One of my favorite childhood memories is from one winter when all our family (mom, dad, me, and my younger brother) got a nasty flu and stayed home for a week or so. We were all feeling miserable, the four of us lying and resting in our parents' bed... it wasn't the best of times. Until my dad came up with the idea of a family read-aloud - and my mom chose a book for the occasion, and a great book at that - "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson. All of a sudden, our miserable week was transformed. Mom and dad took turns reading, for 20 minutes or so at a time - they were also sick, after all! - and my brother and I listened and talked about the adventures of Jim and his friends and the pirates between the reads-aloud. In his beautiful poem "Block City" Stevenson described this sweeping feeling of a child's imagination running wild during imaginary games: What are you able to build with your blocks? Castles and palaces, temples and docks. Rain may k
Swan Lake Musical Sound Book (story by Lesley Sims, illustrations by Anna Luraschi) I didn't get into listening to classical music until I was old... er 😅 and I think it was a bit of a miss in my education as a child. That's why I'm especially passionate about including music (any music! But especially classical music) in early childhood education of my own kids, and of course also in our story circles. In the BBC Music Magazine article "How can I get my child into classical music?" Hannah Nepilova explores best ways to make children interested in and introduced to the classical music. According to Nepilova, one of the best ways to do that is to listen to music while telling a story. This makes a lot of sense since typically, as caregives and educators, we already have a habit of telling stories with our kids, so adding a habit of playing music while telling a story is really easy, especially if we have a good sound book handy. Many class