Early Chapter Books

We have been entering an exciting new era with Echo over the past few weeks. She is just beginning to get in to chapter books and it is amazing! We are starting to do more family reading time in the evenings and I have been able to read out loud to her in the afternoons while Clover naps so that we can have quiet time. Honestly I feel like it's changing my life, it's making things so much easier and more fun! She still has a limited attention span for books without many pictures (she can listen to picture books all day though!) so we have to be pretty selective in what we read to her at this point. I'm also trying not to push it too much because even though I am super excited about it I'm afraid of overdoing it and turning her off of the whole "reading a book out loud as a family" idea.

So far we have read the Dragons of Blueland trilogy and the first Boxcar Children book. We started the second in the Boxcar series but it didn't really hold her interest so we decided to move on. I am currently reading her Charlotte's Web which she likes, and we are trying a little bit of Peter Pan but it is pretty far over her head at this point. Anyone have any good suggestions for other early chapter books? We are very excited about starting this with her!

What's Inspiring Me Today

I woke up today feeling energized and peaceful. Coming out of my cancer treatment has left me feeling hopeful to the point of being elated at times. Don't get me wrong, I still have my moments just like anyone else, but overall I am feeling filled with optimism about the future. I have also been reading a lot of materials that I find inspiring and I wanted to share my current inspirations with you.

I just finished reading a wonderful new addition to my cookbook collection called "brown Eggs and Jam Jars. I love this book because the author focuses on simple, healthy foods with a focus on family. Her descriptions of the turning seasons and holidays celebrated with family and friends are warm and rich. There is a lot of basic info on homesteading included and I like her approach is really nice because it encourages you to start small and not get overwhelmed by making big changes all at once. Instead she asks readers to try making one thing from scratch instead of buying it at the store or to try growing some herbs in a simple container garden. There is so much about her life that I admire and would like to emulate!

I usually try to read one non fiction and one fiction book at a time and the non fiction book I am currently reading is The Artful Year. I have done a few projects out of this book with Echo already but I am now sitting down and reading it cover to cover. I read Jean Van't Hul's other book, The Artful Parent earlier this year and found it so inspiring! I am loving this seasonal celebration book by her as well. It's so full of timely projects and activities for every time of year. She focuses on little ways you can celebrate throughout the year as a family and as someone who looks for any excuse to celebrate it really speaks to me. It's a good mixture of recipes, art projects and games to enjoy with your kids.

Last but not least I highly recommend checking out this blog, Crafting Connections. It's full of information about living a creative life and how to encourage creativity in your family culture. I love the most recent post on meditation, something I really want to try to start doing regularly.

These are just some of the things that are brining me joy and inspiration at the moment. With so many depressing stories clogging my facebook feed it's nice to have some positivity from other sources. What are you inspired by at the moment?

Project Books

As an unschooling mom it is really exciting to see some of the things that I believe in start to happen with my kids. Echo is getting to the age where she is just interested in everything! Something that many unschooling parents do as a way to spark interest is something called strewing. This involves leaving interesting materials around for your kids to stumble upon in the hopes that they will find something that fascinates them. The materials you strew could be books, art supplies, building supplies, dress up clothes, a science kit, anything really! It seems as though strewing is starting to pay off in our house even though I didn't even do it intentionally.

Lately Echo has been really in to what she calls "project books".  You see, I am starting to collect a lot of books on projects and activities for kids. Echo saw me reading one of these books one day and she has been obsessed ever since. Our favorite of the project books is called Tinker Lab and it is great for younger kids (while also having a ton of projects that would appeal to older kids). If you have kids I highly recommend this book! The projects start out very simple and build in complexity, I think we will use it for many years to come. Lots of kids activity books seem to be mostly things that kids need a ton of supervision with which means that the parents end up doing the projects while the kids watch but this book is great about having projects that kids can actually do themselves!

Practicing drawing circles on a circular form (paper plates)

I tend to gravitate toward the art projects (obviously) but there are a lot of science and engineering type projects as well that we are starting to delve in to a bit. Some of the projects are very simple (like drawing with sidewalk chalk) but it's nice to have the suggestion written down with pretty pictures next to it because when Echo sees it she gets excited and wants to try it!

