What we're reading this week

We're not swapping out our books weekly at the moment. Instead we're having a month-long theme of animals and the sounds they make. I never realised just how many animal books we had until I chose this theme. There were too many choices so I pared it down to books that included the most common animals that Little Bean would come across daily in the world around us - farm animals, Australian animals and zoo animals.

These are the books from Little Bean's reading corner basket.

These great little chunky books came in boxes that can be used as a pull-along toy. 

I bought the First words and Animal fun sets. 

We're only reading the Baby Animals book out of the First Words set.

I got this The Very Hungry Caterpillar: Little Learning Library  by Eric Carle from The Book Depository. It has little board books on colours, words, numbers and animal sounds. We're just using the animal sounds books this month.

The Tall book introduces the concepts of tall and small using jungle animals.

 

I got these cute fabric sensory books in an online Christmas sale for a few dollars each. Bargain. They're usually quite expensive.

 Little Bean's Nanna got him these books for Christmas. Lucky boy.

These are some books that Little Bean and I will be reading together throughout the month.

 I love these two books. Danny's Duck has such beautiful illustrations. Where's My Teddy? is a great way to reinforce the concepts of big and small. I use this book in my ESL (English as a Second Language) kids classes. Eric Carle books are also a common feature in my classes too.

These are four of the mini books that we got in a Penguin books - Sunday Times newspaper promotion in Australia. Each Sunday, you could redeem a coupon to get the books. I think the first book was free and then the remaining books were only $2 each. All the books were much loved children's favourites.

The Cocky's Circle Little Books range used to be found by the checkout in Australian supermarkets. I haven't seen them for a while so I'm not sure if they're still available. I picked up a heap of them from a charity shop. 

I love the Ladybird Phonics series. I used these with my older son little. OMG. That was nearly ten years ago. Oh, how time flies.

 One Woolly Wombat is a fun way to introduce Australian animals. I bought this in a pack of Australian kids books at Australia Post. They have lots of great cheap books.

 I am a HUGE Mem Fox fan. I own heaps of her books. Hattie and the Fox is great book featuring all our farmyard friends.

A colourfully illustrated book will all the jungle animals. It has big flaps that lift up or out to show larger scenes.

What we're reading this week

This week I took Little Bean, my niece and my nephew to our local library. They have so many great holiday activities on at the moment. And they're free. Even better. Some of the activities include a chicken hatchery, Lego club, book making workshops, story telling, baby rhyme time, Summer fun at the museum and musical comedy shows. There will also be appearances by popular authors and book characters.  We're going to see an exhibition and talk on birds of prey, which features live animals.

Here's what we're reading this week. At first, I didn't intend on a theme but ended up coming across a couple of cute toilet training books for kids at the supermarket that I couldn't resist buying. One of them even has a button that makes the sound of a toilet flushing. So I thought the Nappy Duck & Potty Pig  book and Toot book would also make a good addition to the start of our toilet training journey.

These are some sensory books with textured panels to touch and feel. Some also have flaps to lift. Little Bean loves these kinds of books at the moment.

I couldn't resist this pack with The Very Hungry Caterpillar book and puppet. Little Bean has spent a large chunk of the week running around wearing it. This is one of my all-time favourite books.

I am a huge Mem Fox fan and this book is fabulous. I love the silly rhymes and pictures. It's such a fun book to read aloud.

This is book all about farts. It's really funny and a sure fire hit with small boys.

These are a couple of books that Little Bean picked. He likes the freaky realistic eyes in Nat the Cat. They kind of creep me out.

1000 Books Before Kindergarten challenge

I recently bought Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Lives Forever by Mem Fox. It is a very interesting and informative book about the benefits and joys of reading aloud to children. She says that "Children need to hear a thousand stories before they can begin to learn to read. Or the same story a thousand times!" So when I came across the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten challenge, I decided that we were in. It also seemed like a fun way to track just how much we were reading.

 Mem Fox's website has sections for parents, teachers, children and writers. Visit her site here. It is full of great tips, thoughts and information.

