Third Grade Read Aloud List

On the giveaway that I posted this week, I mentioned that Elliott and I have finalized a list of 20 books that we plan on reading this year as part of our school day.  This will definitely not be the only 20 books that we read throughout the school year, but I thought 20 would be a good starting point.  :)  They are all chapter books, although we plan on using some picture books this year, too.  We do use Reading Street for language arts as well, and that has a picture book each week that we read together and do worksheets about.

When we were picking books out, we kind of went all over the place.  We picked some classic books, and some new books, and some in between.  We chose books that appeal to 2nd graders, and books that appeal to junior high kids.  We chose books that will take us about a week to read, and books that will take closer to a month.  We didn't really have any set parameters, because this reading is for fun, and I wanted to make sure that it was all stuff Elliott would enjoy.  He purposely picked several that have film adaptations so that we can watch the film and compare and contrast as well.

We already had most of the books in our shelves, but will be ordering a few as well.  I like to have a copy of the ones that we read together, so we can check another copy out at the library and each hold our own copies while we read together.  In fact, there are 2 or 3 books that we actually own a second copy of because we got the second in a bigger pack from scholastic.  Even though I pulled these from our own shelves, most were books we hadn't read yet.  We have always had the problem of buying more books than we have time to read in the past, but I'm hoping that phase is over now that we have so much more dedicated time to reading together!

 This is the stack of books that we want to read together, or I plan on reading out loud to him.  We also have the Chronicles of Narnia set, and the Harry Potter books that we will try to read if we get a chance, but we might wait until next year on those.  Others that we don't have yet, but plan on reading as well include the Sarah, Plain and Tall books (I believe there are three?) by Patricia MacLachlan and Number the Stars by Lois Lowry.

There are also a number of books that Elliott has already read that he wants to read again, like the Runaway Ralph series, and the Fudge books.  So, in other words, we have a lot of reading planned. :)

We are almost finished reading Charlotte's Web right now.  I think the next book we start will be Hotel For Dogs.  When Elliott was younger, the movie was his very favorite.  I think he was probably about 3 or maybe 4.  I'm not sure exactly how old he was, but he was little enough that he called it "Hofer Tail Dogs" instead of saying it the right way.  We are pretty excited to read the book now!