I have blogged about Pizza Hut’s BOOK IT! program before, and Jacob is really enjoying participating this year! Skylar will be in Kindergarten next year, and she is already looking forward to getting her pizzas. We are really glad that Pizza Hut includes homeschoolers in this fun reading program!

I was just reading over at 5 Minutes for Giveaways about “America’s Biggest Bedtime Story.” BOOK IT! is sponsoring the event on February 18, 2010. You can log on to www.bookitprogram.com to hear John Lithgow, a Golden Globe winning actor and author, reading “Carnival of the Animals”! You can listen in beginning at 9AM CST (10AM EST), and it will be available all day.

BOOK IT! wants to break the 2009 attendance record, and they are hoping to support a good cause. If the record of 197,972 is broken, BOOK IT! will donate 50,000 meals to Haiti through the World Food Program. So, gather your kids, listen to a great author, and help those in need at the same time!

5MFGiveaways also has a prize pack from BOOK IT! to give away to one lucky reader, so go on over, check out their post, and enter to win!

Join in on Feb. 18!

The kids and I just finished reading Pirates Past Noon, of the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne. I remembered that someone had told me about something fun on the Magic Tree House website, so I looked it up. There is a Magic Tree House Passport that you can download and print. After reading a book, your child can answer a few questions about the book, then print out a stamp to put in the passport. If you are familiar with the series, you know that the books take Jack and Annie on adventures all over the world and throughout time. Jacob enjoys these books, and I think he will really like this little reward activity after each book. You can find the Magic Tree House passport here.

Jacob really likes books about animals. At the library, he recently found Bats (from the “Scary Creatures” series) written by David Gilpin and illustrated by Bob Hersey. This book gives a lot of factual information about bats, answering questions such as “How do bats fly?” and “Are Vampire Bats real?” The cool thing about this book is the Xray Vision. There are two special see-through pages. There is a picture of the bat on one page, and when you hold it up to the light, you see the skeleton through the page. It is a little hard to explain, but Jacob is fascinated by it. All of the drawings and photographs in the book are excellent. Now, if your kids don’t want to see a picture of a bat with the frog that it is eating dangling from its mouth, they will probably not like this book. However, if they don’t mind seeing the the food chain up close, they will probably love it as much as Jacob does!

We all like Nine Ducks Nine, by Sarah Hayes. This is a cute story about a fox who is trying to catch some ducks, and is, of course, unsuccessful. The book helps kids count backwards, counting down as each duck runs away and escapes from the fox.

Make sure to visit 5 Minutes for Books for more Kids’ Picks!

It’s Kids’ Picks time again at 5 Minutes For Books!

JonDavid has started talking over the past few months, and he is attempting to say more and more words. One of his clear words is “George”…as in Curious George. He really likes Curious George books and recognizes the little monkey’s picture anywhere! And who doesn’t love a good George story? In fact, JonDavid nearly threw a fit at the library when he saw me returning Curious George at the Aquarium. I had to sneak it to the book return when he finally laid it down, and then find another George book to check out. Now we have Curious George Makes Pancakes. All of my kids enjoy reading Curious George books; they are always a hit. We like the movie and the TV show, too!

Skylar has been enjoying nursery rhymes lately, and has been reciting some of them. We have multiple nursery rhyme books, but one of my favorites is a big beautiful book that we received as a gift when Jacob was born. It is called Mother Goose Keepsake Collection. The pictures are lovely, and the print is easy to read. It is just a perfect book for sitting down and reading together.

I am reading The Spiderwick Chronicles, by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, aloud to Jacob and Skylar. We just finished Book 3 tonight. This series is about three kids who move into an old family house and discover a book written by their great-great-uncle, Arthur Spiderwick. The book they find contains his notes about faeries, which include all kinds of creatures that most people cannot see. The kids have adventures with these creatures, some of whom are dangerous, as they explore around their new home. We really like the stories so far, and we are looking forward to reading the last two books!

I chose seven words from “The Ant and the Elephant” by Bill Peet for Jacob’s vocabulary words. We looked up the words in the Yahoo!Kids online dictionary, and talked about what they meant. We are also going to make up sentences with each word to help him understand the meanings. He actually already knew the meanings of a couple of the words. Here is the list I chose: cumbersome, fury, boulder, jolly, stroll, codger, ravine.

