Read This

Here's a link to a wonderful post about homeschooling and unschooling, about structure and habits and how it can all fit together. So thoughtfully and beautifully written.

The Homeschooling Habit at the wonder farm.

Bookmaking with Kids

Since I first learned how to write, I've always been interested in making books. In fact I still have some of my earliest projects. But with all the busyness of life, I've kind of forgotten about the possibilities for making books with my own kids -- until I found this site. Just take a look around. You'll love it, you'll be inspired, and you'll come away with lots of ideas to use with your kids or whole family.I can't wait to get started!

Bookmaking with Kids: For the Love of Reading, Writing & Art

Adventures of Riley

Here's my latest favorite easy non-fiction series: Adventures of Riley. This series takes you all over the world exploring different environments and touching on various environmental issues like the bleaching of coral reefs or the shrinking rain forests and talking about how you can make a difference. The stories are fun and it's an easy way for me to talk about different places and issues with my 4 and 5 year old. Plus, I love the pictures! Each page is a blend of photos and drawings so you see the real place or real animals along with the fictional characters and their adventures.

My New Planner!

Before I forget, I wanted to show you my new family planner. It just came in the mail yesterday and I already have it penciled up! It's called the BusyBodyBook and I love it! There's a two page spread for each week divided into three sections: "ToDoodles" which is just open space, a check-off list, and then a gridded section for planning activities or just general calendaring. Plus it's got pockets, calendars, a dates to remember section for birthdays etc..., tear out note paper, and it's cute to boot! Take a look for yourself! BusyBodyBook.

It's Getting Better!

And just when I was feeling a little discouraged, it's all turned around with Beck and now he's asking for his little learning sessions with us. I'm delighted, of course, since this is what I love. I love seeing his confidence build, I love seeing him gain skills, I love all the fun materials, and I love having this one-on-one time with Beck.

It's Official

Well. The school year officially started so we've also "officially" started with homeschooling. Official means that I now have a Partners in Education discount card at the University Book Store for 20% off on all purchases and we've started some more formal structured learning with Beck.

The truth is, it hasn't gone that well. Beck seems reluctant to try anything new - like holding a pencil correctly, for example. And it's been hard for me to figure out where I stand exactly on all of this. Part of me thinks we should just wait until he's asking to learn these basics and part of me thinks there isn't anything wrong with working together for a short time each day to practice some of these foundational skills. I guess we'll work it out as time goes on.

And the other part of our official start is that we're trying to do at least one activity a week with the Seattle Homeschool Group. We joined last spring and get the newsletter each month, but until now we haven't done much with the group. So last week we tried the "Not Back to School Picnic" which was a large and well attended gathering. Too large, really, if you ask me. We didn't connect with anyone and I just didn't have the energy to chase Ember, keep my eye on the boys, and walk up to complete strangers to introduce myself.

Yesterday we had more success. We went on a "Smallfolks Ramble" - a short hike in one of the nearby parks. There were only a handful of families and we all got a chance to mingle and chat along the trail. Plus the boys had a blast. Beck ran down the trail full tilt with another boy and Yogi plodded along in the middle of the pack with another 4 year old boy. They held hands most of the way. It was very cute!

Kindergarten

And here you can read about some of the many reasons we are not sending our kids to kindergarten.

From the article "Pressure-Cooker Kindergarten" in the Boston Globe

"Meanwhile, more and more children are “failing” kindergarten, according to the Alliance for Childhood report -- and missing out on the kind of early schooling that does help develop 5-year-old minds. Winifred Hagan is a former kindergarten teacher and a vice president at the Cayl Institute in Cambridge, a nonprofit that sponsors conferences for principals and fellowships for the study of early childhood education. She worries that vulnerable kids are being sent down a path to failure inside a system that was created to meet purely political goals. “Kids are spending hours of their day sitting with pencils and tracing dotted lines,” she says. “And we call that education? We are kidding ourselves.”

Not the best way to start with homeschooling

Here's what I found when I tried to put some books on hold just now:

Getting Started

Well, here we are: the last hot breaths of summer and in the next week or so all of my original mom friends have their oldest starting kindergarten. I keep flashing to this vision of all of us in track suits, arms high in the air celebrating our victory as we cross the finish line...We made it! And even though we're homeschooling I still have a little of that feeling, the feeling of crossing the threshold into a whole different phase. And I'm excited! I feel this awesome sense of relief knowing that I don't have to send Beck away and I love gathering up all my supplies and ideas and preparing our space downstairs as our workshop. I just can't help it. It's the teacher in me that likes all this stuff.

