In the maelstrom that is two children asking questions at the same time, the washing machine running, the dinner cooking (but still needing some attention), sometimes words emerge that go WAY back. Sometimes they come out at bedtime, when the noise level has gone down, and there’s a slight chance that you can hear your …
Author archives: alison
Lit Kid: books with counting
Cometh the reader, cometh the reading preferences. Which is fair enough really – and it keeps it fresh for the adult narrator too. Junior Reader could be relied on to spot rhymes. Sometimes to guess a rhyme before I’d read it. Or to fill in the gaps where I left a space. Mini Reader is …
In the time it takes to cook an egg
It’s that mad dash to put food on the table in the evening. Back from a sports class, small people’s need to eat – and their limited patience while food is cooking – mean it needs to be quick. Mini and Junior aren’t entirely reading off the same menu at the moment. That’s OK. Tea …
Lit Kid: books with holes in
I’m not here to encourage you to get the scissors out (and you’d have a hard time doing so with board books). But I am being reacquainted with certain categories of books, following in the wake of Mini Reader, who has some very definite ideas about what makes a good book. One with holes in, …
Drawing breath
There’s a wild dance out there called the summer holidays. (And yes, it’s the footslog through the trenches too, depending on how long the holidays are near you.) Every summer is different, I’ve found. One year, the kids need lots of structure – like going swimming every morning, so that you have something at the …