Read-Aloud Record, 2014

List of novels, chapter books, novellas and dedicated story collections read through the year with J1, from age 3.75 to age 4.75.

Looking back: 2003 reading list is here.

Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang	Mordecai Richler		Better for six-year-olds?
Catwings	Ursala K. LeGuin
The Hotel Cat (New York Review Children's Collection)	Esther Averill
The Kingfisher Treasury of Stories for Four Year Olds	Edward and Nancy Blishen		We prefer the Corrin-edited, Faber-published age-level story books to the Blishen-edited volumes, but it’s good to have alternatives.
The Boxcar Children	Gertrude Chandler Warner		Primer-style language. An exciting, age-appropriate story, but like Beginner Books, better suited for emerging readers than for reading aloud.
Many Moons	James Thurber
The Reluctant Dragon	Kenneth Grahame		Michael Hague illustrations.
Comet in Moominland	Tove Jansson
The Children of Noisy Village	Astrid Lindgren
The Great Quillow	James Thurber		Doris Lee illustrations. Usual Thurber weirdness and wonderful language.
Tell Me a Story: A Collection for Under-Fives (Young Puffin Books)	Eileen Colwell (compiler)		Solid. Looking forward to read the other three volumes in the box set in coming years.
Owls in the Family	Farley Mowat		Terrific. Will seek out more Mowat.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz	L. Frank Baum		Mostly Librivox audiobook, some chapters read by me. So glad we had a facsimile edition in the house--pictures are terrific.
My Side of the Mountain	Jean Craighead George
A Toad for Tuesday	Russell Erickson		A child-appropriate thriller.
Kashtanka.	Anton Chekov		William Stobbs illustrations. Ultimately heart-breaking but the kid didn't track the details enough to mind.
The Complete Brambly Hedge	Jill Barklem		These deserve to be better known in the States--lovely!
The Teddy Robinson Storybook	Joan G. Robinson		Adorable and so warm. Get omnibus/treasury?
26 Fairmount Avenue	Tomie De Paola		Terrific. Perfect for age level. Will read the sequels.
Caroline and Her Kettle Named Maud	Miriam E. Mason		J loved this. Perfect age-level and interest level for a TK/Kinder boy, with bonus feminism and history for me. “Mom, I’m going outside to look for four-leaf clovers near gray rocks so I can find seven and put them under my pillow and wish for a gun.”

  

Ameliorating Math Anxiety

"One way to keep tension is to be aware of it. I told the math class that to let something go by in class without knowing what it means, and without saying anything, is like leaving something in Howard Johnson's on a long car trip. You are going to have to go back eventually, so the sooner the better. The foolish metaphor has helped the kids, or so they say. They have learned to recognize, if only a little, the feeling of panicky confusion that slowly gets hold of them. To be able to say, 'I'm getting left at Howard Johnson's' how them to control this feeling, and if it gets too much for them they can always tell me they have been left behind; then I can do something about picking them up."

--Holt, John, How Children Fail, p 42