When is the last time you explored the library with your children? Books are a great alternative to watching TV, and if shared with the family you can grow together and have greater control over the content than you can ever get with television.
Take a trip to the library and share the books you loved as a child. Let them show you their favorites. If you don’t run out of time from all the sharing, you will want to look for some books that are new to you both. Ask the librarian to show you the latest popular titles, or to suggest titles you and your children might like.
If your children are old enough to listen to a chapter a day from a children’s novel or chapter book, I highly recommend checking some out. There are so many to choose from. One of my treasured memories is listening to my mother read Tom Sawyer to my brothers and sister and me when we were in elementary school. She also read from A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson from time to time. I wish we had done this more often.
Try the following resource (link) for finding good children’s books, with both old and new titles:
A late addition to this post… I just discovered a great podcast with children’s book writers telling their experiences about going to the library as children. From Katie Davis’ Kid Lit website…
http://katiedavis.com/blog/podcast/2011/04/podcast-39-library-love-2/
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