And I'm not sure how much we'll use it or how structured we'll end up being, but I have purchased some curriculum. Both boys expressed an interest in a math "workbook" so after reading a lot of reviews and comparing options I bought the beginning level of Math Mammoth. We also have a lot of manipulatives and I'm trying to gather together lots of different games where we can play with numbers.

I ordered the beginning package of Handwriting Without Tears. And I'm looking into some options for reading. Of course we read all the time and talk about words and letters, but Beck wants to R.E.A.D. so I'm going to do what I can to help him along the way.

Does this sound too much like "school at home"? I met some other homeschooling moms the other day who said they started out with a lot more structure than they ended up having. All I can say is that we're learning as we go.

A Space for Children

I checked out this book, Designs for Living and Learning and spent a few weeks looking at it this summer. First of all, it's a beautiful book to look at - full of glossy photos with explanations and interesting ideas for setting up a spaces where children spend time. It was actually written for people working in childcare or preschool environments, but since we're homeschooling I'm always interested in getting new ideas for our space here at home.

And I especially liked a "preschool assessment" list included in the back of the book. It's a list of things to look for in a preschool environment, but it's a nice reminder of what to consider including in the space where your own children are at home. (I'm only including the items that make sense for a home environment!)

1. I can see who I am and what I like to do here.

2. The natural world can be found here (such as objects from nature, animals, living specimens).

3. There is something sparkly, shadowy, or wondrous and magical here.

4. My [parents] leave a special object out here every day so I can keep trying to figure out more about its properties and how it works.

5. There are materials here that I can use to make representations from what I understand or imagine.

6. I can feel powerful and be physically active here.

7. I can learn to see things from different perspectives here, literally and through assuming roles in dramatic play.

8. I see my name written, or I get to regularly write my name here.

Easel Painting

Here are the boys with the new double-sided easel that Chris built. Right now they're just playing and experimenting with the paints and brushes, but in a few weeks I plan to start working through the exercises in Children and Painting which is the best book I've ever seen on the subject. I used it when I taught in the classroom and my students loved the projects and learned a lot about the basics of painting and of art.

I guess the boys figure that easel painting requires special attire because they both grabbed their "Dr. Nailbender" caps - a freebie from Dunn Lumber - and popped them on their heads before they started!

An Evening at the Zoo

A few weeks ago we packed a dinner picnic and headed to the zoo for the evening. When you live in a crowded urban area, you start to learn the best times to visit places and for us, evening is the best time at the zoo. Parking is a cinch, there are no lines to get in, and once we're there we almost have the place to ourselves. Plus we've learned that the zoo stays open for an hour after they stop letting anyone else in. And they feed the animals in the early evening so you often get a good show.

During this particular evening, we had an incredible time watching the elephants out in their yard. They were very active and doing all kinds of interesting things like drinking water, playing with balls, and breaking large sticks with their trunks. And we saw all of this with nobody else around!



Ember, who's usually so confident, was scared of the elephants. She completely freaked out.

Playstands

Now that our basement will be warm and cozy over the winter months, I've been thinking about what I'd like to see for the kids down there. My latest interest is in building a playstand. I love the simplicity and open-endedness of them. I think they're pretty, they can be used for so many different set-ups, and we don't have anything like it. You can buy these Waldorf inspired playstands at various places for about $100 each or about $300 for a pair of them joined by an archway, but Chris thinks we can build a set of our own for much less.

I found two places with free plans:

Against the Grain Carving has plans for the set pictured above.

And at Eric's Projects you can find free plans for a simpler version.

We also ordered plans for about $20.00 from Playstandplans.com which include full-sized patterns to trace and cut for the set pictured below:


I'll post photos on our progress and the final result!

The Neighborhood

I just read this article by Michael Chabon about the "lost wilderness" of childhood and it strung a chord with me. And while I agree that there's value in roaming the neighborhood without the constant monitoring of adults, that there's value in discovering your "place" and all it's secrets, hidden corners, alleyways, interesting gardens, houses under construction, noticing the way it all changes through the seasons -- I'd be worried to let my kids do it here.

