Spring Reading

“Spring, Spring, Spring!” sang the frog.
“Spring!” said the groundhog.

When my children were little, one of the books I read throughout the months of March and April was a Little Golden Book by Margaret Wise Brown called Home For A Bunny.  Illustrated by Garth Williams, it delighted us all.  Although I found the rhythm and rhyme in the story a bit wobbly at times, I still enjoyed reading it frequently in springtime.  I particularly loved the illustrations and enjoyed looking at the detailed drawings of forget-me-nots and other flowers.  The baby robins always made me smile.  It’s still available as a Big Little Golden Book. You may also be able to find it second hand in the smaller format. 

Other picture books that come to mind when I think about spring are the Brambly Hedge stories by Jill Barklem. They are filled with very detailed illustrations of little mice who live in various trees, hedgerows, and stumps.  My daughter in particular loved these stories.  There’s a Brambley Hedge website at www.bramblyhedge.co.uk. 
 

Whenever I think of Brambly Hedge, I think of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Concerto.  We have recordings of each of the seasonal Brambly Hedge stories that start with the music from the appropriate part of The Four Seasons Concerto. 

If you enjoy musical humour, you might enjoy Raffi’s Berry Nice News cut on his recording Raffi Radio.   The cut offers a weather type report about the seasons and, I’ll bet you guessed, Vivaldi’s Spring from The Four Seasons provides the theme music. 
If you’re not familiar with this music, you can hear listen to this clip by Itzhak Perlman with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra on YouTube






 
The information in this post was taken from a newsletter I published a while ago - Ideas for Homeschoolers.  To read more, please follow the link.    For others in the series go to my website