reading for kids Archives - Page 3 of 3

10 Books about Monster Trucks

May 3, 2016 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

Do you have a child who LOVES big trucks? My boys are huge fans of monster trucks right now, which is why I decided to use big trucks to teach them about measuring last week.

But if you want to encourage them to read, why not check out some fun and educational kids’ books about monster trucks? There are plenty available, but these are super for finding out how trucks work and getting your little ones excited about reading! Trust me. We have a few of these in our home library. 🙂

10 Books about Monster Trucks

For more monster truck learning fun, check out our free Monster Truck Measurement math pack for kids!

And be sure to follow my Reading for Kids board on Pinterest to find more awesome children’s book roundups!

Harry the Dirty Dog Activity for Tots

April 12, 2016 by Selena Robinson 1 Comment

Piglet and I read the classic children’s story Harry the Dirty Dog together and she loved it! So, we decided to share a simple art activity together that would help her connect with the events in the story!

Check out our super easy Harry the Dirty Dog activity! It’s simple enough to try with toddlers, tots, and preschoolers and you can prep it in just a few minutes!

Harry the Dirty Dog Activity for Tots

This activity is extremely easy. Honestly. Plus, it’s guaranteed to get your tots into the story!

What You’ll Need:

The book Harry the Dirty Dog
Crayola Dry Erase Crayons
A copy of our Clean the Dirty Dog Printable
A laminator

Once you print the Clean the Dirty Dog printable, run it through the laminator. Then get out your dry erase crayons.

You’ll only need the black one. 🙂 I like the Crayola Dry Erase crayons, because they come with the cleaning mitt, which you’ll also need.

In the story, Harry hates taking baths, so he hides his scrubbing brush and runs away from home. While he’s away, he gets super dirty – running through a construction site, sliding down a coal chute, and so on.

So our first step was to get our white dog dirtied up!

I just turned Piglet loose with the crayon.

Boy, he really got dirty, didn’t he?

Making our white dog dirty was probably Piglet’s favorite part of the entire activity. 🙂

When Harry returns home, he’s so dirty that his family doesn’t recognize him. Frightened, he digs up the scrubbing brush, runs into the house, and jumps into the bathtub.

Once he’s all clean and scrubbed, the kids know that the black dog with white spots is actually Harry, their white dog with black spots.

Naturally, we had to clean Harry up too! And that’s where the dry erase mitt came in handy.

Aw…look how clean he is!

To do this art activity with your littles, get a copy of our free Clean the Dirty Dog printable below!

Clean the Dirty Dog Printable

Want more book-related learning fun? Check out these posts!

This post is part of the Read It, Make It Book + Craft Week linkup from Emma Owl! Get 50 ideas for arts and crafts based on children’s books!

Follow my Reading for Kids board on Pinterest to get more literacy ideas for your little ones!

50 Beautiful Spring Books for Kids to Read

April 7, 2016 by Selena Robinson 1 Comment

I absolutely adore spring…mostly because I detest winter. (Cold weather turns me into an actual bum.)

But once the days start to get longer and the weather starts to get warmer, I come alive! And it’s a wonderful time to explore changing seasons with our kids!

This year, I want to put a greater focus on spring reading, so I put together a list of 50 spring books for kids! These are spring books for kids are great for talking about the season, examining how things around us change, and generating ideas for spring break!

Want to share more spring learning with the kids? Don’t miss our All About Flowers printable unit study!

