Keep 'em Reading

I keep reading tweets, blogposts, and general comments asking for suggestions and offering advice on how to keep kids interested in reading over the summer. I just can't participate in those discussions. Why? Because I don't think I could keep my girls from reading this summer! Any time there is a lull in activity around here, I can almost always count on finding them curled up with a book. Right now it's Little House on the Prairie books. Olivia just finished her second reading of the series, and Angela is a book or two behind Olivia on her first read-through. They love reading them and then pretending that Olivia is Mary and Angela is Laura - with "Laura" helping take care of "Mary" since "Mary" is blind. It's such fun to watch and listen! They have one book in the expanded series of Little House characters, and we're hoping to add more books to that collection. In the meantime, I think they're just bound and determined to wear out the original set. We've had to tape the binding on all of the books. What a delightful thing - to wear out books from so much reading!

I went to look for the girls in a quiet moment yesterday, and this is what I found...

(Yes, that is Angela inside her toybox reading. Olivia would probably be in hers if she could fit!)

Then there is this week's mystery. One afternoon this week after Steven had been coloring and cutting, the girls carried these two slips of paper to me to show me Steven's writing! I honestly did not believe them...I still find it rather hard to believe that Steven wrote these a's. But, the girls insist that they didn't, and Steven says he did! I still consider it a mystery...