His Treasure Seekers

We’re settling into life with our little one and trying to find our new “normal” now that Nathaniel is part of family life. (Is he not one of the cutest newborns ever???  I’m so in love!) This week I started preparing the older boys for getting back to our school schedule.  We touched a little on history and math (we’d squeezed in our full week’s worth of science the day before Nathaniel surprised us with his early arrival), but mostly we spent hours every day reading aloud.

In the chaos of the first couple weeks after the baby was born, the kids had used up at least a month’s worth of screen time.  I was so tired of having the television on that this week I just announced that there would be no more watching shows until after everyone’s afternoon naps.

As the kids sat down for lunch on Monday, I grabbed an old childhood favorite, Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink.  (I figured if there was ever a time when my boys might be willing to sit through a story about two girls and a bunch of babies, this was it.  They loved it!)  We read through the entire book before bedtime that day because every time I went to put it down Ian would beg for more.

I decided to take turns choosing chapter books to read together, and over the course of the week we finished two more and started into another.  Ian’s first selection was The Deadly Curse of Toco-Rey (Cooper Kids Adventure Series #6) by Frank E. Peretti.  When we’d gotten through that one I picked The Witches by Roald Dahl, and we finished out the week reading the first couple chapters in Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe, which we already read a couple years ago but Ian wanted to read again.  (Can you tell he loves anything with a hint of spookiness? Not my favorite genre, but all of these met with my approval and made him feel like he was getting a special treat since I usually don’t allow the ones he picks at the public library.  These were all from our family’s collection.)

      

I love seeing Ian getting excited about books.  Right now I have lots of time to sit and read to him while I nurse the baby, but sometimes I have to turn down his requests, and I hope he’ll feel motivated to read more on his own when I’m not available.  And if all he got out of school this week was a deeper enjoyment of books, I’ll call it a successful week.