Last week, I shared some “must read” classic picture books to read aloud to young children. (And I missed a few...Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things that Go was one of them!)

This week, I’d like to share some classic chapter book read alouds for kids and parents to enjoy.

Are you ready for a little longer reading aloud experience for your kids? Perhaps you love picture books but are interested in something with continuity that will keep your kids coming back for more every afternoon or for a bedtime routine.

Reading aloud was one of my favorite parts of homeschooling my kids. We connected and bonded as a family as we journeyed together through the lives of favorite book characters and traveled to places and times beyond our own experience...

 Recently I was asked by a conscientious young mom what I would recommend for a “must read” list of children’s literature.  What are some classic books every child should read, and every family can enjoy reading aloud together?

I remember wanting a checklist  like that when I was a young mom. It is so frustrating to read something poorly written, boring, or questionable to my kids. Worse yet, it is gut-wrenching to read a book where you actually sense a message you don’t want your kids to absorb. 

Back in the pre-internet days, I primarily used three resources to choose good read alouds for my kids: The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease, the Rainbow Resource Catalog, and the Sonlight Curriculum read aloud lists. I also drew on my own favorites from childhood plus whatever my friends recommended. Libraries also had some lists I occasionally found helpful.

The internet has made the search more accessible, but also more overwhelming. My favorite resource besides Sonlight lists is the...

Want a fun way to inspire kids' imaginations this week? How about creating a time machine?

Do you ever close your eyes and wish you were in your favorite spot? Like, say, a beach location or a place nearer to home that you love to visit? That exercise itself is valuable--it may help you relax and it reduces stress.
If you take it a step further and imagine yourself in a new, yet-to-be-discovered place, or a place you are inventing in your mind, then you begin to also involve your imagination and to work your brain in a new way. And maybe, imagining something and dreaming about it can also spark an adventure or even an invention.

Ask kids the questions, "Where in the world would you like to go?" and "When in time would you travel if you could go visit any time or place?"

Let’s spark your kids’ creativity by helping them draw a machine that can take them, oh, I don’t know…anywhere. What’s more, let’s make it into a machine that will take them anyplace, too! Wouldn’t it be fun to “draw”...

While I like cats and was very excited about drawing cats, I actually don’t own one and never will. Both my husband and I are allergic to cats so our eyes and noses quickly alert us when one is in a closed room. However, I enjoy reading about them and drawing them. This week we will create a cute cat collage.

The first cat Mike and I found on our trip to Italy was sitting outside (thankfully!) on our balcony in the town of Assisi. It was a beautiful gray and white striped tabby cat with green eyes. Tabby is a kind of cat with distinctive stripes on its forehead, body, and tail. 

Another cat can be found in a tapestry in the Vatican. I don't remember seeing this tapestry, but I probably walked past it! It was woven between 1524 and 1531. The artist chose to put a cat and dog at the feet of the table in the story of Jesus at Emmaus.

Most kids that come to Storygalorey tell me about their interesting pets-or the pets they wish they had. Kids especially love their cats and dogs. That’s why, when Mike and I were on a recent trip to Italy, I was on the lookout for cats. Amid the magnificent art, the ancient buildings, and the fascinating people, I had read that Italians like cats and protect them and that I might encounter lots of them. “Kids would love this,” I thought. So I brought cat photos back to you and we are going to read and do art with cats this month.

If you are new to Storygalorey, you need to know that we almost always start art creation with a good book. Reading to kids inspires creativity and comprehension skills, as well as increases the bond between reader and child. Just for fun, pick up this popular Caldecott Medal winning book and read it to your kids: They all Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel. 

You will want to read and reread this book to take in the intriguing way the book is illustrated and t...

Map making is a great skill for kids to develop: As they learn about maps, they are growing:

1. In spatial awareness
2. Their understanding of their place in the world related to everything else
3. Their ability to think in the abstract 
4. Their creative abilities by imagining and drawing their own maps
5. Their fine motor skills as they draw and color maps 

It’s fun to draw maps of places kids are familiar with, like their bedrooms or their street. But it is also important to encourage kids to dream of faraway places they may have never seen and to be able to put those places down on paper. Your child might invent an imaginary place that no one except your child knows about. Your child may draw a treasure map and put lots of fun markers pointing the way.

One of my daughters loved her imaginary country of “Tearaki,” which she drew maps of and populated with her own characters and landmarks. 

When you think about it, all authors who create fictional stories in fictional worlds must have a...

Have you ever noticed those pretty circleish-star shapes with the directions on them in the corner of a flat map? They are called compass roses. They can be very elaborate or simple, but they help orient the reader of the map to which direction places exist in relationship to each other. The concept of direction can be described to kids as the relationship of one object to another. On a flat map or a globe, you can show them north, south, east, and west. The symbol on a map that reminds us of these cardinal directions is called a compass rose.

The first decorated compass rose, according to Wikipedia, was found on a map in 1375 by cartographer Abraham Cresques. 

Help your child draw a beautiful decorated compass rose by reading a story first to introduce them to the idea. 

The Boy Who Loved Maps, by Kari Allen and G. Brian Karas, is a story about an imaginative boy and his friend who worked together to create the perfect map. I love this line from the book: “He made maps of the far...

There I was, sitting in our new 1985 Nissan Sentra, aged 22 and married all of twenty-four hours. I was full of optimism and giddy enthusiasm. Mike was driving, and I held the map. Full of complicated folds and teeny tiny lines, it was a puzzle to figure out. Thankfully, I could do it-because somewhere along the line, I’d learned to read a map. We made it all the way to our North Carolina honeymoon, and thirty-eight years later, I still get excited about road trips with my husband-- and reading maps.

You never know when maps will come in handy on an adventure, so it’s important to help your kids learn how to read them. Besides that, maps can aid kids in developing a mental picture of their place in the world, be it in their home, church, city, or country.

Today’s picture book about maps, Footsteps on the Map, by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Osaka Drachkovska, is interesting because it tells of two kids starting at different places and meeting in the middle.

That’s a fun concep...

My husband and I love to watch Amazing Race, where people travel all over the world completing challenges. We always feel frustrated (along with the competitors!) when they get hopelessly lost on the way to their next destination.  I actually have a terrible sense of direction, but I was taught to read a map, so I feel somewhat more secure when I have one in my hand and find myself wandering around in a new city. 

Is it even important for kids to learn to read maps anymore? Why teach your kids to read maps when they’ll have smart phones with GPS to do it for them?

It’s important for them to know how to read a map because obviously, technology sometimes fails us. We hit a “dead” spot or our phone dies.

If you know how to follow a map, you have a picture of where you are and how to get to your destination.

If you know how to follow a map, you know what the GPS means.

If you know how to follow a map, you can lead others and help them where they need to go.

According to PBS Kids, “T...