With Emily now a bit older than four years old, I have gotten extremely tired of reading children’s books to her. Now, this does not mean that I am tired of reading to her. While stories like the Berenstain Bears, Curious George, and the Golden Books are fantastic compared to most of the children’s books that have been written, I have read all of the ones we own to Emily (and that is a lot of those books). So, starting this week, I have decided to rebel. Over Christmas, we brought back a lot of Ashley’s old story books from her parent’s house. This included ten or so of the Great Illustrated Classics. So, this week, I picked up Heidi and began to read it to Emily. At first, I was a little worried about how she would deal with that, because my daughter is very opinionated, especially with regards to the story she listens to at bedtime. However, she seems to really be enjoying Heidi so far. We are reading 3–4 chapters a night, with each chapter being 10–15 pages each, with illustrations every other page. Once we get through the classics we have, I may look at introducing her to Nancy Drew, since Ashley and her Mom have collected virtually every Nancy Drew known to man and we have them all stashed in Emily’s room.
I also have a goal to get Emily off of her Disney movie obsession. We have watched about half of My Fair Lady and she likes that so far, so I am going to let her watch the original movie version starring Rex Harrison. After we finish reading Heidi, I am going to show her the Shirley Temple version of the movie. This won’t break her of the Mouse, but it will expose her to other classic films that will not drive me nuts to watch.
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I remember how much she loved watching the Sound of Music here at our house! She is such a smart, inquisitive little girl. She will love the classics and probably understand most of what you are reading. Don’t forget to read her A Christmas Carol at Christmas time.!