50 Spring Books for Kids:

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1. Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert

2. Flip, Flap, Fly! A Book for Babies Everywhere by Phyllis Root

3. A Rainbow of My Own by Don Freeman

4. Cherry Blossoms Say Spring (National Geographic Kids) by Jill Esbaum

5. Storm is Coming! by Heather Tekavec

6. The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle

7. Curious George Plants a Seed by H.A. Rey

8. Kitten’s Spring by Eugenie Fernandez

9. Poppleton in Spring by Cynthia Rylant

10. Spring is Here, Corduroy! by Don Freeman

11. It’s Spring by Linda Glazer and Susan Swan

12. Kite Day! (A Bear and Mole Story) by Will Hillenbrand

13. And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano

14. In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb by Marion Dane Bauer

15. Everything Spring! (Picture the Seasons) by Jill Esbaum

16. Plants in Spring (All About Spring) by Martha E. H. Rustad

17. National Geographic Readers: Seed to Plant by Kristin Baird Rattini

18. The Tiny Seed (The World of Eric Carle) by Eric Carle

19. Mouse’s First Spring by Lauren Thompson

20. Let It Rain! by Maryann Cocca Leffler

21. It’s Spring by Samantha Berger

22. Weather in Spring (All About Spring) by Martha E. H. Rustad

23. When Spring Comes by Kevin Henke

24. Springtime Baby! (Baby Seasons) by Elise Broach

25. The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

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The Best Picture Books for Three Year Olds

February 1, 2016 by Selena Robinson 3 Comments

Piglet turned three last winter. And, while she’s always been part of our family storytime, she’s really started to take an interest in storybooks lately. She constantly asks “Can you read this to me?” It melts my heart every time.

Naturally, she loves picture books. So I started looking for the best picture books for three year olds that I could share with her. So far, these are her absolute favorites! And, since many of these were classics when I was a kid, they were my favorites back in the day too.

By the way, these are all books that I’ve actually read. Trust me, they’re pretty great.

Image c/o: vadimphoto1@gmail.com via depositphotos

The Best Picture Books for Three-Year-Olds:

Did I miss any of your favorite picture books for three-year-olds? Share your family’s favorites in the comments!

For more tips to make your kids into readers, check out my Reading for Kids board on Pinterest!

And catch some of our other book lists for kids below!

10 Kids’ Books about Monster Trucks

10 Children’s Books about Butterflies

10 Awesome Picture Books about Bugs

This post is part of The Massive Guide to Homeschool Reading Lists by iHomeschool Network! Click over to read tons of awesome booklists shared by my fellow homeschooling bloggers!

Our First Grade Reading List Homeschool Picks

August 28, 2015 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

Well, we’re down to our final reading list for the new school year and it’s time to show off our books for first grade! Roo is reading much more fluently than he was last year, but he’s still not really a leisure reader. He’ll read when I tell him to, but he’d rather play than anything else. Of course, he is six. 🙂

But I really want to encourage him to develop the habit of reading for fun, so I’ve selected stories he can read on his own and stories we’ll read together. Here are our first grade reading list homeschool picks for this year!

Our First Grade Reading List Homeschool Picks

Roo, like many young boys, loves construction, so I included a book with that theme. I also included a couple of books that are funny, since those hold his attention the best.

Several of the books below will be part of unit studies we’ll be completing as a family, so they’ll fit in nicely with some of our themes.

1. Pete the Cat: Construction Destruction

2. Ocean Babies

3. Harry the Dirty Dog

4. Ramona the Brave

5. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

6. The Pigeon Wants a Puppy

7. The Complete Tales of Peter Rabbit

8. Aesop’s Fables for Children

9. The House at Pooh Corner

10. The Story of Ruby Bridges

11. Where the Wild Things Are

12. Curious George: Snowy Day

And those are our first grade reading list homeschool picks! Do you have any “must-read” books for first grade? Share your suggestions in the comments!

To see our other book suggestions for this year, check out our Fifth Grade Reading List and our Second Grade Reading List!

For more tips to make your kids into readers, check out my Reading for Kids board on Pinterest!

This post is part of The Massive Guide to Homeschool Reading Lists by iHomeschool Network! Click over to read tons of awesome booklists shared by my fellow homeschooling bloggers!

