We’re going to be blogging lightly for the month of August, posting frequent photo postcards with a snippet of text. View the entire summer postcard series here.
Our toddler reading on vacation while riding a play horse, sharing a special cozy moment with Great Grandma, and keeping her baby-doll occupied. Especially on vacation, we’re a family of readers.
Our family tends to collect art appreciation books written for kids.
Our latest discovery is Alphab’art
This wonderful book presents a wide variety of art styles and subject matter with paintings by some of the masters of western art including Picasso, Dali, Van Gogh, Matisse, Giotto, Chagall, Mondrian, and Klee. Many of the paintings in the book came from French museums and private collections (the book was originally published in France) and were unfamiliar to me.
We found that looking for letters in the paintings jump started our conversation about the many other interesting things hidden away in the works of art.
Our daughter felt proud that she spotted three letter O’s in this painting by Henri Matisse. I love the idea that we can find shapes and letters all around us, in pictures, photos, bookshelves, toy bins, doorways, if we really look. We’re surrounded by beautiful, interesting and educational things.
The book has inspired us to go on an alphabet adventure! I feel a photography project coming on…
Curious about other art appreciation books for kids that we love?
Read all of our previous posts on the subject here.
Three years later and she still loves Eric Carle’s classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar
February 2008
August 2009 (playing with Matthieu and Christina who brought us the French version with them from France)
October 2009 (reading the Pop-Up version with Alexis)
May 2010 (reading the French version with Alice)
December 2010 (reading the German version with Diane, a present toted from Germany for us)
January 2010 (reading the French version with Natalia)
“Reading” us her version of the book
“This is a picture of me sleeping peacefully,” says the toddler upon seeing a photo of herself asleep. I love looking at her when she’s sleeping because she looks so radically different without any emotion on her face.
I love this shot of her, taken at my parents house last week, asleep amongst the comfy pillows next to a stack of books.
Our whole family loves reading before bed. (Truthfully, the parents enjoy it a little bit more than is good for us, as we tend to stay up way too late reading just about every night.)
By far the easiest way to put the toddler to bed is to read her out.
Here are some of the wonderful books we’ve been reading before bed:
I’ve added these books, plus several others, to a new section in our left-hand sidebar on the right titled, “favorite family reads,” and will try to update this regularly as we discover new books to share with you. We so enjoy them all and highly recommend you pop over to your local library to pick them up.
Reading together before bed is, by far, the easiest way to put her to sleep.
