Books we've been reading

Jason usually keeps a list of books he's read over the years. It's kind of neat to look back and see how much you've read. So I thought I'd start doing the same for me and the kids.

Today I finished Talkers, Watchers, and Doers by Cheri Fuller. Excellent book on how to figure out what your child's learning strengths are and how to cater and supplement those strengths (and inherent weaknesses) to make learning not frustrating. It was an easy read and I'll probably end up buying it just to have on hand since it had tons of ideas in it on how to make learning more fun that I would never think of. I learned I am a "talker". My strength is definitely auditory, then heavily visual. You never would have guessed, right?! It's so obvious since I'm doing this blog :)

I think Bekah is the same as me: auditory but visual comes in a close second. I think James is going to be visual since he is so observant and loves to just watch what's going on around him. For Jason--even when we do personality/color tests he seems to have a little bit of everything and I think the same is true here, although he doesn't have that need to hear himself talk to figure things out like I do. He definitely has some "doer" or kinesthetic in him. But since he might read this sometime, I'll leave it open for him to comment on.

Last month I finished reading an overview of Jean Piaget's work called Piaget's Theory of Intellectual Development by Ginsburg and Opper, recommended by Jason so I could start studying how children learn and how I can best supplement their education at home and over the summer. Very heavy reading, but it was very interesting to realize how our bodies and minds develop. I gained an appreciation for Piaget. Amazing person. By reading this I realized I would enjoy studying psychology since I love to figure out why people do the things they are doing and what they are thinking.

Bekah and I have been reading The Magic Treehouse series together by Mary Pope Osbourne. We love it! I don't know how long the series goes on, but it keeps getting better. We're on book #33 now. Bekah plays "Jack and Annie" all the time. We also started reading A to Z Mystery Series by Ron Roy. The main characters are Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose, and Bekah pretends to be Ruth Rose at times too. She's definietly in to mysteries, although has a tough time with anything with mummies in it. We just finished the M book: The Missing Mummy and she handled it much better than other books with mummies in them.

James loves his Good Night, Elmo! soft book. He loves to chew on the cloth toothbrush that's supposed to brush the star's teeth.

I won't even try to list what Jason's been reading lately because he reads so much for his major. But I did want to mention Bekah and I got Jason a cook book for his birthday. But not just any cook book--an Alton Brown cook book. His first, I think. It's called I'm Just Here for the Food. It's almost like a textbook on cooking with really good recipes in it. Jason really enjoys his show, Good Eats, on The Food Network and has been experimenting with Alton's recipes, so we think he'll enjoy reading this cook book.