Back to School/Summer Reading Dinner

A month ago today (oops-2 days ago) we started school. Can't believe it has been 1 month.
We started on a Friday. I was not sure about starting on a Friday, but in the end I loved it. It is nice to have one day to get over the first day jitters and work out the kinks in the family schedule, then have a weekend to recuperate and get ready for a full week ahead.
We had our family Back to School/ Summer Reading Dinner/Father's Blessings that Sunday.

We started off with Father's Blessings. I love this tradition. I think that next time I will make sure everyone has a little food in their tummies. We had only a few moments of grumpiness. And that was mostly for the pictures. I was really proud of one of these photos that I took. The child gave me only 1 shot to get the photo. And I did it.
And the shot of me and Jay? Savanna took it. It is now our favorite current shot.


















That weekend we pulled together our list of all the books we had read outloud together and made our menu. I was feeling a little sad that we had not read more books outloud together. But then realized we had only read one more outloud last summer than this one. I just decided to feel good about what we did do. We made some fun memories with a nursery rhyme book. There were so many that we had never heard of before. The funniest being, "Aiken Drum." This became our favorite and the kids memorized it pretty quick.

Our book list:
Mr. Popper's Penguins
How to Eat Fried Worms
The Nursery Rhyme Book
More About Paddington


The kids helped compile the menu from the food they could remember in the books.

Our Menu:
Mr. Popper's Penguins "advertising lettuce"


Mr. Popper's Penguins "canned beans"


The Nursery Rhyme Book- Aiken Drumm "good roast beef"



The Nursery Rhyme Book- Aiken Drumm"penny loaves"


The Nursery Rhyme Book- Aiken Drumm "good cream cheese"
More About Paddington "marmalade"





How to Eat Fried Worms "gummy Worms, popcorn & licorice"



More about Paddington "hard candy"


I love our back to school dinner- and it is a tradition that I will try and keep going. (Luke just saw me typing and said "even though we have only done it two years.") As long as I have children at home that will listen to me read I will keep doing it.

(I have a recording of the nursery rhyme Aiken Drumm- but I can't get it to load. As soon as I get a hold of my technology wizard I will get it loaded.)