A little car reading

                   

Last week I knew I would be in the car and at some point Si would fall asleep.  I drove prepared.  After a quick stop at Starbucks drive thru which isn't as much fun as sitting in the shop, I pulled into the parking lot drank my new favorite concoction, Mocha Misto and read some books.  I tossed the books on the passenger seat as I finished them.  The photo above is a recreation of what I saw on the passenger's seat.  In true blog thinking, I thought the selection of books would make a great book post.

Wild About Books, a most delightful book, arrived via Paperbackswap.com just that morning.  If you haven't read it I'm sure you will love it.  I read a book about fractions entitled Full House: An Invitation to Fractions.  Miss Bloom runs a bed and breakfast called Strawberry Inn and wishes for her rooms to be filled.  As each guest arrives for the night she notes, 1/6th full, 2/6th full and so on.  The characters and the rhyming are sure to please even young children.  The book reminded me of Meredith's recent post about studying fractions.  I was just now checking other books written by Dayle Ann Dodds and discovered that she is also the author of one of our favorite books (there are about 1000 on the list) entitled Hello, Sun.

                                    

Jess recommended Autumnblings and I am so thankful.  In the past, I hadn't been a big fan of Douglas Florian but Autumnblings changed my mind.  I photocopied quite a few poems from the book to use in our home learning.  Thanks Jess.

Those Amazing Musical Instruments! is an institutional book that you might only find at the library but I am glad my library listed it as a new arrival because it is a wonderful resource for teaching about musical instruments.  We just spent the last half hour listening to the CD-Rom that accompanies the book.  The multimedia is so easy to navigate.   You can listen to an individual instrument and then there are links to short segments of real music where you can hear the instrument.  The photos and the detailed information in the book are fantastic.  There is a page that describes the make up of a string trio, quartet, quintet and so on.  I imagine we will have this book from the library for the maximum time and will check it again in the future.  I just now checked the book on Amazon to create the link and this book is only $13.57.  We just might have to purchase this one. :)

I very much enjoyed Mommy, Teach Me even though it took me almost 4 months to read it.  I finally finished it as I sat confined to my car last week.  I photocopied many of the exercises including laminating photos of different living creatures in order to learn animal classification, introducing geometric solids, the cultural geography exercise where you find images that represent the seven continents and then keep them in separate envelopes.  I am looking forward to presenting these to Citcat.

Why do kids sleep so soundly in the car? 

Comments

[Jess]

Yay! Glad you liked it. :)

[mrs darling]

Books? I didnt get past the mocha misto at starbucks! What sort of drink is that? I might have to try it!

[Jane Deau]

Thanks for the recommendations. The musical instruments one looks great!

[patience]

You are lucky - my kid never slept in the car, not even on those looooong roadtrips we occasionally took. And if she did sleep, all it took was one of us glancing at the door with the vaguest thought of opening it and she would be awake again, talking even before her eyes were completely open. ;-)

[Mariposa]

Nina, great story.

My husband and I remember well driving Ami around to get her to sleep at 11:00 pm. I forgot it was the only way she would fall sleep until she turned 2. Gas is a lot more money these days.

[Jenny]

I haven't seen the Mocha Misto before- usually I get the Peppermint Mocha they come out with around Christmas. :o)

I was surprised to find I can't even get Mommy Teach Me via an ILL, so that one is going on my Wish List as the geography exercise you mentioned sounds great.

I'm off to which of the other ones I can get my hands on- thanks for the recommendations!

[KateinNJ]

We loved Wild About Books!
P would never sleep in the car,
if she did, she would wake at the car stopping
and feel refreshed enough to not sleep again for hours!!
I'm going to see if I can get my greedy
little hands on the music book.

[sarah]

Nina, I, too, ALWAYS keep books in the car. Piles of them, in fact. The kids like to read while driving but also for those moments when there is a sleeping baby (or two brothers...) and it's just the perfect cozy place to read uninterrupted for a bit.

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Suzanne]

I always love your book posts. The only one in our library system is Autumnblings, but it's on my list now.

E never slept a single minute in the car for her first year (she screamed the whole time, so I rarely left the house). After that, she'd sometimes fall asleep only to wake up after a few minutes (like Kate's Princess), in which case she refused to sleep another minute all day and tantrums ensued.

[Debbie]

That sounds lovely. I can pass the time anywhere as long as I have a good book to read. And I'm always on the look out for book suggestions. These look great!

I tried looking up "Full House: An Invitation to Fractions." in our library's catelogue and they don't carry it. :( But they do carry several others by that author. "The Great Divide" look good.

[Jenny]

Hi Nina-

Thanks for the recommendation on the fraction book. Ellie just started learning fractions this week.

Jenny