Whenever we have school holidays coming up, I always try and order at least one new book for Anya. It’s just something I started doing a while ago but now it’s become a holiday habit. The holidays have somehow become my prompt to get her some new books and with half term coming up next week, I went looking. I don’t always get a story book but it can be an activity book, a joke book, an art book or anything that looks interesting and will keep her occupied for a while.
One of the things I try and stock up on for the longer school holidays is books for Anya. I mix it up with some new books as well as pull out old books that she hasn’t looked at for a while. This is exactly what I did before the long Easter/Spring break. I always try and include a few different types of books to keep her interested so I’ll maybe include a puzzle book, a story book and a joke book or a fact book.
Recently, I was so excited to discover this gem of a book. While Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a book we’re all very familiar with, it was finding this (fairly) rare edition that got me so excited. One look at this book and I knew it had to be added to our shelves.
Yay, it’s World Book Day! What have your kids dressed up as? We love this day so much and get excited about it from weeks before – choosing a character, planning the outfit and eventually making it. This year Anya is going as Violet Beauregarde – our school will celebrate tomorrow so we are still putting the finishing touches on the outfit. We just got a tracksuit in a slightly larger size, dyed it violet and will stuff her up with cushions and padding to make her look like a blueberry!
To celebrate this day and our love of books I wanted to share 9 must have children’s books. Most of these books are ideal for ages 5 – 9 years but many can be enjoyed by younger and older and they are all keepers. We’ve got them all and I can’t rate them highly enough:
Hands up, who is maths phobic? It turns out that a lot of us parents are and that we can unintentionally pass on this math phobia to our kids.
We tend to place a lot of emphasis on language and reading. Every parent I know reads to their kids at bedtime and usually started when their kids were babies. But why not the same importance for maths? If I had to choose between the two, I would say that maths is a more important skill to understand and feel confident about. I’ve read a lot recently about this and it really resonated with me. Up till now Anya has loved and enjoyed maths but recently she started struggling with the concept of division and I started hearing phrases like ‘I can’t do it’ and ‘I just don’t understand’. That’s when I went hunting for a maths book for kids to help make maths more fun for her.
When I find a good picture book I end up buying a few copies to give as birthday gifts too. Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam is one of these picture books that is just delightful. Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam are a pair of robber dogs. In the dead of night they creep around town with big plans to rob banks, book shops and bike shops. But… they are hopeless robbers! After one too many failed grand plans, Shifty McGifty & Slippery Sam realise that crime doesn’t pay but cupcakes do! The book is written in rhyming text and is a sweet and funny little story with a simple moral take out. The illustrations are playful and fun and this book is equally great to read to kids or let 5+ readers read by themselves.
Are your kids in to myths and facts? My seven year old is obsessed with them so we have recently made up a dinner table game called ‘myth or fact?’. We each take a turn to come up with a statement and the others have to guess whether it’s a myth or a fact. The statement can be about anything, any subject, any topic – the challenge lies in coming up with facts that sound like myths and vice versa. It’s really fun seeing what Anya will say as she sometimes comes up with things that neither Richard or I are sure whether it’s a myth or a fact. And other times her statements are so random, they are hilarious! She gets some of her info from one of her current favourite books – The Amazing Human Body Detectives – that I wrote about last year.
That book was such a hit in our home and yours (so many readers emailed me to say they had bought it and their kids loved it too) that when I discovered the other book in this series I had to get it for Anya and of course share it with you. Called Bug Detective: Amazing facts, myths and quirks of nature – this Bug Detective book is packed with interesting facts and myths about bugs, insects and minibeasts. Did you know that worms don’t have lungs or that ladybirds have poisonous knees? Or if you weighed all the ants in the world, they would weigh more than humans (wow, that I did not know!). All the info is presented in a fun and engaging way with great illustrations. There is a lot of info on each page but it’s broken up in to bite sized chunks making it easy for kids to read and understand.
The Bug Detective book also comes with a magnifying glass so kids can search for the extra, often tiny, details on some of the pages – making it even more fun to read. I highly recommend it especially for inquisitive kids who will devour this book and spend hours buried in it! If you’re in the US, you can find the book here and in the UK find it here.
Lately Anya has been asking a lot of questions about the human body and how it works. Her questions were becoming more and more involved and I didn’t have the answers. But she was really curious to know more so I did what I always do – I went looking for a book. I didn’t want a really serious book with anatomical diagrams which would be boring and too complex for a 6 year old but most of the books I came across were like this. So I continued looking and then I found The Amazing Human Body Detectives.
The Amazing Human Body Detectives is a fab little book packed with interesting facts about the body. The facts are shared in a fun and engaging way and the drawings are also playful and colourful. Each double page spread focuses on one part of the body so you have spreads on the brain, teeth and bone, muscles and many more. There are facts as well as myths which are all shown in bite-size chunks so it’s easy for kids to read by themselves. The book comes with a mini magnifying glass and then suggests ways in which a child can use it. There is also an interactive side where the book suggests experimenting with things like tasting food while holding your nose or looking inside your mouth and seeing what’s in there.