On the other hand, we've been taking family walks together once a week and I'm delighted and amazed with all the exploration and discovery that goes on. It's a 26 minute walk that I usually take each evening by myself to get away from all the chaos, but with the family it can take up to 2 hours. The boys poke around, feel the bark curls on the Paper Birch trees, scoop up handfuls of cottonwood fluff to throw in the breeze, sample the blueberries just ripening on the neighbor's bushes, gaze at the lake and Mt. Rainier in the distance, and discuss Daddy's commute over the floating bridge and to the city of Bellevue beyond -- all which is part of the view on our walk. It's good stuff and when I see the boys in action, on foot and taking it all in, it reminds me how important this roaming around is -- even if Chris and I are along for the ride.

Powerful Words

I recently read parts of How Lincoln Learned to Read by Daniel Wolff. Here's a quote that caught my attention:

The argument that got the [common school funding] movement going again wasn't so much the nation's need for literacy or a unifying patriotism, but for obedience. What made a republic successful, Noah Webster wrote, was "a singular machinery...which takes the child as soon as he can speak, checks his natural independence and passions, makes him subordinate to superior age, to the laws of the state, to town and parochial institutions." It was like religion: a child had to be taught to answer to higher authority.

Our Classrooms Last Week

How Children Fail

I just finished my latest John Holt book called How Children Fail and I thoroughly enjoyed it. After years of teaching in my own classroom, I related to SO MUCH of what he had to say. One thought that was new to me was the idea that school can actually lead to misunderstanding, more confusion, less confidence in your own ability to reason, the slow destruction of common sense.

Of course I always knew that school lumbers along at a slow and boring pace, that it's disjointed and interrupted and disconnected from "real life". But I hadn't really considered how damaging it can be - not just to one's self esteem, but to one's ability to learn. I think that I've always assumed that the really confused kids just weren't very bright. Now I wonder how much school and teachers and all the nonsensical busywork impacted their confusion.

The other thing that I'll take from this book is how powerful it is to be a careful observer of learning and of misunderstanding. I think Holt refers to it as plumbing the depths of their misunderstanding - something that teachers rarely, if ever, have time to do for individual students.

And finally, what made me laugh was that this book was written in the 1960's! It could've been written today. It's all still completely relevant.

Time Goes By series

The Time Goes By series is my newest find at the library. These aren't the typical look and find books, although there are things listed to find on each page. And the pictures don't have the map-like quality of Roxie Munro's books. Instead, this series brings you to a place which you get to experience over a passage of time: A Day in a City, A Day at an Airport, A Year in a Castle, etc...

The illustrations are of the same view, but change on each page spread as time goes by and lots of things happen! They are packed with details: some pictures have cut-away walls so you can see inside of buildings, they contain lots of little stories that you follow visually, there are some people who show up only once, and others that appear throughout the day, and each page has a "follow the action" key on the sidebar illuminating the time and where it fits in.
Here is the complete list of titles.

Our Homeschooling Journey

It looks like we won't be enrolling Beck in the Homeschool Resource Center after all. At least not for the beginning of next year. You have to complete an 8 week (one hour per week) class and it just got too complicated trying to figure out childcare and rides to preschool on the mornings I would've been in the class. Now I'm thinking that we'll re-visit that idea next spring when both Beck and Yogi are school-aged. And that'll give me a year of doing our own thing and finding our way with it all.

I did manage to attend a "parents' night out" with our local homeschooling group. I was a little nervous, but found everyone to be very welcoming. Like I said on Homecake, it felt like I found "my people" and that's a good feeling.

Bananagrams

I've seen Banangrams in stores for awhile now, and a few weeks ago I finally got a set thinking that I'd put it on the shelf until my kids could read and spell words. And then after seeing all those cute little letter tiles, I decided that they'd be just the thing for my boys to play with now!

My first thought was to put out just the letters necessary to make words within a certain word group: tan, man, van, ran, etc... with the hope that they'd come up with the words. Instead, they immediately dumped my little sorted basket out and mixed them in with all the other letters. They quickly found the tiles to spell their own names and then began setting them up in tiny domino lines. So much for spelling out the "_an" words!

Now I have all the letters dumped into a larger basket and they help themselves to it as they wish. I still find myself wanting them to work on making words, but I'm convinced it's better not to push it at all - or at least I'm willing to see what happens with no "teaching" on my part.

