This post is long overdue and I’m so excited to share an updated version of our current favorite children’s books. The first time I shared books we were reading was this “Learning Tools” post when the kids were freshly three and one-and-a-half. Now, I have six year old, an almost five year old and a one year old (!) and each of those three beautiful babies absolutely love their books. Let’s dive in.

I’ll start with with Favorites for the Whole Family. Realistically, every book I’ve shared belongs in this section. We don’t split our books up into girl books and boy books or big kid books and baby books. We read aloud together every day, all the time so naturally each child is exposed to each book whether they like it or not-but they love each and every one of these on this list. That goes for every book in the sections above as well, but I tried to show the books each kid chooses from our home library time and time again.

Oshiolema’s Favorites: Age 6 Oshiolema was fully reading on his own shortly after turning five so now that he’s a couple months away from turning seven (my goodness, that just broke my heart a little bit) he is an avid reader. He reads in the car, he reads while he eats his snack, he reads until his clock turns green in the morning and reads his way through rest time. Yes, he’s wildly active and can be found jumping/sprinting/climbing/throwing/ninja-ing for much of the day, but in the moments between, I love seeing my little bookworm fall in love with reading.
Because he reads on his own much of the time these days, I could easily lose that connection of reading aloud to him like I did multiple times a day every day of his life before he began reading on his own. Outside of homeschool, if I’m not intentional, that part of our relationship could easily just have been closed. There is something so special about the connection of reading together so I love our routine of reading to the big kids together every night and then reading this devotional with Oshiolema. I also just ordered The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for us to read together-just him and me. These are the books he’d call his favorite over the past year or so along with the books he’s reading right now:

Keogena’s Favorites: Age 4: Keogena has the most beautiful imagination. I can almost guarantee the moment we close the book, she’ll be off to create whatever it is she was inspired by in the story. We just finished painting fairy houses because the Pinkalicious Fairy Book really made an impact. For that reason, she loves things that are super fantastical, silly or inspiring. We’re still reading together quite a bit but we stopped our Junie B. Jones before bed routine because reading to Zeameh then reading to both kids and reading to Nana just wore me out, but I do love those sweet moments just before sleep laughing about “That Grace” so much that I know it’s time to bring it back. Here are the books she’s loved most over the past year.

Zeameh’s Favorites: Age 1. Oh my gosh. This girl is book obsessed. It’s a teeny tiny weensy bit over the top because she wants to read all day long, but Lema was this way too and it’s just so sweet to see it all over again. She’ll grab a book and either plop in my lap or tug on my clothes saying “Buhh? Buhh? Buhh?” nonstop until I crack that thing open. You guys. It’s a lot. BUT, I genuinely love how attached she is to her books, how inquisitive she is and how much she genuinely loves them. Here are her favorite books right now, but y’all-they are random and there is no rhyme or reason so I’m also going to share some all-time favorite baby books for this age in almost seven years of parenthood–plus, many in the “for the whole family” section.