Living Books

I know I say this a lot, but I love children's literature. LOVE IT! Not all of it, there is some poorly written stuff and I'm particular about what we choose. One of the things I like to do with books is to pick a theme, like during a season or holiday and then interact with the stories and bring them to life in some ways. With Spring here we gathered up all our stories and made a trip to the library and started reading. There are so many good books on gardening and farming we went a bit nuts gathering our selection this Spring. I originally got the idea from a friend of mine who always has a basket of books in her living room with seasonal or holiday books in them. I always love visiting her and seeing what she has in her library basket each time.



We are just about to finish up Charlotte's Web by E.B. White so Marin has been telling us since the beginning of the book that we can either get her a baby pig or a baby cat (hmmm that's a tough choice). We also started planting seeds around our house so gardening and farming were on our minds. Our university has a huge dairy farm and a few times a year they open to the public.


We took the kids this year for the first time. It was so great, we made butter from cream, got to pet the calves, watch cows being milked, meet the university veterinarians, and play on the tractors.



We learned so much about dairy farms and the ways our milk goes from the cow to our fridge. It is always good from kids to see where their food comes. We are part of a CSA (community sustained agriculture) and have been out to visit their farm, and shop at the Farmer's Market, next week we will pick strawberries and in another month blueberries, but its still hard for kids to understand the food don't magically appear on grocery store shelves.















Several of our books were on planting seeds and how they grow and what they become. We compost and used some of our soil from the bottom of the bin. One of the surprising things about using your compost is that you get a few volunteer plants. So far we have 5 pumpkin vines taking over the wild flower pots (we didn't plant those), some zinnias appear to be popping up (we picked those last year out of a friends garden), some different melon plants and squash are beginning to appear. We did plant, beans, wild flowers, moon and stars Amish watermelon, tomatoes, yellow neck squash and purple carrots, all heirloom seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog.




One of our favorite books is Peter Rabbit by Biatrix Potter. I love her books because she was not afraid to use big words and so your kids learn words like "soporific". Peter is a naughty little rabbit who makes a journey through Mr. McGreggor's garden, even though his mother forbid it. As we read through the book we counted how many different vegetables Mr. McGreggor was growing in his garden. Then Marin and I made his garden one afternoon during Owen's nap. I drew Peter, and she did the little mouse with who couldn't talk because she had such a large pea in her mouth.


We will break out Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey soon and start getting ready to visit Meg's Blueberry Farm. In the meantime we are trying to memorize Jamberry by Bruce Degen as we get ready for our trip to Roger's Strawberry Farm.

There are so many ways you can make books come alive for your children. I think that its normal for books to take us places, we can imagine so many things through books. But I think we can also allow books to not just open new worlds to our imaginations but to our real life too. Last year Marin and I worked on memorizing The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson. Occasionally Marin will get on a swing and I'll here her say "Up in the air so blue. Up in the air and down!" I believe that literature, story and poetry, is such a great way for kids to learn about the world around them.

Stay tuned for more Living Books ideas.