MommaReads

I am pretty sure that our boys have read just about every one of these this summer. Some of them we checked out from the library and some of them we bought for the two longer road trips we made this summer. These books are so well written and just fantastic in every way, especially if you have a little historian in your house. The series covers everyone from King Tut to Steve Jobs to Anne Frank to Daniel Boone to Walt Disney to The Beatles and many, many more.

They all have both text and pictures. They also have a timeline in the back of each book that shows events from the person’s life and then a corresponding time line that shows world events that happened during that person’s life. Again, your little historian will love these books. I would say if you have a second grader who is a really good reader that they could probably handle these. What’s so great about them though is that I think a child even in middle school would find these interesting as well.

Both of my kids LOVED the Magic Tree House series which we call “the Jack and Annie books” in our house. If you have not discovered this awesome series it involves Jack and Annie who are brother and sister and they have a magic tree house near their house that takes them on adventures to different time periods. What I love about these books is that Jack and Annie’s adventures always begin with a book they have in their tree house and that with each adventure the reader learns a little piece of history. Our kids love the stories and the suspense and are learning all at the same time. LOVE it!

The Magic Tree House series has two books that focus on the Olympics. One is Hour of the Olympics which is about Jack and Annie’s adventures in Ancient Greece during the first Olympics. The second is Ancient Greece and the Olympics which is a non-fiction companion book to Hour of the Olympics.

These books are so fantastically well written and so much fun. I will warn you though, once your kiddo gets started on the Jack and Annie series it’s going to be a while before they read much of anything else. 🙂 There are a lot of these books and they are all fantastic and kids just eat them up.

If you have a little history buff in your house, then they will love this book. It is a fictional account of George’s 7th birthday. His whole family forgets…he has to do his school work and help his dad in the cherry orchard. Oh, but did they forget or is there a surprise waiting for George? Children will like this story because not only is it an engaging fictional story about our nation’s first president, but it also had facts about his life intertwined with the story.

This is a great counting book and it’s also fun because as the hunter (who never seems to be able to see the animals that are hiding from him) is looking for the animals, your little reader will have fun trying to guess which animals are hiding in the background. The best part is the end when the hunter finally sees the animals and they are all following him. Again, great for counting…”1 hunter”, “2 elephants”, “3 giraffes”, etc. but fun and interactive as well.

When our youngest was in first grade last year they did an in depth study of the first Thanksgiving feast. He was basically obsessed with the Wampanoag, the pilgrims…the whole deal. So when I saw this book at the library I knew he would love it. It is great because it has a simple rhyming story that goes along with the fantastic illustrations, but it also has in-depth information for those that want to read more.

Love, love, love this book! It’s colorful, it involves counting and numbers, it rhymes…there is so much in this book for so many ages. I love that this book isn’t “just” a counting book and it isn’t “just” a book that rhymes. It’s also a science book that very young children all the way through early elementary school children could use to learn more about caterpillars, what the caterpillars eat, what animals eat caterpillars and different types of butterflies.

This book explores the relationships that animals have with their siblings. It’a such a great book because kids of all ages will like it, but for different reasons. Younger children will love flipping through the pages and just looking at the picture of the animals. Children who are a little bit older will enjoy listening to how animal siblings interact with each other and children just a little bit older will be old enough to listen to the whole text (it’s a little on the wordy side) or even be able read it on their own. Don’t let all of the words discourage you from checking out this book. Just pick and choose which parts you want to read to your child. They will be so fascinated with the pictures they won’t even notice you didn’t read the whole thing.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this magazine! We have outgrown it at our house, but I would HIGHLY recommend it if you have a child between the ages of 2 and 5, I would suggest you get a subscription ASAP. It has poems, hidden picture puzzles, short stories (both fiction and non-fiction), finger plays, riddles, simple crafts and recipes, and my boys’ favorite feature, Silly Pictures. (A picture with things happening in it that shouldn’t be happening…like a dinner scene with a dog and a cat sitting at the table, a woman wearing earmuffs at the table, etc.)

This is a cute rhyming book about the seasons a garden goes through starting with planting in the spring, things growing and getting picked in the summer, harvesting pumpkins in the fall and the blanket of snow covering the garden in the winter.

This is SUCH a great book…so much vocabulary and pictures to discuss. It is a non-fiction text with a short sentence or two on each page with great pictures that accompany the pics. Some of the great words that you might want to discuss with your child include: annual, perennial, bulb and tuber. We have had a family garden almost every year for the past five or six years, so this would be a great book for us to read to help us to learn even more. Don’t have a garden? This book might make you want to have one. 🙂