The Good Books. Alice in Wonderland.

We are continuing with our "Good Books" list and have finally come to reading Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. This was one of my favorite books as a child and I still have many of the poetry from the book memorized! I'm hoping that the kids will like it as much as I did.

Although I provide a link to Amazon under our First Grade Reading List on the left. I decided to go with the Junior Library's version that is illustrated by John Tenniel. You can find it on Amazon.com here.

I'm having the kids color some of the illustrations from the book as well. I found these on the Project Gutenberg website and I think they are wonderful! They are not copyrighted, so you are free to print them out freely, copy them, pass them out...whatever!

Easy to print out illustrations can also be found here.

If you want to read this great book and not stop at just the reading...here are several websites that will help you make whole lessons out of the book! I'm planning on using them as well.

Alice in Wonderland-An Interactive Adventure!
An audio version of Alice in Wonderland.
The Poems in Alice in Wonderland.

Happy Reading!!!!

**Also note that there is an Alice in Wonderland movie coming out in March of 2010 directed by Tim Burton (one of my favorites!). It will star, unsurprisingly, Johnny Depp!!

Collection Complete. Before Five in a Row.

Today I completed my collection of books for Before Five in a Row. I figured that these books are worth having since all my kids enjoy them so much. I initially wanted to do the program with Anthony, but am now having Isabella join in. Marco still loves the stories as well and I plan to revisit them all again when Christian is old enough to start "school."

Searching for many of these books is like going on a treasure hunt. Since there are 5 books that are out of print, you really have to be diligent about searching. My final book purchase was My Blue Boat by Chris L. Demarest. Now that I'm done collecting, I'll just guard the books with my life!

Following is a list of all the wonderful books that make up the curriculum of Before Five in a Row.


Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by Nancy W. Carlstrom
Yellow Ball, by Molly Bang
My Blue Boat, by Chris L. Demarest
The Little Rabbit, by Judy Dunn
Ask Mr. Bear, by Marjorie Flack
Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey
Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown
The Big Green Pocketbook, by Candice Ransom
The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown
The ABC Bunny, by Wanda Gag
If Jesus Came to My House, by Joan Gale Thomas
Caps for Sale, by Esphyr Slobodkina
The Carrot Seed, by Ruth Krauss
The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats
The Quiet Way Home, by Bonny Becker
Play With Me, by Marie Hall Ets
Prayer for a Child, by Rachel Field
I Am an Artist, by Pat L. Collins
Angus Lost, by Marjorie Flack
Katy No-Pocket, by Emmy Payne
We're Going on a Bear Hunt, by Michael Rosen
The Red Carpet, by Rex Parkin
Corduroy, by Don Freeman
Jenny's Surprise Summer, by Eugenie

On Our Reading List.

We'll be reading these books over the next 2 weeks as part of our scheduled school including Anthony's BFIAR selections. This list does not include free time reading books.

"Good Books" Literature Schedule.

It seems like I have 16 "Good Books" to go through for both kindergarten and first grade. How do I accomplish this without overkill? I DON'T KNOW!! But what I'm planning is to split up the reading time throughout the day. I'll do 1 hour total for both grades with 30 minutes in the morning for first grade and 30 minutes in the afternoon for kindergarten. I actually don't think that 16 books is too much to do in the course of one year. This is especially true since some of the books on our list are only compilations of stories.

For these compilations, such as the fairy books by Andrew Lang, I'll just be picking a few stories from each book. We are pretty familiar with so many fairy tales and nursery rhymes that I don't think the kids will be missing out on anything.

I created the following table as a simple way to keep track of what books we are reading when. It will serve as a very basic schedule. Since I don't know how long it will take us to get through any particular book, I decided against setting deadlines. I want to make sure that we take our time, especially since we'll be doing book reports on each book (simple narrations on what the book is about) as part of the Angelicum lesson plans.

Kindergarten	First Grade
Perrault's Complete Fairy Tales	Crimson Fairy book
Favorite Uncle Remus	Just So Stories
Orange Fairy Book	Water Babies
Wind in the Willows	Grey Fairy Book
Household Stories	Jungle Book
Brown Fairy Book	Aesop
Green Fairy Book	Alice's Adventure in Wonderland
Pinocchio	Free Reading
Treasury of Mother Goose	Free Reading