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What My Children Read

CULTIVATING THE READING HABIT AT HOME


I wanted to cultivate the culture of reading at home. I have failed with my husband.👎 He once bought a  Star Trek novel, assuming that he would start reading if he reads something he loves watching but that didn't help. He did not read past two pages. That was more than 10 years ago and the book was still sitting on the shelf, untouched. I hope my children would read it one day. The only books my husband read was "Who Moved My Cheese" and "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". Recently, he started reading Cashflow Quadrant, a Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Freedom. He is very much a movie person. Sometimes I wonder, is it always an "either or" situation when it comes to "books or movies"?

I hope some of the readers here could enlighten me in this area. How to get him to start reading?

ALTHOUGH he doesn't have the habit to read, he insists that our children read. (Fortunately😁)

We started reading to our first born sometime after his first birthday. (Yes! My hubby does read to them whenever he is in the mood!😌) Of course, my son wouldn't be sitting next to me, looking at the pictures or the words while I read. He would be laying down beside me or roll on his mattress, doing all kinds of stunts.

By the time he was around 3, he was a very restless kid. He would even jump and move all over the room as I read to him. He would request for certain stories to be read but wouldn't sit still as I read.  I almost gave up reading to him but his daddy told me to continue so I did.

Tough Tommy: The first story my son recited to me.

Then one fine day, he surprised me when he casually recited a story he requested me to read everyday, over and over again. From then onwards, I diligently read to him every night before bedtime.

In this post, I would like to share with you some of the books that my children love.



Our top choices of English books and magazines

Some of our favourite Dr. Seuss' books
  • Brown Watson's books
  • Dr . Seuss' Beginner Books
  • Peter and Jane series 
  • Ladybird's books
  • Songs and rhymes
  • Mr Men and Little Miss series
  • Postman Pat series
  • Noddy series
  • The Young Scientists (magazine)
Our top choices of Mandarin books and magazines
The 明明丽丽 (Ming Ming Li Li) series.
  • 明明丽丽 series (This is highly recommended for beginners. It is a complete series of books from 100 words up to 1200 words.)
  • Songs and rhymes
  • 哥妹两 Ge Mei Lia (magazine)



Note: I started with books that comes with "han yu pin yin" (which is the official romanisation system for standard Chinese) but I found that it has a negative effect on my son who would depend on the "han yu pin yin" when reading and resulted in wrong pronunciation of words. Thus, I switched to books that comes without it.
Our top choices of Malay books and magazines
The Bacalah Anakku series.

  • Bacalah Anakku series 
  • Koleksi Terbaik Cerita Fabel Aesop 
  • Tik Tok (magazine)
  • Kuntum (magazine)
  • Taman Ria Disney (magazine)











What do your children love to read? Do share with us your favourite books so we can check them out too!






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