Favorite Chapter Books for Young Children

My oldest daughter, Isabel, is 6.  Over the last two years she’s really begun to enjoy listening to me read chapter books to her.  During the day it’s just the two of us and most evenings we read with Dad too.  Before moving into chapter books we spent years reading hundreds and hundreds of picture books, nursery rhymes, and fairy tales.  We still read these.

The good books we have read have had a powerful influence on Isabel (and me too!).  I see her being inspired by favorite characters to try new things and behave in better ways.  We’ve had many sweet discussions over these books.  Her daily play is usually based on one of our current novels.  I love the effect reading these books has had on her.  Every child has different interests and attention span so I would expect them to all like different books at different times of their lives.  But, for what it’s worth, I thought I’d share Isabel’s favorite chapter books and how old she was when she was able to truly enjoy them.  

Often, after I read a book to her, I then get it on audio from the library and she loves to listen to them over and over.  I like to re-read them with her too but there’s something about listening to the book in her room while she plays with her toys that’s different than when I read to her.  There have been a handful of books that she didn’t love the first time I read them to her but after listening to them on her own, she fell in love with them.  Then, we re-read the books together and it was a totally different and better experience.  I've also learned that great illustrations are important to her--they keep her engaged and interested.  I wish I had realized this before I bought many cheap books without illustrations. 

We’ve read lots of great books that aren’t on this list but I wanted to share just our very favorites, things I think every child should have read to them at some point.  And to reiterate, I’m not suggesting the age that Isabel enjoyed something will or should apply to any other child, but it might be helpful to see which books are easier to start with versus those that were harder for her.  We’ve tried lots of books, found them beyond her interest/comprehension and waited and then tried again and found her finally ready for them.  There’s a long list of books I can’t wait to read with her that she’s just not ready for yet.  So here are our favorite chapter books from the last 2 years.  My specific reviews of the books can be found on my goodreads.com bookshelf.

                                                                 

Little House in the Big Woods, 4                       

Little House on the Prairie,  4           

Farmer Boy,  4           

On the Banks of Plumb Creek, 6

By the Shores of Silver Lake, 6           

The Long Winter, 6                       

Little Town on the Prairie,  6           

These Happy Golden Years, 6           

The First Four Years, 6           

The Secret Garden, 5           

Charlotte’s Web, 4           

Trumpet of the Swan, 5           

The Magician’s Nephew, 6           

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, 6          

The Horse and His Boy, 6

Prince Caspian, 6           

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 6           

The Silver Chair, 6           

The Last Battle, 6           

What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know, 5             

A Christmas Carol, 6           

Dinotopia, 6

Winnie the Pooh, 5

The House at Pooh Corner, 5

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 5

The Wind in the Willows, 6

Alice in Wonderland, 6

Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass, 6

Bible and other Scriptures, 5

Pictures of the Kids

Chloe loves to kiss Liam.  He seems to like being kissed.Belle loves to read and color in "Mommy's Chair"

I love Chloe's profile.

We use gates often to keep the twins out of the kitchen.  This is what Chloe thinks of gates.Isabel likes to put Chloe in tiny spaces to see if she will fit.  Yep, Chloe fits in a small plastic bin, with some toys.  Isn't that cute they way Liam is reaching for Chloe?I guess we misjudged his intentions.  Wollops aren't so cute.Finally put the dollhouse together that Isabel got from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas, a year ago.  Forgive us, we had a busy year ;)  Thankfully Isabel did.  She was very patient.

Raw Milk: Health Food or Horror?

This article by Hannah Wallace on salon.com, really has me wondering if raw (unpasteurized) milk is something I've been missing out on.  I haven't studied the issue much but I'm really interested.  If you're curious about the subject you should really read the whole article - it seemed thorough and fair to me.

My default position on food and health is, "if God made it for our use, it's probably safe and good.  If a scientist messes with it, it probably isn't as good or safe anymore."  So I'm very open to the idea of raw milk.  That's what Laura and Mary Ingalls from Little House in the Big Woods were safely raised on.

