Rainy Day Reading

For some reason, I had no idea it was supposed to rain today although the thunderstorm at 2 a.m. was my first clue.  The rain meant I had to revise my activity plans for this morning and go with a rainy day plan. 

We went to the library last Thursday in an unplanned "I can't sit in the house with these kids any longer" moment.  The library is a great place to go for free entertainment, even with 16 month olds.  We checked out a stack of books and brought them home.

Fast forward to this morning.  I thought the rainy morning would be the perfect time to pull out our books.  (I do have them out and accessible for the kids all the time.)  I set up a couple of the many wonderful blankets the twins have received in the past year and a half and threw some pillows on the floor.  I set out the books so the kids could decide which ones they wanted to read.

The kids were a little unsure at first, but when I layed down on the floor, they took the bait.  My daughter choose one of the dog books in the foreground from the "Good Dog, Carl" series.  It's a great series of books if you've never read them with your kids.  It's about a rottweiler named Carl and "his" little girl who have all sorts of adventures without the adults ever noticing.  The majority of the books are pictures and there's so much to look it, so it's great with little ones.  The little girl rides on Carl's back a lot though, so I keep trying to convince the kids that they can't do this with our dog who is much smaller than Carl as you can see below.

My son's attention span was much shorter and before long he was up in search of something with wheels on it. He returned shortly with the chosen wheels and sort of half listened to the story.

It was a fun rainy day activity, but it didn't last long.  Sixteen month olds have short attention spans as many of you can attest to, but it's good to attempt things anyway, especially if you can do something like this and inspire a love of reading at an early age.  I look forward to trying this again when we might be able to get through more than one book!

I just checked tomorrow's weather forecast and it looks like rain again in the morning.  I'd better start coming up with another rainy day activity.  Darn!  I'm really looking forward to trying my next outside activity!

Rain, rain, go away!