Oh Charlie!

With the start of school, and our weekly library visits I was itching to read some chapter books to the girls. I had no idea how they would do and if they would be able to focus without pictures. I thought it would go well though so I figured we would give it a try. A few months back I had DVR'd the old school Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and we hadn't yet watched it so I figured that would be a great first book. We spent about 2 weeks going through it. We read it a bit during our 30 minutes of reading time for school, but we often just curled up on their beds at night to read a few chapters before bed.

The girls actually did much better than I expected. Av would get a bit fidgety from time to time, but that's just how she is and she was always paying attention so it didn't seem to matter. Each day before we read any new chapters I would ask them questions about the previous chapters. I wanted to see how well they had understood and remembered what we read, as well as remind them where we were before starting off again. I was kinda surprised at how much they grasped. They always knew the answers to the questions and would often ask me smart questions or think aloud as to what might happen next.

They absolutely loved the book and looked forward to it every day. It was especially fun to finish because we got to watch the movie together with Daddy for Family Movie Night. We had pizza and piled on the sofa and watched the movie together. We talked a bit throughout about what was different from the book. They started pointing out things they noticed and it was fun to watch them compare and contrast on their own. I'm so glad we did this and I'm already looking forward to the next chapter book we read!