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Best Winter Books For Kids To Celebrate The Season

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No matter what we are focusing on learning at the moment, we always have a selection of seasonal books in our home library. Here is a list of my favorite winter books for kids.

Winter books for kids plus activities to help you explore winter inside and out with busy parents club homeschool

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Seasonal books are a great addition to your home library, whether you buy them to keep, r borrow them from your local library, they add an exciting layer to your reading times that helps kids connect with, and learn about the flow of the seasons through nature. In Winter, some of our favorites include books on hibernation, snow, and seasonal changes.

Winter books about hibernation for children

Anything with animals is always a hit with my kiddos. From Amazon: “Kids can bundle up and join award-winning author, illustrator, and naturalist Jim Arnosky as he follows the tracks of otters, beavers, moose, polar bears, killer whales, penguins, fur seals, and other creatures to discover more about their lives during this frigid season. Arnosky’s stunning art includes five magnificent foldouts that reveal worlds under the ice and at the farthest, frostiest reaches of the globe.”

Another book that talks about hibernation, this has more of a storybook vibe to it. From the book: “In this cozy bedtime story, follow a child and his grandma through a winter landscape to explore how the Earth goes to sleep for winter. Spot the sleeping animals as the tale unfolds, then learn about their hibernation habits from the information pages at the end.”

This book uses beautiful illustrations to tell a story of what happens under the snow in Winter. From the book: “This beloved nonfiction picture book exploring the subnivean zone reveals the tunnels and caves formed beneath the snow but over the ground, where many kinds of animals live through the winter, safe and warm, awake and busy, but hidden beneath the snow.”

We love to incorporate these Winter hibernation books with a trip outside to look for animal tracks or to build a model animal den or nest. You can find a large collection of preschool hibernation activities here (some of these will work for mixed ages and older kids as well)

Winter books about snow for children

This book was a random find and it turned out to be one of our favorites. It gives detailed information about how snowflakes form as well as beautiful photos and illustrations of all of the different types of snowflakes.

This book would be a great jumping-off point for some fun snowflake science and investigation. Exploring snowflake art is also super fun and has a ton of possibilities.

A story of fantasy and wonder, The Story Of The Snow Children excites the imagination as kids step into Poppy’s world as she imagines snowflakes as snow children who open the way to a magical world.

I don’t know about you, but my kids are always trying to eat snow. This book is a funny take on the class “There was an old lady…”

Beautifully illustrated, this book details some of the feelings and emotions we feel as we watch the snow fall around us.

Children’s books about the Winter season

Definitely one of our most loved books about Winter, The Mitten is a must-read when the snow starts to fall.

Another classic Winter storybook, I love reading this one on snow days when we will be getting outside sledding or building snowmen.

When the season changes from Fall to Winter, what happens in nature? “Goodbye Autumn, Hello Winter,” tells this story.

What do all of the animals do in Winter? “Winter Dance” is a beautiful romp that follows different animals as they decide what to do as Winter approaches.

Exploring Winter through books and in nature

I hope you enjoyed this list of our favorite Children’s books that celebrate Winter. If you have some favorites, please share them in the comments- I would love to check them out. In addition to reading books that celebrate winter, you can find some fun outdoor ways to explore Winter in nature here.

Winter books for kids plus activities to help you celebrate winter with busy parents club

Creating A Kid’s Reading Nook

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How to create a reading nook for your kids that they will love.

Today I am going to share some of my best ideas and tips for creating a reading nook. Whether you are a homeschooler or not, these tips will give you all the ideas and tools you need to create a cozy reading nook for your kids that will encourage them to curl up and explore their favorite books.

This post contains affiliate links. Please see our disclosure page for details.

Creating a literacy-rich environment

No matter what age your kids are, a reading nook is a key component to creating a literacy-rich environment for your kids. here are many components to reading in addition to the decoding of letters. Many factors contribute to our children’s literacy. Some of the best ways to encourage a love of reading are:

[Read more…] about Creating A Kid’s Reading Nook

Let Them See You Sweat

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IMG_8513-2IMG_8514IMG_8507-2IMG_8508IMG_8511-2Last week we took home this gorgeous pop up book called Welcome to the Neighborwood from out library. Seriously, maybe the coolest pop-up book I’ve seen to date.

After the first reading and a little discussion about how these animals all work alongside each other in their “neighborhood” my son declared, “let’s take the wasp out of the book so we can play with it”

welllll, no. We can’t deface property, and mom’s soul dies a little when people tear things out of books. But being an unschooler, I wanted to find a way to “yes” to his desire to play with the wasp while still keeping the book intact.

Enter my suggestion that we make one the next morning.

Saturday morning arrived and we set up shop at the table, with much coffee, ready to craft a 3 dimensional potter wasp.

Turns out this was a great opportunity to let my son watch me do something that I am not very good at, or in unschooling lingo, an area in which I m underdeveloped. So we worked together, but I did do most of it. He watched me mess up, struggle to understand how certain things were supposed to go together, and make a joke about howe when I try to think of things in 3-D I can actually feel my brain hurting.

“are you just joking mom?”

“kind of…but I swear I can feel it growing.”

