I lately discovered a beautiful biography picture book series that captured the interest of my 7 years old. This is by far our favourite, the GENIUS series by Isabel Munoz. I am not a big fan of the Little People (too short and less info for my kids’ taste) so I continued looking for kid-friendly bio books and I came across this series.
Sharing with you our favorite selection of Montessori friendly books for babies from birth to 12 months old. Note that this list is GROWING. I provided the links to the books (affiliate links) so you'll know where to get them.
Happy first day of December! I know by now that you've heard about the Advent Books. This scheme is similar to Advent Calendar, but instead, you prepare 25 Christmas books to read each day till Christmas. Some people wrap the books up and open a random book each day, others simply put a bow on the books and schedule ahead which book to read (I like this one better!)
If you are looking for child-friendly books in introducing history to little children, I highly recommend this Usborne Beginner's History book set. I bought this entire box set recently and it contains 10 books and it is absolutely worth it!
Ever since my eldest was a toddler, we love reading alphabet books of plants and animals and we used to borrow them at our local library. Mavi loves associating any objects to the alphabet sound so he truly enjoys reading these books with me. Unfortunately, most of them are out of print.
We can’t get enough of Farmer Falgu! Here’s another book that we totally love, Famer Falgu Goes to the Market. It’s market day and Farmer Falgu has to transport his goods to the market. Though it seemed like an easy task, but strange things happened on his way to the market which sabotages his vegetables and eggs!
Oh the boys and I love to play trains! And in fact, I love creating train tracks with them too. The only problem these days is that, our train sets were long forgotten due to Bruder trucks which they recently received last Christmas. But boy, oh boy, that changed when Old Tracks New Tricks arrived in the mail one day, and my 3 years old upon seeing the book immediately requested to play with his Thomas Train!
I love book extension activities. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy doing Before Five In a Row with the boys. So when I introduced the book Harold and the Purple Crayon, I knew that its a story that we can explore beyond than just reading. The book itself is enjoyable to read, engaging and the boys found it funny. Vito was glued to it for a long time. At times, he would even “pretend” to read it by himself, mimicking how I read it to him at night.
If you love this book, or if you plan to get one (highly recommended!) I listed below the areas of learning we touched by just doing this simple easy to set-up activities:
I was quite surprised when Mavi finished this book in one day! It arrived on the mail last week, and when I opened it in front of him, he excitedly asked if he could bring it to school so he can read it during the break.
Now that the boys are older, I’m starting a new Christmas tradition (other than having a Christmas tree) that will have a meaningful effect in our little family. Aside from the festivity and receiving presents, I want the boys to feel the love of the family, drawing us closer to each other, to other people and to God. I want them to remember that Christmas is all about giving, not receiving things for themselves.
We’ll open and read one advent book each day (but for sure we’ll be reading them all throughout the month!). It’s similar to the Advent calendar but instead of having toys, we’ll read a really good book about Christmas. I wrapped the books already, and randomly select a few to display under the tree for Vito open. (Mavi said Vito can open all of these everyday)
Mavi borrowed this book from the library so we can revisit the Animal Kingdom and he wanted to explore more of the other kingdoms of life. We’ve done a couple of times before (here and here) and he loves revisiting this over and over.
Our first activity for this week for the Fish Theme! We love this Hooray for Fish book so much! I say this is one of the best books I’ve read for toddlers. The images are so colorful, bold and it contains some silly stuff like numbered fish, big and small fish, fish with different patterns etc. This is the reason why it is perfect for our unit this week!
Aside from The Bible, do you have favourite books to read with kids that tells about Jesus (if you are a Christian) and Godly stories?