I also found this argument for raw milk (from the article) very compelling,

"Another reason no pathogens have ever been found in his milk, McAfee believes, is that it contains a host of active antibacterial components -- not just proteins like lactoferrin, but enzymes, bacteriocins, colicins and at least 25 beneficial bacteria, including lactobacillus and bifidus, the same probiotics that are found in most yogurt. And all of those components, McAfee says, are destroyed during pasteurization. (In her book 'Nourishing Traditions,' WAPF founder Fallon concurs: 'Pasteurization destroys these helpful organisms, leaving the finished product devoid of any protective mechanism should undesirable bacteria inadvertently contaminate the supply.') To prove his theory, a few years ago, McAfee sent his milk and colostrum to a private lab and had both injected with high levels of the three pathogens. The bacterial counts of all three bugs decreased over time. And the conclusion of the scientist at BSK Labs? "Raw colostrum and raw milk do not appear to support the growth of Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, and Listeria monocytogenes," stated the lab report. McAfee is so proud of his below-normal bacteria counts that he posts annual averages on his Web site."


And this really resonated with me:


"'Pasteurization is an excuse to produce dirty milk,' says Los Angeles raw milk activist Rahman Dalrymple, citing the outbreaks of salmonella, listeria and Campylobacter that have all been traced to pasteurized milk. In California, accepted bacteria levels for Grade A raw milk are fewer than 15,000 colony-forming units per milliliter; accepted levels for raw milk destined for pasteurization is 50,000. (Post-pasteurization, milk in California can contain 15,000 CFUs per milliliter. States that adopt the FDA's Pasteurized Milk Ordinance allow pasteurized milk 20,000 CFUs per milliliter, one-quarter more than California's raw-milk limit.) Dalrymple, who credits raw milk with curing his asthma, emphasizes that he would never drink raw milk that's destined for pasteurization by a large industrial dairy. Not all raw milk is created equal, Dalrymple says. 'Raw milk is dangerous -- if you get it from one of these industrial dairies that have fecal matter and pus and blood in their milk. I would absolutely not drink that!'"

"This distinction -- between raw milk that's destined for pasteurization and raw milk from a small, spotlessly clean dairy that's kept to higher standards precisely because the milk won't be pasteurized -- is a crucial one, and it's lost on public health officials like Sheehan, who seem to lump all raw milk into the same pathogen-contaminated vat. Industrial farms are dirty -- as the recent agri-exposés 'Fast Food Nation' and 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' have proved. When Sheehan thinks of raw milk, in other words, he's thinking of milk from cows crowded together in barns, eating a diet of corn, and standing in their own manure. All the raw milk advocates I spoke to are against drinking this type of raw milk."

"Perhaps even more convincing is the argument, made by raw milk advocates, that safe raw milk must come from grass-fed cows. That distinction, too, is ignored on the FDA's Web site, in remarks that Sheehan made last May to Ohio's House Agriculture Committee, and in his anti-raw-milk PowerPoint presentation. Cows, like all other ruminants, are meant to eat grass. Yet, at the vast majority of U.S. dairies -- even organic ones -- cows subsist on corn feed. In "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Pollan explains how eating a high-starch diet acidifies a cow's rumen, making the animal sick and eventually allowing bacteria to enter its bloodstream. A cow's corn diet can also make us sick: E. coli O157:H7 has been around only since the early '80s, when it likely evolved in the acidic guts of corn-fed cattle. (E. coli O157:H7 is so lethal because human stomachs, too, are acidic. We can kill off microbes that evolve in the neutral pH of a grass-fed cow's rumen, but not the acid-resistant strains such as E. coli O157:H7.) Grass-fed cows also produce milk that is intrinsically more nutritious: Whole milk, butter and cream from grass-fed cows contain conjugated linoleic acid, an omega-6 fat that has been shown to inhibit breast, skin, stomach and colon cancers. (CLA is found in both raw and pasteurized grass-fed milk -- it does not appear to be damaged by pasteurization.)"

I totally believe that consuming large amounts of pasteurized, mass produced, modern, US, dairy products is one of the major problems with the disease-promoting Standard American Diet.  I'm going to have to keep studying this one but I'm leaning toward raw milk. 

Cranberry, Apple and Yam Muffins

Cranberry, Apple and Yam Muffins

I tried these today.  Pretty good but I had a few problems with the final product.  I'd love to perfect them.  Any experienced bakers want to suggest how I could improve them?  I based my recipe on a universal muffin recipe.  They weren't sweet enough (probably need to increase the maple syrup), they were too salty (so I'll decrease the salt a bit), they weren't moist enough (not sure what to do?).  They stuck to the muffin tin liners pretty bad.  I wondered if the soymilk versus real milk had something to do with this.

