Maureen Wittman had a post on her blog about favorite read alouds, and I thought it would be fun to post our favorite read alouds.

I polled all my children and they each came up with their 3 favorite read alouds.  It’s funny to see theme’s emerge.  Gamer-boy’s favorite stories all feature a mouse, and Dino-boy seems to prefer non-fiction.

Annie’s top 3
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Movie Tie-in Edition (rack) (Narnia) by C.S. Lewis

Toliver’s Secret by Esther Wood Brady

The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien

Gamer-boy’s top 3

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’ (The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 5) by C.S. Lewis

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

Dino-boy’s top 3
Africatrek: A Journey by Bicycle Through Africa by Dan Beuttner

Sovietrek: A Journey by Bicycle Across Russia by Dan Beuttner

. . . If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 by Ann McGovern

MamaSaurus’s top 3
The Complete Tales & Poems of Winnie-The-Pooh by A.A. Milne

Charlotte’s Web E.B. White

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

The Host: A Novel- Meyer (2) And I think I’m being generous with that rating. I will NEVER read anything by her again. She writes like a very juvenile 16 year old girl and her stories go absolutely no where. Seriously–600+ pages and NOTHING HAPPENS!  It was marketed to be a psychological thriller–I think the psychological part is that you force yourself to keep reading because you think something must happen at some point…there has to be a climax right?  NO.  The only thrilling part was finally getting to the end.

Patron Saint of First Communicants: The Story of Blessed Imelda Lambertini (Stories of the Saints for Young People Ages 10 to 100)- Windeatt (4) a read aloud with the boys before they made their first communion.

Unlikely Spiritual Heroes- Hill (3) I read this for The Catholic Company’s reviewer program.

The Rosary: Keeping Company with Jesus and Mary-Edmisten (4) I had been wanting to read this book for a while and then I won it in one of her blog giveaways. I love when things like that happen!  I really enjoyed the book–the rosary is one of those things that I just never “got”.   After reading this book though, it makes much more sense.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl- Drummond (4) I liked her book quite a bit, but with dh’s high cholesterol I can’t really use many of her recipes. I liked all the pictures and stories about her life though.  And her pie crust recipe is awesome.

The Lady Elizabeth: A Novel (Random House Reader’s Circle)- Weir (4.5) I really liked the story, but I think Weir makes her out to be a little too innocent.  I’ve read other books about Elizabeth that went the opposite direction and made her out to be very duplicitous.  I imagine she was somewhere in the middle.

The Book of William: How Shakespeare’s First Folio Conquered the World- Collins (4) This was actually a really interesting book–it goes into the history of the first Folio being printed, and follows who owned the books through the centuries. I never knew there was such a thing as a book census.  This also made me want to break out my Complete Works of Shakespeare–even if it’s just a mass market paperback copy.

I had many big plans for Lent this year, but I found that a couple weeks in, I started  to feel burnt out.  I tend to overwhelm myself with ideas and information, and, as always, I overdid it.  I ended up doing nothing at all, and feeling very guilty.  And then I received Consoling the Heart of Jesus by Michael E Gaitley, MIC for review from The Catholic Company. I was so blessed by this book.    It’s meant to be a do-it-yourself retreat that can be done in a weekend.   I, and I’m sure most people, don’t have a whole weekend to be alone and read a whole book straight through uninterrupted.  However, this is the sort of retreat you can do in whatever little snippets of time you can find.  And it is EXACTLY what I needed this Lent.

This book helped to understand many things that just hadn’t really occurred to me before.  The first half of the book is the actual retreat–which is really a retreat about mercy.  It uses excerpts from the works of St. Therese and St. Faustina to explain how we can console the heart of Jesus.  Now there’s a concept I’d never considered–that Jesus is continually suffering and needs to be consoled.  Michael E. Gaitley explains this beautifully, and in ways that anyone can understand.  You do not need a degree in Theology to understand this book.   Even a tired, frazzled mom can get so much out of it.  I especially loved the meditations–I’m a very visual person, and being able to “see” Christ as I was praying really helped me to focus.

The second half of the book are appendices containing Rules for the Discernment of Spirits (for little souls), excerpts from the Diary of St. Faustina, and references and notes.  It’s not essential to the retreat to read this half of the book–it’s more for afterwards, to help you continue–sort of like you’re Fourth Day, (for those familiar with Cursillo.)  This book could really be you’re entire Lenten sacrifice.  In fact, I think I’ll be rereading it next Lent.

