggestion I will go did those out tomorrow.
I am now in the middle of writing a blog about the importance of reading to children to make them great communicators/writers hope to have it out n the next few days.
Kimba, great blog post. I am sure you already know this, but for those who don’t, Andrew Pudewa has an excellent spelling and writing program. You can find it here: http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/ .
I have not heard this lecture, so I am not sure if Andrew mentions it, but there is one very obvious reason why readers make good writers. When a child hears and reads excellent sentences and paragraphs, those become part of his/her mental furniture. When the child goes to write a story, they have a storehouse of sentences and paragraphs to choose from. They will then rearrange those bits of information into something that is their own. Not at first, this grows with maturity. Without formal teaching, a child will naturally pick up rhetorical skills from the material they are exposed to. That is why it is very important allow your child access to the very best literature, for their age group, available.
Time for a little update on the challenge.
We’re still doing well, with many new english books. We’ve started first readers, a nice change from chapter books.
The only thing I’ve stopped doing is writing down the name of the books, but I know from looking at the book shelves which ones have been read and approx. how often. We aim to read 30 mn every nights and more during the week-end.
I feel off the bandwagon last month and I am now about 85 books behind but I am reading like a trojan to catch up as I am absolutely determied to meetthis challenge!