Echo has been practicing tracing shapes with sidewalk chalk

Echo regularly comes to me asking to do a project from her project book. Then we take some time to flip through the book and pick out something she wants to work on. Seeing how excited she gets about this is extremely gratifying. Her enthusiasm for learning new things is amazing and it's easy to see how her unschooling educating is coming together.

The projects can be messy, for example the goop we made in the above pictures (a cornstarch and water mixture that she loved playing with!), so it's nice that the weather is warming up and we are often able to work outside.

Monoprinting was a big hit!

The Tinker Lab book also has a huge section on how to set up your project space that I found really helpful. We ended up moving a desk down in to our living room so that Echo would have a place to work where Clover couldn't mess up what she is working on (now that Clover is crawling she is in to everything!).

Finished prints

We have a lot of good "project books" but so far Tinker Lab is our favorite. I have done a ton of different projects with kids over my years as a teacher but I love having these books on hand for inspiration. I think the best benefit of having the books out and available however is that the projects don't come from me. I don't set something up and say "this is what we are doing today". Instead, Echo can peruse the books at her leisure and choose the projects that excite her most. This is what unschooling is all about!

Four Indispensable Cookbooks In Our House

I love to cook and in recent years I have become a cookbook fanatic. Anyone who has seen my Amazon wish list knows what I'm talking about. Before I had kids I rarely used cookbooks, preferring to find my recipes on the internet but since it's almost impossible to use my computer with my kids around I started switching to real life paper cookbooks. I have to say I'm glad I made the switch because the experience of sitting down and flipping through a real cookbook is much more satisfying than looking something up online (I still do online recipes on occasion but nothing beats thumbing through a dogeared copy of one of my favorite cooking manuals). In my scarce free time I love to pour over these books and mark recipes I want to try. I also aim to read through them every Sunday evening and plan the week's recipes so I can shop and cook more effectively. I also find that it's really fun cooking with kids out of a cookbook. Whenever I get the urge to bake I flip through my bread cookbooks with Echo and let her help select the recipe and then we cook together. It's a wonderful bonding experience for us and so much fun!

I'm building a great collection of fabulous books but I wanted to share with you some of my tried and true favorite, these are the books I go back to again and again and have consistently loved the recipes from. There are many more cookbooks I adore but these four are definitely my tops.

1. The Family Cooks: This is my newest of cookbook collection and I absolutely love it! Sometimes it can be a little overly healthy and preachy about that fact but if you can get past that it's really a great book full of amazing recipes and suggestions. The suggestions are really what I love most about it actually. As someone who loves to cook and experiment I love that this book gives you jumping off points and then encourages you to run with it. For example, my family's new favorite meal comes from this book and it is totally customizable. They call it nice nice brown rice but we usually just call them rice bowls. You cook up a big batch of brown rice and serve with little bowls of whatever fresh veggies you have on hand. We usually put out corn, edamame, cabbage, red bell peppers, blanched broccoli, chopped peanuts and shredded carrots. Everyone fills their bowl with rice and then adds whatever toppings they want. We also put out a variety of sauces like soy sauce, peanut satay sauce, sriracha and pad thai sauce and that way everyone can sauce it up to their individual tastes. It's amazing for families, especially if you have picky eaters, and is so easy to throw together. I also love that almost every recipe in this book has suggestions for what you kids can do to help you in the kitchen or ways to make the meal more kid friendly.

2. Keepers: This is another great cookbook geared towards families with small kids and offers great tips for shopping and cooking with children. The thing that amazes me about this book is that every time I make a recipe out of it I think "this dish is so good I would serve it at a dinner party". Not that I ever have dinner parties but it's nice to have an array of dishes that are good enough for company. The ingredient lists are short which is always nice for weeknight meals and the results are amazing, I would definitely say that each recipe is more than the sum of it's parts. It's also been the book I own that has taught me the most in terms of cooking technique (outside of my baking books) and that's something I'm pretty lacking in since I tend to be an intuitive cook and just make things up. I've found their tips on how to cook fish really helpful for example.