Here's a quote I read in How Children Fail by John Holt last night that relates to this constant struggle I have in wanting to teach:

"But it is just as true of intelligence as it has always been true of school subjects that teaching --"I know something you should know and I'm going to make you learn it" -- is above all else what prevents learning.

We don't have to make human beings smart. They are born smart. All we have to do is stop doing the things that make them stupid.

Ingenious teachers, "gifted" teachers, teachers who are good at thinking up new and better ways to teach things, can do just about as much harm to their students as the teachers who are content to plug along with the standard workbooks and teachers' manuals. These gifted teachers can't stop teaching. They are like someone who tries to help a friend start a car by giving it a push. He grunts and strains, the car gets rolling, the engine catches are begins to run. The driver says, "It's going now, you can let go." But the pusher won't let go. "no, no," he says, "you can't go without me, the car won't go unless I keep pushing." So the car, now ready to run at full speed, is held back - unless the driver want to break free and leave the helper on his face in the road. And most learners, children above all, can't break free of their teachers."

Searching for Cactus

We just returned from a week in Death Valley and it was a wonderful adventure with the kids. I love taking them out into wild places. I love how easily entertained they are. I love seeing them explore and discover and get comfortable outside. It really is so deeply satisfying. Is it because this is what I love so much? Or is it seeing them so occupied without any material things, no toys, no legos, no stuff.

Anyway, at one point after a hike, Chris pulled our rented mini van over to the side of the road so we could look more closely at some cactus plants. I thought about encouraging them to get out and have a look, but the boys were tired from our hike and whined about getting out. I said we'd be just a minute and right there near the car anyway.

Sure enough, after a few minutes they unbuckled themselves to see what we were looking at. Then they wanted to find their own examples of the plants. Both boys pointed things out with great excitement and took their time looking at the spines and comparing the varieties of cactus. It was perfect. And a good lesson for me in letting them take the lead.

Homeschool Resource Center

Well, we're thinking about signing Beck up for the Homeschool Resource Center in a neighboring school district. Some of the benefits of doing this include:

1. attending any of their offered classes is optional

2. you get a budget of $600 per year per enrolled child to spend on curriculum materials, theater tickets, art supplies, etc...

3. some of the classes (like pottery or the lego design class) look like fun

4. access to an art lab, science lab, and library

Drawbacks include:

1. you have to meet with one of their staff (not a certified teacher) to go over curriculum goals each quarter

2. your child has to participate in state testing - although they are willing to work with you if you'd like to do an alternative method of assessment

3. I'm sure there are others that I don't know about yet!

Seasonal Tableau

We're just a few days away from spring, (though you wouldn't notice by poking your head outside around here!) And with the changing of the seasons it's time to change the seasonal display! I love this idea because it's so fun and simple and even obvious, yet I hadn't thought of doing it before I saw a photo of one on "our unschooled family" blog. I'm sure it's done in Waldorf schools, but this year the boys and I have been setting up our own seasonal displays.

We gather all the little odds and ends around the house that might work: a teacup from my grandmother's collection, a porcelain Hagen-Renaker animal or two, a photo, a pressed leaf, a shell or rock, a curl of bark or twist of ribbon. We talk about what the season reminds us of, what we like to do and look forward to doing, find things outside on our ramblings and then put it all together in a little display. It changes daily as they like to add and subtract from it and play with the figures and other loose parts.

A few times they've been dead set on adding something that seems totally unrelated like a little black plastic gorilla that Yogi likes to add whatever the season, but that's ok too. The Nature Corner book has been recommended too, but I haven't gotten my copy yet!

Meditation

I just wanted to point out this book, Peaceful Piggy Meditation since I've really never seen any other written for kids that even mentions meditation. I started my own meditation practice a few years ago out of desperation. I was suffering from chronic muscle tension brought on by stress. After years of trying various things ranging from muscle relaxants to acupuncture, massage, and chiropractor - nothing really worked. The acupuncture came the closest, but it meant weekly visits and a lot of money.

Then I had my second baby when my first was only 18 months and the pain became unbearable. I look back on that time and shudder. The tension between my shoulder blades was so intense that I couldn't sleep at night.

So, I ended up taking a class on relaxation at the community center where I was introduced to meditation and yoga. I never thought of myself as someone who would meditate, but I went into it with an open mind. And then an amazing thing happened. The tension in my back slowly started to go away. I felt happier, I became pain free, it was empowering.