Besides new vocabulary words, we spent some time talking about the story. Here are some of the things I asked Jacob to answer, and we talked about together:

• Name the characters in the story.
• What is the setting of the story? (I first explained what “setting” means, as we had not used that term before.)
• How did the story begin?
• What excuses did the characters make as they refused to help each other?
• Did the animals have the ability to help?
• How did the story end?
• The elephant was kind to help everyone, but what problem did he have?
• What is a fable?
• What lessons can we learn from this story?

This will just give you an idea of how we are studying “The Ant and the Elephant.” We also saw a play based on this story at a local theatre, which we really enjoyed. The play is what caused me to look for the book and use it for reading lessons. Skylar enjoyed the play and the book, too. It is a fun read and a good study.

Boris Ate a Thesaurus is definitely on our favorites list! My parents gave Jacob this book for his birthday, and he really likes it. It is about a little boy who is in class learning about synonyms. He gets really hungry and actually eats the thesaurus. He then begins to speak in synonyms and becomes famous, eventually being invited to the White House. In the end he learns that books are for reading, not for eating.

This book is very cute–the story and the pictures. It is also great for increasing vocabulary! If you know Jacob, you know he has had a vocabulary beyond his years since he started talking, so this book fits him perfectly. It gave us an opportunity to talk about what synonyms are and what a thesaurus is, as well as the meanings of some new words throughout the book. It’s a funny story that kids can also learn from, and we recommend it!

There is also an activity guide from Rainbow Bridge Publishing that you can print out and use. We have not done that yet, but it looks like it has some good ideas.

For more Kids’ Picks, visit 5 Minutes for Books!

Skylar (age 3) really enjoyed Bounce by Doreen Cronin and Scott Menchin. This lively book shows different animals and people bouncing in different ways. There is some good vocabulary in there for toddlers and preschoolers, and the illustrations are cute. The book is a good length for little ones who do not like to listen for very long at a time.

Jacob (age 5 until tomorrow) likes How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? written by Margaret McNamara and illustrated by G. Brian Karas. In this story, a teacher brings three pumpkins into his class–big, medium, and small. He asks the students to guess how many seeds are in them, then they actually get the seeds out and count them. The story takes the reader through the whole process of removing, drying, and counting the seeds. When the numbers are tallied, the kids are surprised by their findings. The story is entertaining, and also helps kids learn about pumpkins, skip counting, and a deeper lesson about how much can be found inside something small.

JonDavid (age 1) has been enjoying Disney Babies at the Farm. This board book includes farm animals and their babies, sounds they make, and food they eat. I bought several of the “Disney’s First Baby Books” when Jacob was a baby, and they have been well used! They are great books for babies and toddlers.

Those are my kids’ picks for this month. For more, visit 5 Minutes for Books!

We’re participating in Kids’ Picks this month, hosted by 5 Minutes for Books.

Jacob’s pick for January is this book that we just got from the library: Big Words for Little People, by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell. With funny explanations and illustrations, this book helps kids understand big words like cooperate, appropriate, consequence, and persevere. It is a fun way to increase vocabulary and learn more about language. It is designed for ages 4-8, and we definitely recommend it!

5 Minutes for Books is hosting Kids’ Picks, a chance for bloggers to share what their kids are reading. Jacob (age 5) and Skylar (age 3) had trouble narrowing down their favorites, but here are their top 3 picks from the books we have read lately, followed by their statements about what they like about each one.

Jacob:

In A Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories, retold by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Dirk Zimmer.

I like it because it was scary stories!

Froggy Gets Dressed, by Jonathan London, illustrated by Frank Remkiewicz

I think it’s funny where she says “Your underwear!”

Arthur’s Thanksgiving, by Marc Brown

I like the part where they all dress up like turkeys.

Skylar:

Dora the Explorer: Follow Those Feet!, by Christine Ricci, illustrated by Susan Hall

Because I like Dora!

Who Said That? and What Do I Eat?, by Kathryn Smith, illustrated by Daniel Howarth

I like all of it!

All of these are books we checked out of the library. Who Said That? and What Do I Eat? are Dial-A-Picture books. There are questions and clues on each page, and you turn the picture wheel to find the correct answer. Both kids really liked reading them.