> I'm a bit confused by your post.  You say it was
 > "time-consuming" to
 > gather up books.  Didn't you read to your children
 > every night when they
 > were young?  Seems to me one trip to the library to
You bet - and I still do pretty often, tho they are now 4th and 5th grade. 
When my kids were little, we'd often read one book here, then wait a while, 
read another book - and then I'd have to remember what I read each day, the 
author, how many pages, and how much time it took to read each book (this was 
what the teacher asked us to write on this list). Perhaps since I read more 
than one book a day to my kids when they were that young, I had more work to 
do for this list. Also I felt "why do I have to write down the titles? Isn't 
it enough for the teacher to know that I read 20 minutes aloud to her?"
 > isn't a bad idea.  I think going to the library with a
 > child once a *week* to choose books is a great idea.  Many people
 > have oodles of books in their homes.  In our home we read to the
 > children every night.
I started taking my girls to the library when they were about 2 years old. 
(Actually, they went with me before that, but we didn't spend much time in 
the children's section since I have an incredible preschool library of my 
own.) We still go to the library often  - I can't say once a week any more, 
but perhaps every other week, and they are allowed to check out as many books 
as they are old. (10 year old = 10 books). We still read aloud - we're 
reading Lois Lenski's _Strawberry Girl_ at the moment.
 > those books.  When I read a book in class that a child
 > has had read to them at home I get an excited response from that
 > child.  I acknowledge that the book title came from the child's list.
That's an excellent idea!
 > I can't understand why people wouldn't like it.  Of course,
It may be because our teachers required so much information - title, author, 
# of pages, and time spent reading.
When I was teaching, I always told my kids that part of homework every night 
was either reading to themselves for 10 minutes or a parent read aloud. I was 
pleased to see that Jennifer's 5th grade teacher said something very similar 
this year - she made 20 minutes as the requirement. (Jennifer surpasses that 
on a daily basis.)
 > read to their children at home.  How do we as teachers
 > stress the importance of reading routinely to children?  Perhaps
I always felt that being a good role model for the students and parents was 
important. I read aloud to every class I've ever had...even 6th graders.
One year I taught general music as a specialist. I decided that once during 
the year, I would pick something that was musically-oriented and read it 
aloud to every class I had. (I had 56 classes between K-5.) For the really 
young kids, I did it more than once. I have a collection of books based on 
songs - Raffi has some based on his songs. There are also some based on 
Christmas songs. At Christmastime, I got Jan Brett's "Twelve Days of 
Christmas", and sing-read it to the kids. (Most teachers just read books. I 
sing them when they're based on musical pieces.) With older kids, I got a 
little tiny book called "A Little Schubert", called the 5th graders up on the 
floor so they could see it, and we had both a book and a listening session. 
This part of my program was *very* successful. Yet I could not *believe* it 
when some teachers complained to the principal that I was "wasting music 
time" by "reading" to the kids. (I simply explained to the principal that 
kids need to hear good singing role models, that I was supporting the 
classroom teachers in showing the importance of books in our lives, and that 
it was no different than using song charts since we usually followed up a 
book-sing/read with the class singing the song. She was very supportive of MY 
efforts, and told the teachers where to stick their complaints - in a polite 
matter, of course.)
                                 -donna
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