We jumped into our Russia study!  

We read A Symphony of Whales (what a neat book!)

We started The Night Journey (Annie is loving it, but the twins aren’t sure yet–it might be a little over their heads)

We also started reading SovieTrek  (so far it’s a huge hit–my kids love the idea of bike riding across an entire country or continent)

Annie is reading Angel on the Square .

Here’s a few pics of our Russia Map/Poster

Dinoboy drew a Beluga whale to go on the map for A Symphony of Whales

Annie is now officially a Girl Scout.  She had her first service project this week helping at the local food pantry, sorting food and discarding expired stuff.  She is so excited.  

We took Cutie to the children’s hospital for follow up’s with neurology (no real problems there but they want to see her in 6 months anyways–hopefully that will be the last time!) and hematology.  Hematology was much more interesting.  It seems that her Thalassemia, which we new was rare, is so rare that she is in fact the first ever case.  They’re even going to name it after her.  Thankfully it’s mild enough that we don’t need to worry now, but it looks like we’ll be back every 3 months to have her blood checked.   I’ve also set up an appt. for her to be evaluated by early intervention to see if she needs any speech therapy.  And of course, she said mama for the first time immediately after.  I figure, if she suddenly begins babbling/talking over the next month, I can always cancel the appt., Murphy’s Law and all.

Also, Cutie has suddenly started eating real food, and keeping it down.  It would seem that she’s finally learned to swallow without gagging.  Now if I could get her to eat something other than banana, we’d be in business.

Yesterday we finally got a chance to go to the library, and I was  psyched to see several copies of Carpe Demon available for check out.  It’s apparently the book of the month.  I had heard about it months ago at The Homeschool Library and it’s been on my to-read list ever since.  Basically the idea is what would happen if Buffy the Vampire Slayer grew up, and  became a soccer mom?   I’m only a third of the way through, but it’s really good!  

Phew…February got off to a busy start, and I don’t think it intends to let up anytime soon.

How the Reformation Happened Hilaire Belloc (3.5) I would have rated it higher if I’d finished it, but Rob took it back to the library before I did and it was ILL. It was really interesting though!

Flat Belly Diet (4) I am really enjoying this diet. I’ve lost 3lbs and 2 inches so far, and Rob has lost about 10lbs and 4 inches.

Desert Fire: A Novel Shannon Van Roekel (3) I won this in a giveaway on GoodReads. It was ok, I liked the info about Sudan and what’s happening in the Darfur region, but I don’t usually enjoy Christian fiction because it’s a little too preachy for me.

The City of Ember DuPrau (4) I read this as a pre-read for dd, but she didn’t like it at all. I really enjoyed it though. 

Club Dead Charlaine Harris (4) the 3rd Sookie Stackhouse book. These books are just fun.

The Lightning Thief Rick Riordan (3) Eh. I read this because dd raved about how great it was. I thought it was pretty much just Harry Potter with Greek mythology. Even down to him traveling with a girl who was really smart (Hermione) and a kind of bumbling Satyr (Ron), an invisibility cap, a special camp (school) for the half bloods where they can learn about who they are and train, big bad evil guy returning, living with a family member who treats him badly…I understand that sometimes books will borrow ideas, but this just seemed like he took every idea from Harry Potter and tweaked it to fit his story. I did enjoy the Greek Mythology though, so I didn’t hate it, but I probably won’t read the rest of the series.

The Night Journey Kathryn Lasky (5) I absolutely LOVED this book. I bought this for dd to read while we studied Russia, but I decided to use it as a read aloud since there was just so much there to discuss and research. It takes place around the same time as Fiddler on the Roof and it’s about how the main characters great grandmother helped her family escape from Russia during the Pogroms. I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve even heard of this book.

The Lion,  the Witch and The Wardrobe (5) I read aloud to the kids.  Our goal is to read the whole Chronicles of Narnia this year.  We’ve only ever made it as far as Prince Caspian, which we’re reading now.  

Plus, of course, all the science books we read for our human body unit.  I actually read a lot in January.

We’re just about finished with the human body, so I’ve been working out what we’ll be doing for February’s study of Russia.  

Our main project will be making a giant map of Russia, with the help of MegaMaps.  We’ll use that to track the journey in SovietTrek (our spine book), as well as to mark interesting places we read about, books we read, habitats, native animals, etc.  

We’ll be reading lots of great books.  Check them out: