#5 of Kaylynn's Top Ten

#5 is brought to you by:

BOOKS

Now, we've mentioned on here a jillion times how much Kaylynn loves to read. Did we mention that she LOVES to read? No? She does. We own at least 100 books, and she can name most of them. She may not call them the correct name, but she knows what the story is about.

We started reading to Kaylynn very early on. As she got older, her attention span grew shorter, so we only got through the short books, like "Wet Pet, Dry Pet" or "One Fish, Two Fish" (the baby board book version). Now, as she's gotten even older, she's starting to sit through books with a significant amount of words, like "Green Eggs and Ham" and "If You Give a Cat a Cookie".

It's hard to say what her favorite book is. I think it's pretty cyclical. What is a favorite one night, might be tomorrow's trash. She and Daddy have a nighttime ritual of book reading. He can hold up a book and ask if she wants to read this one, and she'll respond with "No Canada" (for "Goodnight, Canada"), "No Itsy Bitsy" (for the "Itsy Bitsy Spider"), No "Friends" (for "God Made Me Special", and so on. She has her own name for most books.

And she's really getting something out of these books. She knows what they are, and what they are about, and has a lot of them memorized. She has one book about monsters (thank you $1 bin at Target...seriously, I've gotten a lot of her books from that bin) called "Grumpy Frumpy" and is about opposites. We'll do this bit where I say "right side up" and she says the next page "upside down". Then she'll say "gru frumpy frumpy" (grumpy frumpy) and I'll say the next page "happy snappy!" In "Goodnight Moon" (another favorite), she knows what the old lady whispers (hush). She also knows when the little mouse appears and where (i.e. by the fireplace, on the table by the mush, etc.).

But the best is "Goats". See, her Daddy has this old reader from 1st or 2nd grade (I had the same one when I was in that grade, too!). He kept it because his favorite story was "The Three Billy Goats Gruff". Well, he decided to read it to Kaylynn one night. He got into it, using voices for the goats and the troll. It quickly rose to the top of her list. Since it's a reader book, it has more than just that one story. She will flip through it, looking for goats. Sometimes, in the carseat, I will hear her telling herself the story. "Trip trap, trip trap, trip trap. Who's going on bridge? I'm gonna eat you up." She uses the troll's deep voice and everything!

I really believe that all the reading we've done through her two years have really helped with her vocabulary. I've said that many times already, I know, but it's so true! I hope her love of books continues, so that one day, I can pull out my old "Babysitters Club" books for her to read.