Time for Bed

I like many of Mem Fox's books, but my favorite story is Time For Bed. Mem wrote this book in the early 1990s, but I didn't stumble upon it until a few years ago. In Time For Bed, different animal moms and dads send their babies off to bed with a couplet, such as:

     Time for bed, little mouse, little mouse,
     Darkness is falling all over the house.

It even has a soft, sweet tone to the poem that makes it perfect for a "good night" read. After I bought this book I struggled with where to use it in my class. Of course there is always time for a good read aloud, but since there are so many fabulous children's book out there (and more appearing each day), I like to at least have some common themes in my read alouds during different units or parts of the year.

I finally decided to include this book as part of my Valentine's Day theme. I have several other books, such as Guess How Much I Love You, that I read as part of this unit when we talk about the love families have for each other. It seems to fit nicely there and gives us a chance to talk about how we can tell the animal families in the book love each other. A great companion text is Goodnight Moon where we compare our bedtime routines and how we get ready for bed each night.

I keep this book in my "special" section. Most of the time I let my kids get their hands on the books I use for read aloud, even though 99% of the time they are too hard, just because I think that is an important experience. However, I do keep a special section of books on a shelf that if I ever have kids will be coming home with me because I love them that much - this book made the cut!