Our Second Grade Reading List Homeschool Picks

August 19, 2015 by Selena Robinson 2 Comments

Last week we shared our choices for Tigger’s fifth grade homeschool reading list. Today, I’m sharing our second reading list homeschool picks for Pooh!

Pooh is at a point in his reading journey when he’s definitely ready to take on some chapter books on his own. However, I still prefer to read most of our books together, so that he will slow down and really absorb the story. Sometimes he tends to rush through a book and only pick out the parts that are instantly amusing to him.

So we’ll be covering these books in-depth this year. Take a look at our choices for second grade below!

Choosing a Reading List for Second Grade

First grade was really a stepping stone that helped Pooh become a more fluent reader. And because we took a short break to try public school, he got a chance to read for his class pretty often. I really think that’s helped him step outside the box and take on more challenging books.

So I wanted him to read some books with me this year and some on his own as well. He likes mysteries and funny stories and this list features plenty of both!

Our Second Grade Reading List Homeschool Picks

1. Ramona and Her Mother

2. Oliver Twist

3. Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing (Yes, I realize the title character is in fourth grade. But I think Pooh will relate very well to Fudge…lol.)

4. Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Soccer Scheme

5. The Mouse and the Motorcycle

6. The Boxcar Children

7. What’s Cooking, Jenny Archer?

8. The Wind in the Willows

9. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

10. Flat Stanley’s Worldwide Adventures: The Intrepid Canadian Expedition

11. Freckle Juice

12. Geronimo Stilton: The Race Across America

And those are our second grade reading list homeschool selections! Unit studies for these books will be coming soon!

Catch our other reading list selections for this school year below!

For more tips to make your kids into readers, check out my Reading for Kids board on Pinterest!

This post is part of The Massive Guide to Homeschool Reading Lists by iHomeschool Network! Click over to read tons of awesome booklists shared by my fellow homeschooling bloggers!

Do you have any books you think second-graders should read? Share them in the comments!

Our Fifth Grade Reading List Homeschool Picks

August 14, 2015 by Selena Robinson 4 Comments

If you follow the Charlotte Mason method strictly, then you already know about what she called “twaddle”. Mason felt that kids should avoid books that had no educational or intellectual value. Instead, kids were to read “living books” – works that enlightened them and taught them new concepts.

Even though I love the CM method, I believe that there’s a place for “twaddle”. I’ve always been of the opinion that I want my kids to develop a love for reading. We can help them choose challenging selections later.

Eventually, however, it is definitely time to ease away from twaddle and into books that are designed to make kids think or dream. And that’s where we are with Tigger. So – here’s a look at our fifth grade reading list homeschool picks!

Choosing Our Reading List Picks

This year with Tigger, I wanted to encourage her to focus on some of the classics. She likes modern books like the Ramona series and “Smile” by Reina Telgemeier. And those are great books, but for her school reading list, she needs to be challenged.

During our public school experiment last year, Tigger got tested with the LEXILE reading system. Her score was within the 10th-grade range. However, she’s not quite ready for the advanced topics covered by high school books, so classics it is! I also added a few books featuring characters of color so she can have some figures to whom she relates.

I’ve only included 12 books on our “official” list, because I want her to finish one per month. We’ll be doing unit studies for each one (stay tuned!), so that will give us time to drop anchor and really explore each work.

Our Fifth Grade Reading List Homeschool Picks

1. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

2. Charlotte’s Web

3. Anne of Green Gables

4. The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond

9. Kidnapped

10. The Secret Garden

11. The Mighty Miss Malone

12. Where the Red Fern Grows

And those are our fifth grade reading list homeschool picks! To get a look at our other reading lists for this school year, visit the posts below!

Get even more of our homeschooling tips by following the board Homeschooling with Look! We’re Learning! on Pinterest!

What’s on your homeschool reading list this year? Share your picks in the comments!

This post is part of The Massive Guide to Homeschool Reading Lists by iHomeschool Network! Click over to read tons of awesome booklists shared by my fellow homeschooling bloggers!