We sat with that for a minute.

It was a fun activity and a great opportunity to show him that mom also has to tackle things that she doesn’t completely understand or particularly enjoy  in order to achieve a desired end goal. As an unschooling mom, I am often asked, “If your kids don’t have to do things they don’t like, how will they ever learn things like, math, reading, writing? What if they don’t like them?” The Answer? Of course they will learn all of those things when they need them to achieve something they want.

I think John Holt has a great explanation for this when he was asked by a reader, “Without school will they have the opportunity to overcome or do things that they think they don’t want to do?”

“I’m not sure what this question means. If it means, will unschooled children know what it is to have to do difficult and demanding things in order to reach goals they have set for themselves, I would say, yes, life is full of such requirements. But this is not at all the same thing as doing something, and in the case of schooling usually something stupid and boring, simply because someone else tells you you’ll be punished if you don’t. Whether children resist such demands or yield to them, it is bad for them. Struggling with the inherent difficulties of a chosen to inescapable task builds character; merely submitting to superior force destroys it.”

 

This Q & A is from John Holt’s book, Teach Your Own, a great resource is you are interested in, or considering unschooling.

So, the next time you are tackling something that you struggle with, let your kids watch- Because kids just love to see their parents struggle! Just kidding, it’s a great opportunity for them to see that grown-ups have a hard time with things and have to overcome challenges, just like they do.

Happy Sunday!

 

Library Finds

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We’ve recently re-instated our weekly library trip. it’s been a great way to break up long Winter days and strengthen our ask a question/look it up process. O’s questions have been flowing very freely, as any four year old’s do, and they are becoming much more complex, connected, and interesting!

Before we head to the library we talk about what things we have questions about and/or what things we would like to learn about. We also leave room for fiction stories and talk about what types of stories we may want to explore.

This week he had questions about airplanes and things that fly.

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This book is one of the I Wonder Why series. We really like these. This book goes beyond flight and also talks about how and why other vehicles work as well-why cars have tires, how do air balloons fly, ect. We have also explored crocodiles, reptiles, snakes, and dinosaurs in this series.

A few of our other finds on flight are below.

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We lucked out this week at the dollar a bag book sale. They had a bunch of kids books that would make great additions to our life learning library. (sorry this is sideways!)

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another score from this week’s library came in the form of some info that O shared with me about why he us usually doesn’t enjoy story time at the library or the book store. Not surprisingly h shared he didn’t like story time at these places is because “you have to sit still and I don’t have anything to do with my hands!” totally get it. When we do story time he is free to walk around, do quiet hand activities (lacing, beading, ext.) as long as he is listening and engaged (if he isn’t we simply stop the story and go back to it another time).

On our way out he noticed a boy doing a craft. We helped ourselves to the supplies the library had offered and he loved listening to me read the story (twice) while he created his colorful fish.

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The book is Rainbow Fish Discovers the Deep Sea. His excitement of the combined craft and story has inspired me to incorporate this into our late afternoon book time.

Next week I’ll be sharing how I am creating our new daily rhythm at home, some supply orders (and wish lists!) and more books and activity fun.

Happy learning.

Introducing Chapter Books to Pre-Readers

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The past few weeks at story time we’ve noticed  that O’s interest is in longer and more detailed stories. He has also been showing a huge interest in making up stories on his own, as well as circle story time, where we take turns telling each other stories. We introduced story cards about a month ago to help encourage this passion (See my post on create a story cards here). He has been using the story cards, but being the extremely self-directed learner that he is, he seems to gravitate towards just making the stories up from scratch. It seems that there aren’t enough cards to fit all the things happening in that brain!

To help support his desire for more in depth stories I decide to try out some chapter books during story time. We have the classic Little House on the Prarie, which is always enjoyable to listen to and I also tried out some longer format classic fairytales. He liked these, so it was off to the bookstore for more.

I came across a few interesting finds this weekend for chapter books that I think would work for 3 years and up (or any age that likes to sit for about 15 +and listen to a story). I was specifically looking for “adventure-heavy” tales as this is what O is loving at this time.

First up, I spied these illustrated classics (on sale at Barnes and Noble now, buy 2, get 1 free. find the whole series and the deal here.)

I liked these a lot as a starting off point for introducing chapter books as they still have illustrations, but the stories are longer and a bit more complex.

Next up, we chose this paperback, The Haunted Library.  This is the first in a “haunted” series (O loves ghosts right now)

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This book has a few black and white illustrations, maybe every 10 or so pages. So far, it’s been a hit and also led into O making up his own ghost stories after we were done reading.

The other chapter book we picked up was Dinosaurs Before Dark, from the Magic Treehouse Series. This book is also lightly illustrated, about every five pages, in black and white.

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This is a middle-grade series, but O (3 1/2) was definitely engaged in the story. Dinosaurs Before Dark has Annie and her brother transported back to prehistoric times after they find a dinosaur book in the magic treehouse and wish they could see a real dinosaur.

The Magic Treehouse series has a bunch of fun adventures to choose from, including pirates, Amazon adventures, knights, mummies, and space adventures.

Do you have any favorite chapter books for pre-readers? Share them below!