Gorillas in the Couch

We've been on a Magic Tree House run these last few days: Tigers at Twilight, Afternoon in the Amazon, and Good Morning Gorillas. Yes, the theme is animals--they've been making zoos, drawing animal pictures to make a book, and then, yesterday, acted like gorillas. And I was the Mommy Gorilla, in charge of knit-picking (literally!), supplying leaves and berries, and leading the gorilla charge of chest-thumping, pounding the ground, and hooting if an invader like a black leopard (or domestic cat) appeared. We roamed our African rainforest, from downstairs to up, carpet to couches to beds. The Magic Tree House is, in more ways than one . . . .

Reading Magic: "The Magic Bunk Bed"

There is something inherently magical about playing outside in the backyard after dark, expanding your imagination in the waning light while testing your bravery against the boundaries of the light cast by the deck light. And so we have spent twilight and the first hour of darkness the last several days playing happily in the yard in unseasonable warm weather.

Their favorite game right now? Magic Bunk Bed, inspired by the chapter books we read in the Magic Tree House series. The so-called bunk bed is actually the fort in their swingset; I'm not sure where they got the idea to call it a bunk bed. But they climb up into the fort, spin the captain's wheel, and wish themselves where they want to go (when I'm invited to come, I sit on the bottom of the slide for a ride!). They've been to China, Australia, both poles, and Scotland. The poles are their favorites, north for the polar bears, south for the penguins. They gather big handfuls of leaves and feed the animals. A big second is Scotland, where they've decided the faeries live; they go there to build more faerie houses. Upcoming in their travel plans? Outer space and Texas, maybe dinosaurs or Egypt. With their imaginations, they can go anywhere . . . .

Reading Magic: Civil War Sunday

We're on a Magic Tree House reading roll here in the Hungry household. In just a few days we've enjoyed the books about Pompeii, the prairie, the SF earthquake, and the Civil War, often in just one sitting. And of those, it is Civil War on Sunday that has the kids most excited. It's not an easy book--slaves, war, injuries--but they took to it even though I'm pretty sure they don't quite understand much of that.

And so we've been playing Civil War, with their igloos suddenly turned into medical tents. A large part of the book surrounded Clara Barton's nursing work and so the kids are rescuing the wounded in our coffeetable "wagon" and then fixing them up. That is, after Bud has shot his cannons to wound them in the first place. Yippee. But I figure suppressing this kind of play only makes it more attractive so guns, cannons, battles, and war have entered the kids' repertoire. Hey, at least it's the healing part of it that most appeals to them.

And Again And Again And Again!

Well, chapter books have taken off over here. With the possibility of reading the first half of Sunset of the Sabertooth, in the Magic Tree House series, since Mama was running a little late, my kids were brushed, dressed, and in bed thirty minutes early. They knew they got 5 chapters and eagerly announced each one.

They seemed only slightly disturbed that we had skipped from #1 to #7, mainly because those were the two topics that Mama and I thought most likely to interest them. Lucky, there was a prologue that caught us all up on everything--it will probably be best to read them in order from now on though. So, I'll get my hands on #2-6.

Sis was so excited and intrigued that she barely noticed Mama come home, only stopping to fill Mama in on the plot. Which she explained rather succinctly. Then she took the book to her bed and studied the pictures in the last five chapters just to see what's coming up (and because in her book the pictures are still extremely important). I could just see her, not too many years from now, curled up with a flashlight under her covers! Meanwhile, Bud recounted the story in the dinosaur book to Mama.

Only problem with all this: after 5 more chapters, were out of books!

Read It Again, Mom!

One chapter book down, thousands to go . . .

We just finished reading The Magic Tree House Series: Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne, our first intentional foray into chapter books. We looked at the cover and guessed what it could be about based on the pictures, we studied how the book was set up with a table of contents listing 10 chapters, and then started reading.

And read straight through to the end, 60-some odd pages later, a very few of them illustrated. There were a few questions, a few stops to summarize, but mostly we just plowed right through, with Bud announcing each chapter's number. I tried to make it interesting with different voices and such. They guessed each dinosaur based on the clues before it was named. The T-Rex was Bud's favorite part. I think Sis liked how the tree house would spin to travel back in time, which they found fascinating.

And so, we'll keep going. Though I'm not sure if we should read them in order or choose our favorite subjects. I'm going to have to check (there seems to be a continuation to the next book but I don't know how important it is). Was it better than picture books? Actually, the narrative was compelling but there was no moral--just pure fun with lots of facts, which is just fine. And it was long. Like, I wouldn't "read it again" today. But I'd read another tomorrow . . .