books, books, books

I just feel like talking about books today. Over the weekend, I finally finished a book that I've been reading for months now. Yes, I am a really slow reader, but the reason it took me so long to finish is because I hardly ever took the time to do so! I feel so accomplished when I turn that last page of a book and I love how reading is such a quiet, peaceful thing. Curtis doesn't quite share my love for reading, (which is probably why he went to sleep at 8 o'clock that night) but I know he appreciates books, especially when it comes to Ande.

I think books are one of the greatest things you can give your kids. For a while, I worried a lot about being able to teach Ande all the important things he needed to know in life. I do teach dance, but I do not consider myself a teacher. I haven't taken much time to sit down with Ande and teach him things like numbers, shapes, colors, etc. When they are young, I feel like you have to be so creative with your approach to teaching. I am just too lazy to be that creative. So, yes, I worried that because of my lack of ambition, Ande would be the only kid in Kindergarten who couldn't identify a "red circle" or "the letter A." This is where books come in to play. To my amazement, Ande already knows most of the things I wanted him to learn! I finally realized that this is ALL due to the books that we read him every day and night before bed time.

Through books, Ande has learned his colors (he knows red, green, blue, yellow, purple, black, grey, orange, white, gold, brown), his numbers (he can point them out and can sort of count: 2,3,2 or he says 9,6,7,8), and several of his letters (he definitely knows T, A, P and Z). His books have taught him about animals, and stop lights, and he now knows the specific names of tons of different cars/trucks. His stories have also given him a very tender nature. For example, today we were reading :

It took us about 10 minutes just to get through the 5 page story! Every time I tried to turn the page he would go, "Awwww....kisses....loves...." as he went to kiss and hug every "cute animal" on that page. I have to agree with him, baby chicks are pretty cute:

(photo)

But he does this with every story we read. Any time he sees an animal that he thinks is "cute" he has to kiss it and love on it. My little truck fiend has a tender heart!

We also decided to start going over his Nursery lessons with him as part of our family home evening lesson. This past week they learned about having a body like Heavenly Father, so we talked about that and then last night we read two books that are great for teaching children different body parts:

If you don't already have these, you should definitely get them! I used "From Head to Toe" with the Mommy & Me dance class that I did for a while and it was a hit! Anyways, if you made it to the end of this post, I'm sure you get my point by now! Books are great. Read them and read them to your kids! That is all.