Over the last few years I have gone through spells of doing nothing, and other times with focused daily meditation and I can truly say that it has the power to change your experience of being alive. It's simple, but not easy and sometimes a little mysterious.

My kids see my cushion in the basement and they've seen me meditate so I like how this book just keeps it in the conversation. Instead of being dismissed as something only certain types of people do, it becomes something very normal that anyone can do.

The author, Kerry Lee MacLean, also has a website where you can learn more about the her work. Click on the Meditate with the Piggies if you want to share it with the kids! It's pretty cute.

Literacy Hit Parade

I've been wanting to write this for several weeks now, but with 3 kids ages 5 and under, I'm having a hard time finding the time! Anyway, here are my latest big hits in the literacy department.



1. Book easels. My husband says these make our house look a little like a library, but I don't mind. I know from my years as a children's librarian that the books on display are the first books checked out. The kids just can't help it. They look so inviting and they have to have them which is just fine with me. At home I set up book easels in our living room and just put a new set of books in at the end of each day. Invariably, these are the first books my kids ask about. And a lot of times they just pluck them off the stands to look at them on their own. I've been checking out a lot interesting nonfiction these days purely for the purpose of independent browsing. I purchased my easels from DEMCO which is one the library supply catalogs I used when I was a librarian. They are simple, inexpensive, and 100% effective! The large all-purpose easels are $2.49 or $2.39 if you buy 6 or more.


2. Clip on reading lights for bed. I love to settle into bed each night with a good book. It's been a lifetime ritual and one I'm passing on to my kids right now. For Christmas both boys got an inexpensive clip-on light for their bed. Each night after we read stories together, they get to pick a few books to take to bed. We say good-night and they are on their own to look at their books and turn off their own light when they're ready. Besides promoting reading on their own, I like how this makes them responsible for lights out.


3. White board easel: We got ours from Ikea and then bought a big set of colorful whiteboard markers and an eraser from an office supply store. It's set up in the living room and each day I try to write one "secret message" for the boys to read. I usually include their names which they can already read and a few other easy site words and then also include some words which are easy to sound out. They love trying to read the messages and when they see their own names they are always interested to see what it says. Sometimes they just erase it and use the board for their own pictures or messages which is also great. I just try to sneak a message in at some point during the day and wait for them to notice. It's fun and gets us talking about words and letters in a natural way.

We Have to Call it School

John Holt mentions Ny Lilleskole, an experimental alternative school in Denmark, in several of his books and articles so I was happy to find this film about it on the internet. I wish there were more alternatives to school like this available here and now. I'd love to get involved. The production values of this film are a little rough and it takes about 30 minutes to watch it, but I found it very inspiring.

Valentines

Yesterday after preschool my boys came home with their big decorated envelope of Valentines. They carefully pulled out each one and admired it and seemed in awe the whole time - like "Wow! This is amazing, isn't it?!" (I'm not sure if they really knew what to expect of Valentine's Day!)

Anyway, as they went through their Valentines I noticed that the 2nd year students (the kids heading to kindergarten next year) had printed their own names on the little notes. I'm guessing that in some cases the parents have worked on this at home since they don't push it at all in school. And I noticed that I felt bad that Beck isn't writing his name. I felt bad, maybe even a little embarrassed and guilty.

And then on top of all of those feelings and overriding them, is this strong belief that I don't want to push my kids, that when they feel ready to write and have a good reason to, they will. That I need to trust them and have confidence in their ability to learn and to want to learn. And I'm realizing that having this faith in children is not easy in our competitive culture. It's hard not to want my kids "keeping up" with the others. But this (this comparing and judging of children, this race to do more and do it faster and better and younger) - this is precisely what I'm trying to avoid by staying out of schools.

Left Behind

The other day a friend was visiting and our conversation naturally turned to schools and education. Her daughter is just a few months older than our oldest (Beck) and because she tested as "gifted" they decided to start her a year early in kindergarten.

And as we talked about how kindergarten was going it became clear that this kindergarten class was very academic. The children are asked to sit and do their seat work, they have daily homework and miss recess if it isn't completed. And even though the year is less than half through the kids are already reading and writing. (According to her report card, my friend's daughter isn't writing "fast enough", - which could justify a post of it's own!)