Here’s my recipe for 24 muffins

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl

4 c flour (I used white flour but wished I had whole wheat on hand)

4 t baking powder

½ t salt

½ c dried cranberries

2 t pumpkin pie spice

Combine wet ingredients in a medium bowl

2 c soymilk

¼ vegetable oil

2 eggs

1/3 c maple syrup

1 apple, peeled, cored, diced, and steamed

½ large jewel yam, peeled, diced, and steamed (I wasn’t sure if the yam and apple would cook inside the muffin very well so I steamed them first, made about 2 cups all together)

Add wet to dry and mix just enough to combine but don’t overmix.  Fill muffin tin cups with rounded ¼ cupfuls.   Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

Cranberry, Apple, Yam Oatmeal

This is what we're eating for breakfast this morning.  It's one of my favorite combos so far.

Cranberry, Apple and Yam Oatmeal

Combine in a pot
3 cups water
1 cup steel cut oats
1 apple, peeled, cored and diced
1/2 large jewel yam peeled and diced
handful of dried cranberries (fresh would be better)
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Refrigerate and soak overnight.  This activates some of the live nutrients in the oatmeal making it even healthier and everything cooks faster the next morning.

Cook over medium heat 5 - 10 minutes until water is absorbed

Yummm!

Update:  The twins LOVED it!  The kept asking for more (with baby signs).  I added a little sea salt and maple syrup to mine but I overdid it - it didn't need the sweetener.  Still, it was so good!  Can't wait to make it again.  I think I'm going to experiment with this combo in muffins...

Feeding My Family

I love food.  I love cooking it, eating it and sharing it.  I also love good health.  I like to feel my body working at it’s best, feeling, strong and clean.  Sometimes I find these two loves at odds with each other.  Reconciling them is something I’m constantly working on.  In this post I will share my experience with making my own baby food and feeding all three of my kids.  My oldest is 6 and my twins are 14 months old. 

First I want to share my family’s eating philosophy.  I have read a bit about the links between health and diet and as a result my family has chosen to eat a certain way.  We are what many describe as flexitarians.  We believe there is an ideal way to eat for the greatest health and we aim for that ideal but we take plenty of detours from it.  We believe the ideal diet is vegan, organic, non-processed, mostly fruits and veggies, low in sugar or other sweeteners and grown by and purchased from local producers.  Truly ideal would be producing it all ourselves.  Like I said, we take a lot of detours from this ideal – it’s just something we shoot for and we hope to get better at it every year.  The closer we get to it the better we feel and the fewer health problems we experience.  I did try for 6 weeks; to live according to the Eat to Live rules and I did it perfectly.  It was amazing.  I wrote about it in an earlier post.  Our weaknesses are dairy products, sweets, summer BBQs, holidays, bread and pasta. 

We have based this philosophy on a handful of books that I’ve read and discussed with my husband.  He’s read some of them.  They include, Eat to Live, Disease Proof Your Child, How to Get Your Kid To Eat But Not Too Much, In Defense of Food, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, and most important to us, The Word Of Wisdom from The Doctrine and Covenants.

My favorite healthy recipes come from the following cookbooks:  First Meals, Whole Food, In Season, Cooking Light: Salads, and Mediterranean Kitchen.  These include non-vegan recipes but I tend to skip those and focus on the plant-based recipes. 

I totally reject the notion of “kid food” – things like fruit snacks, fishy crackers, lunchables, juice boxes, and other processed, snack food marketed to kids.  It’s a modern invention associated with the SAD (Standard American Diet) way of eating that is linked with very high rates of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.   I believe starting toddlers out on “kid food” just primes them for fast food and junk food and deprives them of the opportunity to develop a taste for healthy food. 

Here’s how I feed my kids. 

Birth – 6 months

Idealy, breastmilk only.  I adopted all 3 of my kids and did manage to breast feed them but had to supplement with formula.  Happy to share more with anyone looking into breastfeeding an adopted baby.

