Living In A Library: {Readathon Via Memetales Week 1}

We had a great time with our first couple of books! The boys are super excited to use my Kindle regardless of what we are doing so that definitely helps.
I introduced Memetales to Monkey as soon as I downloaded it and he LOVES listening to all of the stories. I love that you can use it as a read aloud, or there is an option to have each story read to you which makes it perfect when I need a few minutes to myself.
It's also really easy to navigate. I showed Monkey (3 yrs) how to get from one book to another and he had it figured out in about thirty seconds.
It also appears that there are games attached to some of the books but the app doesn't push the games so the boys haven't even figured it out yet.

The first book we read is The Donkey and the Wolf. The pictures are pretty silly and the text is simple. I read the book out loud and then took a few minutes to explain the meaning of "wit" to Bubby. The story was cute, but the boys were content to hear it just once.

(I can't find the actual Memetales version but this looks like a cute non-Kindle option)

Both of the boys really liked this book. I think they are especially drawn to the repetitive sing-song sound of it. We read this three times in a row.

The first time I simply read the story out loud. Then I showed them the hand motions I learned when I was younger to go along with the story. After that Bubby wanted to "read" the story himself and he did a very good job, I was impressed with how well he remembered the wording after hearing it just once. Halfway through the story he suddenly went "oh, each time one duck doesn't come back and so they are sort of counting down!". Love those "ah-ha!" moments.

Finally I let them listen to the audio version. I've noticed in pretty much all of the books the audio version doesn't follow exactly with the wording on the page, but it isn't really a big deal. When the boys were listening to the audio version of Five Little Ducks there is one page with the reader adds two extra words to the end of a sentence. Bubby caught it immediately and told me I hadn't read it right. I explained to him that I read the words on the page but that the audio reader had added a couple of words, it happens. It was nice to know that he was listening and absorbing the book so closely, sometimes it's hard to tell since he sits still for exactly one minute during reading time.

If you're interested this Laptime Songs website has the rhyme with hand movements. While you're there, check out some of the other rhymes listed, they have a pretty good collection.

This was our book for Tuesday. The Lion and The Mouse. For some reason the book didn't download well onto my Kindle, which in the end turned out to be a blessing. The pages showed up so small I wasn't able to read the words, and unfortunately the pictures didn't show up very well. The blessing is that we had to listen to the audio version in order to share the book and it was fantastic! The reader did an amazing job with voices and sound effects. The story was the classic, lion spares mouse's life/ mouse saves lion deal.

Memetales included some fun activity ideas in their newsletter this week. Inspired by their playdough animal tracks, I thought we'd try the same thing with ink pads instead. I actually thought about using paint but was too lazy to break it out on a work night.
I layed everything out and invited Bubby (Monkey fell asleep during story time again) to join me in creating some art work. It didn't work very well. The animals were too stiff to create good prints. I did get some fun ones but it took a lot of wiggling and pressing here and there. Bubby lost interest quickly.

Since we already had the ink pads out I suggested thumb print art. Bubby received this Ed Emberly book in his Easter Basket:

Love love love this book!
We took turns choosing which creatures to make. He seemed to be having a hard time focusing on the steps so I talked him through one at a time as we each drew our own pictures. Even The Mister got in on the action.