Library books from school

His second library book from his school.


I managed to reap the benefits from the moral of the story immediately after I was done reading it to him.

He quickly cleared the clutter of the toys that he had made in the living room. What more do I want :D

His first library book

Betu has always been fond of books and I've tried to keep a good stock of books all the time. In fact if someone would ask me what to get for him I would say "books!" without even thinking for a second.

He has a huge collection now. And I plan to buy some more that go with his current age and interests.

Yesterday he came back with this book from his school library and he was mighty excited about it. So I read it to him at bedtime. It was about a girl who ventured out of the house, without telling her parents, to her friends house. So when the friend's mommy came to know about this she took the girl back to her house saying her parents would be looking for you. So the moral of the story was to teach the kids to never go out alone and without asking parents permission.

In the end they had an exercise where I was to try and make Betu remember the phone number along with telling them what to do in case they get lost. Betu knows both of our cell numbers since long so first part I had already dealt with. But not the second part. So I tried to explain to him what he should do in case he gets lost (which I sincerely hope he doesn't ever!). He nodded as if he understood and I am hoping he did and shall remember it too. I will try and keep reminding him of it from time to time as well.

So I quite liked the book and the concept and now both of us are looking forward to the next book.

~~ Keep Smiling! ~~

Sent on my BlackBerry®.

His love for books!

I do not remember when I initiated books into his schedule. It was probably when he was around 1. I first started with big picture books of either animals or shapes or fruits etc. At night, I would make stories using the elements in the book and add lot of sound, face and hand expressions into it so that he would enjoy it and also understand it to some extent.

I guess this started our daily bedtime reading schedule. There's been no stopping since then. He loves reading books and there will be hardly any days when he would sleep without reading any. I've had tough times when travelling I forgot to carry any. So its a practice to add his books into my travel checklist without fail now.

There were days when we would get late in putting him to bed and would want to do away with the book time but to no avail. He just wouldn't sleep without it. So we started to reason him saying only 1 book tonight as we are getting late. Sometimes he would agree and sometimes with such innocence and big requesting eyes he would say "Wum mo" (one more) that we would give in. It was impossible not to give in.

The books started to vary as he grew and then came the additions of stories. After reading a book or two he would want me to say a story as well. But it was he who decided which character the story will be about. The character's he knew were from watching Pogo and Disney. They would include

• Oswald
• Kipper the Dog
• Pingu
• Thomas & Friends
• Noddy & Friends
• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

He has a large collection of books as of today and it just keeps growing! I remember the day when we had gone to a bookstore in Feb'07 in Bangalore when we were visiting DH's brother and his family. He was totally awed seeing so many books in the store. He was going from one shelf to the other, picking out a book or two as he went along and putting them all in the basket I was carrying. And then he saw another child sitting in one corner and reading a book. It was like a superb idea for him which he had to do as well. So he selected one corner for himself, picked up 2-3 books, sat down and started flipping through the pages (I feel so stupid now thinking why I didn't click him then).

When it was time for billing, we had to secretly take out 90% of the books that he had placed in the basket. I'm sure reading this incident you can imagine how much he loves books.

One of his latest acquisitions include the electronic book from Fisher price in which you can place its cartridge book and it will play sound and words depending on where you touched it. I will try to post a picture of it soon.

There's another book called "Blue's Clues - Telling time with Blue" which teaches your child to tell time. So after you move the hands on the clock and press the "Time" button it speaks out the time. Its quite an interesting book but I'vent been able to keep his focus on learning to tell time as yet. He gets busy playing with the hands on the clock by putting them in different positions or pressing the sound buttons.

Lot of people really appreciate his love for books and we do too. But we really wonder if this habit will stick long. I hope it does!