6 months – 12 months

I started all 3 of my kids on pureed vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, peas, carrots, potatoes, yams, winter squash, and sweet potatoes.  I want them to develop a taste for vegetables, especially the ones that aren’t sweet, before I introduced fruits.  My 6 year old still loves broccoli better than just about anything.  Of course they still get most of their calories from breast milk or formula.  With my twins, our dietician and doctor encouraged me to start with baby cereal but I found they had a hard time digesting it so I stopped it and just fed them pureed veggies.  After about a month of veggies I start introducing pureed fruits like bananas, apples, mango, and pears.  I also start mixing things together and making the texture chunkier.  Once they can handle chunky textures and pick things up with their fingers I give them soft, cooked veggies and fruits.  When I’m low on cooked veggies and fruits and short on time I used canned – not ideal, but better than a lot of other options!  I also give them raw banana and avocado chunks, frozen peas (awesome on sore, teething gums!) and canned black beans (smaller than most beans).  They started consuming less milk about this time.  After my twins were doing well with all the finger food and their systems were digesting all the veggies, fruits, and beans well I started offering them bits of whole wheat bread (sometimes I make my own) and making grain-based casseroles for them.  They wouldn’t mind eating these with their fingers but I can’t handle the mess!  I make a sweet casserole and a savory casserole.  My 14 month-old daughter prefers the savory while her twin brother prefers the sweet.  I suspect this reflects their unique dietary needs.  One casserole will usually last for the whole week.

Sweet Casserole

Combine in a casserole dish:

1 to 2 cups of cooked steel cut oats

Homemade applesauce (peeled apples, cinnamon, and water)

Any soft, raw, soft-cooked, or canned fruit that you have on hand like peaches, pears, cranberries, grapes, apples, bananas (add them fresh right before serving), mango, blue berries, and apricots.  Make sure it’s all baby-bite-sized.

¼ tsp of cinnamon

Savory Casserole

Combine in a casserole dish:

1 to 2 cups of cooked brown rice

Any soft, raw, soft-cooked or canned vegetables you have on hand like, onion, carrots, celery, peas, mushrooms, green beans, broccoli, potatoes, yams, winter squash, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, avocado, and beets. Make sure it’s all baby-bite-sized.

1 can of beans.  (Black are nice and small, others probably need to be cut in half)

1 can of cream of mushroom soup (I feel guilty about this but my daughter is a little picky and she will eat any veggie coated in cream of mushroom so I think it’s an okay trade off.  I should learn to make my own soymilk version….)

I don’t bake them but you could.  I just mix them, refrigerate them and warm up a small bowl for each feeding and my twins gobble them up.  I try to make sure that at least half of the volume comes from fruit or veggies. 

When we are out of the house for mealtime, I take small containers of beans, peas, canned veggies, and a couple slices of bread with me.  Easy, cheap, and healthy.

12 – 24 months 

I start letting them sample what the rest of us are eating at the table, as long as it’s not dangerous for them.  We wait until 2 yrs old on peanut butter, nuts, honey, strawberries, green salad (need teeth for that!), and citrus. We also don’t share cookies or other treats with them. I have not and don’t plan to introduce regular cows milk or juice to my twins.  I still give them formula 3- 4 times a day.  I will eventually start offering them soy and nut milks in small quantities.  This really helps my husband and I focus on healthier eating – we don’t want to set a bad example for our kids.  For breakfast this includes oatmeal (steel cut is best but instant is so much easier), fruit, green smoothies (pureed fruit and spinach) toast, and pancakes.  For lunch we typically have PB sandwiches, fresh and dried fruit, salad, nuts, and veggies and dip.  Our dinner staples are pasta (whole wheat or multi-grain) w/marinara and parmesan, soft polenta made with parmesan and butter, massive green salad with beans and sometimes grilled chicken, steamed veggies, veggie soup and homemade biscuits (nothing healthy about these), rice and beans, and grain-based salads. 

2 years old (or whenever they have a full set of teeth) and on

They eat what we eat.  If they don’t like what we’re having for a given meal, they might be hungry but I won’t make them anything else.  Our 6 year old has done very well with this.  She goes through picky stages and sometimes she’s not satisfied at the end of a meal but she usually makes up for it later in the day or the next day.   I just keep offering her a wide variety of healthy food and she sometimes discovers that now she likes something she used to hate.  I don’t force my kids to eat anything; I just don’t offer them much that’s not healthy.  When my oldest goes to parties or other places away from home she is very attracted to junk food and will eat as much as she can but I don’t worry about this because we’re pretty healthy at home.  She seems to be losing her taste for dairy.  We only have Parmesan and butter on a regular basis.  On Sundays I make one of our less-healthy favorites like lasagna, fettuccine alfredo, chicken and cheese enchiladas, and homemade pizza.  My daughter recently declared that she doesn’t like melted cheese.  She will not eat pizza with cheese (I make a small part of it with just sauce and pepperoni for her), or any cheese-based sauce.  At friends houses she has refused milk and string cheese – she used to love both of those things.  I’m curious how my twins will do going forward.  My little girl is definitely picky.  I know more than I did when my oldest was a baby and I’m feeding my twins even healthier.    