So when I announced that we planned to homeschool Beck, my friend looked a little shocked and said, "Aren't you afraid he'll be behind?" Of course I'm not afraid of that - at all. But her comment made me think: does that mean traditionally schooled kindergarteners are ahead? Ahead in what? Life? Going to work sooner? A better college? A better job? Does the "rat race" start now?

I told my friend that I didn't think learning to read and write was that difficult and that when the child is ready it really shouldn't take long at all. Certainly not an entire year of sitting at a desk doing seat work and homework besides. So, no, even if I did care that much about the academic progress of a 5 year old, I don't think our boys are behind at all.

Starfall

Lately,my 3 and 5 year olds have really enjoyed this reading / phonics site called starfall. It's worth a visit.

A Science Lesson

Our baby, Ember, got a toy for Christmas that plays music and blows out air which makes various things spin around. She enjoys it - especially the music and will stay with it for several minutes. My boys (ages 5 and 3 1/2), on the other hand, spent two hours with it yesterday.

They examined it for awhile trying to figure out how it all worked and what they could do with it and then they started experimenting. Using the little plastic heads of their lego figures they would toss them in to the "air track" (the part where plastic balls spin around when they toy is set up normally)to see how many they could make spin, what would happen when they tossed them in as a big group or individually, how to make them go faster and so on. They were so engrossed that there was very little talk between them. I looked in on them several times to see what they could be doing with the baby toy for so long and was surprised and impressed with what I saw. Voila! A science lesson and they did it all themselves!

Creative Power

From If You Want to Write: a Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland.

You know how all children have this creative power. You have seen things like this: the little girls in our family used to give play after play. They wrote the plays themselves (they were very good plays too, interesting, exciting, funny). They acted in them. They made the costumes themselves, beautiful, effective and historically accurate, contriving them in the most ingenious way out of attic junk and their mothers' best dresses. They constructed the stage and theater by carrying chairs, moving the piano, carpentering. They printed the tickets and sold them. They made their own advertising. They drummed up the audience, throwing out a drag-net for all the hired girls, dogs, babies, mothers, neighbors within a radius of a mile or so. For what reward? A few pins and pennies.

Yet these small ten-year-olds were working with feverish energy and endurance. (A production took about two days.) If they had worked that hard for school it probably would have killed them. They were working for nothing but fun, for that glorious inner excitement like it and it was something never forgotten.

Roxie Munro

One of my favorite new (to me!) authors is Roxie Munro. Her books are wonderful for whole page exploration. We've been looking at her maze books which draw you in with a series of tasks to complete on the page. I love sitting with my boys and having them talk their way through the maze which always opens up a discussion about the place. Roxie Munro uses real places like a marina, an art museum, hiking trails, roadways, a farm, a plant nursery and more) so the "mazes" feel more like the view from above of all the paths, trails, and roads that could really be there. And when you finish there are also a few things to simply find. So fun! So far my favorite is:

Using these books gave me the idea to collect all the little maps we come across in our daily adventures - like the aquarium map we just got during our visit or the grocery store map I picked up at Metropolitan Market awhile ago. Wouldn't it be a fun game to create our own tasks using maps from our own life?

The Toymaker

Check out this book: The Toymaker: Paper Toys That You Can Make Yourself. What fun! So many things to make and they're all so cute! The author,Marilyn Scott-Waters, also has a website where you can download for free many lovely things to make.

Usborne Books

I don't know about you, but I'm just beginning to discover some of the great books for kids published by Usborne. Beck got these two for his birthday and they have both already provided a lot of fun discussion and engaged reading sessions.

The First Encyclopedia of Our World is "internet linked" which means that for most of the articles Usborne maintains up-to-date links to bring the articles to life. So far we've custom built our own volcano and watched it erupt with simple explanations along the way - and - we've discovered the journey a river makes from high in the mountains all the way to the sea.And this is just the beginning!



And the other one is titled The Usborne Time Traveler. For each of the historical times you visit, you're introduced to a family and get to know their life and customs, their houses and pastimes, special feasts, battles - all kinds of interesting stuff! The text is simple enough for my 3 year old to enjoy when I read it aloud, but appropriate for a much older school-aged kid to read independently and enjoy. The pictures all so full of detail that both of my boys get completely absorbed just looking and asking questions and discussing it all. I love it too!