Bedtime reading

I haven't really been keeping good track of this so far except in my head, but wanted to start with this post. Last Fall I picked up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to read to the kids at bedtime. Then we read Prince Caspian. Then we read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We read "Lucy" most nights, but it remained a privilege and sometimes we didn't get to read if someone was throwing food across the table at dinner. Now we are reading Charlotte's Web, and Jacob is loving it. He gets excited whenever Templeton is mentioned, and I have proven that it is hard to keep up different voices for all the characters as the nights go on. Jacob's favorite part by far was when Charlotte and Wilbur had their discussion about the greeting of "Salutations!" being a nice way to say hello to someone. Often before we read he will sit in our laps and very hopefully say "Maybe they will say 'Salutations' tonight?"

We also read scriptures with our kids at bedtime, too, and while it might take us a good 3 years to get through the Book of Mormon at our current rate, it's pretty important for kids to be familiar with the language of the scriptures as well as the stories therein.

Why read novels with toddlers when you spend a while every day reading picture books, too? It's just fun, of course, and it was something I became passionate about when I was working on my graduate degree, but there are other reasons. Borrowing from Jim Trelease's book The Read-Aloud Handbook (Chapter 1):

We read to children for all the same reasons we talk with children: to reassure, to entertain, to bond; to inform or explain, to arouse curiosity, to inspire. But in reading aloud, we also:

• Condition the child’s brain to associate reading with pleasure
• Create background knowledge
• Build vocabulary
• Provide a reading role model