And for all of us it’s a work in progress.  We get better every year but we’re still a long ways off from the ideal.

UPDATE:  I forgot to add that we get most of our produce from Klesick Family Farm.  Each week they deliver a box of fresh, organic, mostly locally-grown, delicious fruits and veggies.  We always order lettuce, potatoes, apples, carrots, and broccoli.  I order additional things each week based on what's in season.  We love it.  Everything is so much tastier than what you get at the grocery store and because it's so fresh it lasts longer without spoiling.  I can keep the lettuce in my fridge for more than a week.  If you live in the Seattle area, check out Klesick.  If you live somewhere else google CSA in your town.  CSAs are community supported farms and they are a growing trend.  

Reading with Boys and Girls

It is so fun and interesting to watch boy girl twins develop along side each other. They are so different right from the start. My twins are 14 months old but if you adjust their age for their early birth they are only 10 months old. Developmentally they are probably somewhere in between 10 and 14 months.

I've been excited to mentor Chloe and Liam through core phase and watching for when they'd be ready to enjoy books with our family. We have a very strong culture of reading. Bookshelves stuffed with books are in every room of our home. We don't have a TV in our living/family room so there is nothing to do in there but talk or play with others, or read. I find Isabel at various times and places throughout the day curled up with a picture book or trying hard to read a few words in a chapter book. Whenever I'm not taking care of basic care and feeding of my family I'm reading to myself or with someone else, most often Isabel. So the twins have grown up seeing that reading is what people do.

We have a shelf of much-loved board books that the twins know they can play with. They've recently seemed to be bored with these and have been very persistently exploring the other shelves in there reach where picture books and chapter books live. Now that they can pull to standing, there universe has grown dramatically. My first inclination was to protect the books from the twins. Both of them like to tear and chew paper. But I've noticed that often, if I will just take whatever book they have and show it to them, slowly turning the pages, describing the pictures, and letting them feel the pages, that will satisfy their curiosity. I've tried to remember when I started reading picture books to Isabel and I can't. I know I read a few of them to her when she was as young as 6 months old. I don't know how old she was when she started bringing them to me to read. I just know we've read hundreds and hundreds of picture books.

Today instead of redirecting Chloe from the picture book she was exploring I sat her in my lap and read it to her. She was so happy. She reached out to touch a page occasionally but otherwise she was perfectly still in my lap and seemed very interested in what I was reading. Liam on the other hand, was initially interested and sat down with us but within 2 pages he was crawling back to the forbidden bookshelves trying to take down a book and "play" (in the roughest sense of the word) with it. This including shaking the book, trying to bend and tear pages, and mouthing it. I took the book away from him and tried to engage him in listening to the book I was reading to Chloe but of course, he just fought his way back to the forbidden bookshelf. Soon after, Isabel came to the room with an overstuffed toy animal, bigger than the twins, that we call "fat lamby" and when Liam saw it he begged Isabel to let him play with it (Liam doesn't say a whole lot but he can do really compelling puppy dog eyes and combined with some vigorous bouncing and whining it's not hard to figure out what he wants). She consented and Liam began wrestling with "fat lamby", one of our family's favorite things to watch. Chloe continued to sit with me while I read 5 books and then she decided to go play.

I have friends with boys and I've read a lot of things about the differences in the way they play and learn so I wasn't surprised by this morning's experience but it was fascinating to see it play out with my own kids. I know many of Isabel's friends that are boys spend far more time playing with blocks and legos than reading and she wants to spend at least half her day being read to. I won't be surprised if I see something similar with Chloe and Liam.

Dave Barry's Year in Review

This article by Dave Barry still has me laughing. He is clever. I'm reading "The 4th Turning" right now which I couldn't stop thinking of while I read Barry's article.