Summer Reading and Where to Find Book Recommendations

I've been going crazy putting together laminated summer reading lists and schedules for everybody, and since two of my sisters have recently asked me about book recommendations, I thought I'd share. I expect my kids to read more than this list during the summer, but wanted to leave room for them to choose some books. I'm pretty proud of myself for blogging at all, so I am not linking them all to amazon. You can go there and type the titles in yourself if you want. I was going to add some pictures, but them I remembered I had to delete Google photos from my phone to free up space, so you get a boring text only post.


Lauren

Sarah, Plain and Tall
Invisible Emmie
The Lemonade War
Tuesdays at the Castle
Matilda

I'm also making Lauren write four book reports this summer.

Andrew

Ballpark Mysteries (his contribution and he mostly still needs them read aloud to him)
Frog and Toad are Friends and other books in the series
Nate the Great
Tales from Deckawoo Drive (companion to the Mercy Watson books)


Grace - trying to get her to move on from Llama Llama and forget that our library has Peppa Pig books

Bear Snores On series
The Rainbow Fish series
Ladybug Girl series


Read Alouds

Jumanji
Zathura
The Trumpet of the Swan
Begin
Farmer Boy


Me - I am trying to improve my score on the Great American Read, but so far, I'm not very impressed

Looking for Alaska (don't read and definitely don't let your teenagers read)
Memoirs of a Geisha (I feel like this one broadened my horizons, but I still don't know if I'd recommend it)
currently reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Gilead
what else should I add?



Now, where to find book recommendations. There are tons of book lists and sites out there, but a few that I find most helpful.

Brightly - follow on Pinterest or Facebook and they will give you age or themed book lists
Read Aloud Revival - thank you to Janet for this one
Amazon - I've found a lot of favorite books just by searching "books for six year old boys" or something similar and browsing
homeschool blogs - I don't have any specific ones, but if you search for book lists on Pinterest, they will continually give you more ideas than you will ever want


What summer reading programs have you participated in?  Our public library has a good one, so besides that, we usually only do the Barnes and Noble one. It's pretty easy and they get a free book at the end.

This is Emily, by the way, since I just saw that I'm posting as Preston.

The Terrible Two-year-old

Grace has been making life ....interesting.... lately.  I try to remind myself that she is just acting her age, but I don't remember the other kids being this rotten. Maybe my memory is just being selective again.

Here are just some of her recent exploits:

1. A few weeks ago, I made some pulled pork. I had taken it out of the crock pot, shredded it, and it was on a dish on the counter when I went into the other room to tend to the baby. When I went back into the kitchen, Grace had emptied the salt shaker into the dish with the pork. (insert angry face emoji).

2. Yesterday, she bit Andrew in the back so hard that it broke the skin (even through his shirt).

3. The other day, she chewed through a package of graham crackers.

4. She emptied an entire bottle of Aveeno baby wash into the tub a while ago.

5. She is obsessed with tape, glue, and stickers. We have also had some close calls with scissors.

6. She refuses to wear shoes, even after getting several slivers that had to be removed.

7. She said over and over last week, "I can't wait to go to church."  Then, when I dropped her off at nursery, she threw a mega screaming fit. I ignored her.  She cries whenever a family member is not with us. She had a little fit when Preston left in a different car to go to his speaking assignment last week. "Dad doesn't need to go a different church, ever!"  I tend to agree with her there. She also freaked out when we dropped Lauren off at a playdate last week.

The Fourth Child

Allison has been a welcome addition to our family and has transitioned pretty easily into the chaos of our family life. The kids still argue over who gets to hold her. She defends herself by sleeping.

Her ptosis is pretty evident here.

Preston and I agree that she doesn't really look like any of the other kids. She's also skinny, which is unusual.

Preston says holding her is like this is like a never ending hug.

This is a common (and frightening) sight.

She loves her paci and is starting to smile a lot, although my attempts at obtaining photographic proof were not very fruitful.

The Fourth of July

We skipped out on our ward's July 4th breakfast this year and went to the Field Day at our town park instead. The kids decorated their bikes and they had foot races, sack races, an egg toss, a dunk tank, a bouncy house and a water slide. It was a lot of fun and I think we'll make it a new tradition.

Later in the afternoon, we decided to celebrate America where it all began, in Plymouth. The Plymouth Philharmonic put on a concert and the kids played with the other kids around us.  We had a great view of the fireworks over the harbor and it was unanimously declared the best 4th of July ever.

Independence Day is pretty fun around here. You should join us one of these years!

Birthday Week 2017

We survived another round of birthdays and I am officially pizza-ed and caked out. It started last Sunday with Auntie Gail's birthday party, then Andrew's birthday on Wednesday.

Ice cream sandwich cake to avoid baking, butter, and cake overload.

The only thing he wanted for his birthday was the game Busy, Busy Airport. He was thrilled.

Andrew's favorite past times are watching TV, playing abcya.com, and playing games on the ipad. When he is sadly not allowed any of the above, he settles for playing board games, playing Car Patrol of Car City with his cars, or reading books and magazines. He also likes to help me cook and really likes jokes, but don't ask him to tell you one.

Auntie Gail gave us a gift certificate for a birthday party at a bowling alley, so we invited two other families from the ward and had a party on Saturday. He wanted a minion theme and said it was his best birthday ever.

Hooray for Pinterest. I figured nothing represents our family better than bananas.

How toddlers bowl. Adults help by giving it an extra push.

My favorite 2-year old's birthday was on Sunday. I was pretty tired of cake and decorating by this point so I made a simple one layer yellow cake, the recipe for which I plan to post to Donning My Apron at some point, and turned it into a butterfly.

It was supposed to be purple, but it looks more like the Play-Doh the kids mixed all together.

She's not sad, she's blowing. It got the hair out of her face, but didn't work so well for candles.

Cutie.

In case you're wondering what Grace is like at two years old, she loves puzzles, play-doh, coloring, baby dolls, building with blocks, and our neighbor Madison. She is wild and crazy and wants to do everything the big kids do, including using the potty (hooray!), and is starting to sing a lot. She sang herself to sleep last night with "happy birthday to you" over and over and over.

I am looking forward to spending less time in the kitchen this week and hopefully more time on the couch or possibly outside if it ever decides to be spring here.

Sisters

I dare you not to laugh at some of these.

Brothers

I've been scanning some old family photographs that Dad sent me. They tend to fall into two categories - me with my brothers or me with my sisters.  I think it's pretty clear that I was the leader early on.  Also, that Ben was the goofball early on.

                       

We obviously needed some distance by this point.