Ever since we’ve had the book, Anya picks it up and reads out lots of interesting facts to me like a ‘sneeze releases 100,000 germs in to the air’ and ‘only 2% of the world population has green eyes’. Lots of these facts have fascinated me too as I didn’t know them and so I’ve really enjoyed this book too. Even if your child hasn’t shown much interest in the human body, I think The Amazing Human Body Detectives is a great little book to have on your shelf. It’s perfect for 5-7 year olds as they can read it themselves and then come and tell you all that they’ve found out!
I’ve often wondered whether reading is a nature or nurture thing. Are some kids born to be avid readers while others naturally shun books or can good reading habits be instilled in to kids? I don’t know the scientific answer to this but I personally believe that kids can be encouraged to enjoy and love books. And once you reach that magical place where you can’t live without books, there is no going back. I’ve become conscious of this recently as I can see that Anya enjoys reading but she won’t go and pick up a book herself and start reading too often. So as we’re on half-term holidays and we have more time, I’ve been thinking of ways to encourage her to read more. My aim isn’t to develop her reading skills as that will naturally happen, but my goal is very much to get her to fall in love with books. I’ve been trying a few things and I thought I would share some of my tips on encouraging kids to read more:
1. Lead by example – there is no better way. Kids don’t do what they are told, they are much more likely to do what they see you do. Since it’s the holidays, Anya’s bedtime is much later than normal (no routines here in the holidays!) so I sometimes go to bed with her and I lie next to her and read. I read every single night anyway but she doesn’t see me do it so the holidays seem like the perfect opportunity to show her. Now I’ve noticed that she asks if she can read too and often will get herself a book.
2. We’ve started visiting the local and school library where Anya can look at the books and she will always sit down and start reading. The best bit about the library is of course that she gets to choose which books she wants to take home and that encourages her to really check out the books on offer.
3. We spend a lot of time in bookshops – Even though bookshops are so much rarer these days (makes me so sad) you can usually find one. We have a Waterstones near us so often go for lunch and then spend the afternoon at Waterstones. It helps that our Waterstones has an area dedicated to kids with seating and lots of toys and books. I could easily while away a whole day in a book shop and I’m glad Anya is enjoying spending time there too.
4. Read to them – Every.single.night. No exceptions. Of course we all have nights where we don’t feel like reading or have other pressing stuff to do or are just too tired. But if you make it an absolute must do, you will do it every night. I love our night reading time where Anya gets to choose the books, although to keep my sanity intact (at least what’s left of it) I have a rule of not reading the same book twice in the same week! Besides, the years of reading to kids are so short so why not make the most of it.
5. Ask them to read to you – once your kids are at a reading age, they’re going to love reading to you. Kids love pretending to be the adult so it becomes a little game. Once in a while I ask Anya to read to me and she loves it. And not just to me – when she has younger friends and cousins over, if I suggest it, she will happily read to them. And when the older ones come, they love reading to her.
6. Buy as many books as you can and involve your kids in the choosing of the books . Even though kids books can be expensive, I would much rather spend the money on books than on those ridiculously priced kids magazines or cheap plastic toys. I’ve started setting up a wish list on amazon for Anya and we go through the list together and she chooses the books she wants. If you’re looking for recommendations, I usually share the best kids books I come across here, so you can browse my book section if you’d like to.
7. Last, buy different kinds of books as you never know what will appeal most. While fabulous fictional stories are a given, there are so many other types of books out there. From biographies (there are some fab ones for kids out there), atlases, kids poetry books, art books, even joke books – the list goes on. One of my absolute must have books is this kids atlas. It’s something Anya keeps referring back to and really enjoys exploring and discovering more places. And we have a Roald Dahl joke book which I think any kid would devour!
These are a few things I’m doing to encourage reading but I’d love to hear your tips too.
While there are lots of fabulous kids picture books out there, I have not had too much luck finding fun chapter books for kids, especially ones with lots of pictures. Anya is at that age (6 years) where picture books are still of interest to her but she could do with longer stories and more text to develop her reading. Recently I stumbled across The Beast in My Belly and it was just the kind of book I had been looking for. It’s a short chapter book for kids with most chapters no longer than a page or two but it also has lots of fun pictures on every page. At 6, kids still really engage with pictures and like to look at them alongside reading the text and this book has plenty of both. Besides which it is a great little story too.
Rumble, rumble, rumble! It’s that noisy tummy rumbling feeling we all get when we’re hungry. We’ve all experienced it but what happens when you’re a small child and don’t know why it’s happening? What could it possibly be? The Beast in my Belly is a funny chapter book about how far a child’s imagination can go when they’re trying to figure out something they’ve never experienced before. The little girl in the book imagines all sorts of things that could be happening inside her belly each time it rumbles. She is convinced there is something sinister inside her belly and tries to tell the adults in her life but of course none of them believe her. The illustrations are quirky and unusual and really bring the book to life. The colours they’ve used in the drawings are stunning too.
The Beast in My Belly is a great short chapter book for kids around 5-7 years old to read to themselves. But it’s also a fun book to read out loud to younger kids. It’s great for plenty of giggles with lots of cute drawings and it’s just a sweet little book which we have thoroughly enjoyed.
Ebabee Likes is a style guide for babies, kids, teens and their mamas. It’s all about inspiration, ideas and indulging yourself and your brood. It’s written by me ~ Nomita ~ a style loving girl from Mumbai who now live’s in London. Read More...