3. Moosewood Cookbook: I actually own three Moosewood cookbooks and I could decide which one I love most so I just put the original down here. In addition to this book I also have the Enchanted Broccoli Forest and Moosewood Low Fat Favorites. All three of these are wonderful options for vegetarian cooking and full of great ideas. For the past few years I have been moving my family towards a more plant based diet. We still do eat some meat but it's gotten to the point where I rarely cook it at home (except fish). For me it's an ethical issue and I try to limit my meat intake where I can. Luckily my family loves veggies, cheese, beans and grains so it's no problem for them. We made a lot of veggie curries and stir fries, soups and lately tons of salad. The Moosewood cookbook is full of great recipes and ideas for everything from brunch to dinner to snacks to sauces. I love that their recipes are never bland and are always full of flavor. This should be a staple for anyone who wants to cook vegetarian meals.

4. Artisan Bread In Five Minutes a Day: I have so many great bread baking books that it was hard to pick a favorite but this is the one that changed the way I cook the most and the one I use most often so that makes it the winner. It's important to note that when it says "five minutes a day" it means five minutes of active time. Any yeast leavened dough needs plenty of time to rise and rest so take that in to account. That being said, this books makes having delicious home made bread incredibly easy. My in-laws even told me it tasted like bread from a fancy bakery and that I could sell it! My secret dream is to run a bakery, maybe in my next life). This is a great book if you are new to making bread since it explains a lot of the reasons behind why you do certain things in bread making. The techniques they teach you are a little different than traditional methods but they are incredibly easy and a great starting point. I have a huge love of baking (bread, not so much desserts) and this makes it possible to have fresh bread often even with two little kids around. It's also a great activity to include young kids in as it is almost impossible to screw up. Echo regularly asks me if we can make bread dough today and loves helping me roll out pita bread or pizza dough (both of which you will find great recipes for in this book).

So these are my go to cookbooks and if you are looking for something to liven up your cooking I highly recommend that you check them out. What cookbooks do you use at home? Are there any that you can't live without? I'm always looking for good suggestions now that I am a cookbook addict!

Establishing A Read Aloud Tradition Early

Echo flipping the pages of her current favorite book, 100 First Words. It won't be long before she is reading out load to us!

My memories of my early childhood are almost entirely made up of 3 things. Cooking, doing crafts and being read to. I guess it's no wonder that cooking, art and reading are three of my favorite grown up activities as well. I can recall countless days where my mom spent hours reading out loud to my brother and I. If it was nice out we would read on a blanket under the trees. If it was cold we would read in the living room and I would draw the characters from the story while I listened. We had certain books we would read while my dad was at work and certain books we would read all together when he got home. I remember waiting anxiously for him to arrive so we could find out what happened next in the story.

I always knew that I wanted to give my kids that same special gift of reading together as a family. Eric and I are both big readers but he didn't start reading out loud to me until I was pregnant. I loved listening to him read so much, it took me back to my childhood. After Echo was born he would read to me while I nursed her to keep me entertained. We now continue to read as a family every night. Usually Echo just crawls around and plays while we read and I'm sure she's not really listening (she also tries to steal Eric's glasses, steal the book, or turn the lights out on us) but I like to think it's good for her to be read to in any case. As she gets older we will keep reading to her every night (and day) and while it doesn't matter too much what we read right now we will have to pay more attention to our book selection as she gets old enough to listen. Right now we try to stick to things that are somewhat kid friendly (meaning no foul language mostly) but soon we will need to find things that are engaging to her that we also will enjoy.

Here is a list of suggestions for those of you who are interested in reading as a family. Most of these are better for older kids but they are all great because they appeal to kids and adults at the same time. They are also (mostly) gender neutral and would be great for boys or girls to read. Some are ones that I remember from my childhood and some are new discoveries that I have made in more recent years.

Coraline - Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling 

Odd and the Frost Giants - Neil Gaiman 

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

Redwall - Brian Jacques

East - Edith Pattou

The Golden Compass - Phillip Pullman

The Book of Three - Lloyd Alexander

Dealing With Dragons - Patricia C. Wrede

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 

Fantastic Mr. Fox - Roald Dahl 

Matilda - Roald Dahl 

James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl 

Peter Pan and Wendy - J. M. Barrie

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum

The Magical Monarch of Mo - L. Frank Baum

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 

The Princess Bride - William Goldman

The Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket and Bret Helquist

I'm sure there are so many more that I am just not remembering but this should get you started. All of theses are fantastic to read aloud and will keep the whole family glued to their seats. If you have any favorite read aloud books I would love to hear about them and file them away for future reference  Please feel free to leave comments with your favorites!