You can find out more about the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten here.

I was always surrounded by books as a child and enjoyed being read to. My greatest love has always been getting lost in a book. I loved reading to my older son when he was small. I would do silly voices for different characters and we'd get right into it. Once he grew out of it, he continued to read, but never to the passionate degree that I do. Little Bean already likes to cuddle up and read a book together, and I really hope that he becomes a hardcore bookworm like me (hopefully a Whovian & sci-fi geek too).

I've decided to track our progress by putting a list of the books we read on this blog. You can see our booklist here.

Here are some other great sources for information on children's books, including reading lists and my favourite online store to buy books:

The Book Depository - My favourite online bookstore. It has a HUGE range of books, great prices and free delivery worldwide. 

Children's Book Guide - Top 100 Children's Books of All Time

Growing Book By Book - a great site with book reviews, reading lists, reading themes, book-based activity ideas and lots more.

GoodReads - a great source for all things book related. There are reviews, booklists, information on authors, quizzes, quotes and trivia. You can see what other people are reading and share your own reading list. There's even an app where you can get book recommendations based on your reading history. GoodReads also has their own annual book awards. Here are their latest award winning children's books:

GoodReads Best Picture Books of 2014

GoodReads Best Middle Grade & Children's Books of 2014

What we're doing this week

This is what we did during our first week back in Australia for the Christmas - New Year holidays. Little Bean is loving it here. Our house in Vietnam is rather small and doesn't have a yard or garden to play in. We only have a tiny courtyard at the front where we park our motorbikes. Little Bean has played more outside in the past week than he has in the previous 3 months. It has made me long for an Aussie style house and garden. When we remodel our Vietnamese house next year, we'll be including a large rooftop entertainment area which will serve as a garden and play area for Little Bean. He really loves exploring my sister's garden and has quickly gone from walking to running since we've been here.

I unintentionally ended up with a bugs & insects theme to most of our activities this week. It just happened that LB found some bug books and discovered my nephew's bug specimen collection.

I bought Little Bean a play set because it included a little wagon, some sandpit toys and a watering can (which I have wanted to get LB for ages). It just happened to also include a "Creeper Keeper" bug viewing container. We haven't tried it out yet, but we'll go looking for some creepy crawlies to go in it this afternoon. I'm sure we can find some slater bugs or snails amongst the pot plants when we water them.

My sister found this awesome bug collection for my nephew at a garage sale. It was a lucky find as it was one of those sets where you had to buy a weekly magazine and bug specimen. These sets usually cost many hundreds of dollars by the time you purchase them all, and often take up to a year to collect. Little Bean is fascinated by them and is very good about only getting a couple out at a time, then returning them to the case before swapping them for more. He is grasping many concepts like this now and I am constantly amazed by how much he actually understands.

Little Bean got to play in a sandpit for the first time. I gave him a couple of spoons and a sand castle mould to play with. He happily scooped, poured and transferred sand for hours. We also used some damp sand to build small castles, which he gleefully smashed with little fists. Once I bought him a sandpit set, he had a shovel, rake, hoe, sieve, bucket and small moulds to play with too.

   Little Bean's cousin was watering pot plants and LB wanted to join in, so he was very happy to be given his own toddler-sized watering can. He quickly got the hang of it and likes to help water the plants every day. He is really enjoying being able to do lots of things that big kids and grown-ups do. Now that's he's undertaking so many new practical life and self care tasks, I'll be writing a post on practical life activities shortly.

The weather has been quite hot, so we've been playing with water a lot. I have been filling his little wagon with water and giving him different tools to play with each day. So far he played with his sandpit set, cups, bowls, slotted spoons for scooping and large serving spoons for transferring water. He also plays with all sorts of natural items he's collected himself such as leaves, rocks and honky nuts. The honky nuts and rocks seem to be firm favourites.

Little Bean has also been enjoying some quiet activities on his Montessori mat. He's been stacking plastic cup towers and knocking them down. He's also been nesting cups and bowls too. As a fine motor skills activity, he's been playing with an icy pole mould set.