The Hello Goodbye Window

The Hello, Goodbye Window was the 2006 Caldecott Award winner. Dear friends of ours gave it to us for Zoe and Ashley's birthdays that year. I didn't actually know it was a Caldecott winner until last summer when I bought it as a present for our neighbor's daughter, and saw the gold sticker. It is such an awesome book. It was instantly a favorite in our house. We've read it so many times that we quote the book :-) "You can be happy and sad at the same time you know. It just happens that way sometimes." And of course, as pictured above, "When I get tired I come in and take my nap and nothing happens until I get up." hahaha!

As the story and writing are wonderful, equally lovely are the pictures. I just want to jump right in! I would love to know Nanna and Poppy, visit their house in town, and look through their kitchen window to, "see if it's going to rain or be nice."

A side note, on the subject of reading - the book I read when I began homeschooling and have used to teach Zoe to read is: Teach a Child to Read With Children's Books (thanks to Amanda for recommending it!) Simply put, the technique is to just read to your children, from the time they are born. Read, read, and then read some more. At some point we started using our finger as we read, so Zoe could follow the words with her eyes as we spoke (she was probably 3 when we began using our finger as we read). I found I read slower this way, pausing on the first and last words of a sentence so she really sees them. As she picks up more and more "sight words" she enjoys saying them for me when I come to them in the text. There is no pressure, and no pain in learning to read naturally like this. Reading is as it should be, a pleasure.