"My kids sat in peaceful silence as I read them this book this evening. They didn’t speak a word or interrupt me or touch each other or anything while I read them the story!! That is a big deal when you are talking about 2 very high energy boys ages 3 and 4. They loved this story and even big sister stopped and listened and agreed that this was a very sweet story.

The Special Memory Creation is a very fun idea with an example showing how my kids can (and WILL) send a letter to our service members. My dad was in the Army, my father-in-law was in the Air Force, my husband was in the Navy and both neighbors are either side of me are currently serving or have. If you follow along at Its the Simple Things you also know my boys are military fanatics as well and want to wear their “soldier clothes”. In our house they are not called camouflage…it’s soldier pants and soldier shirts, lol.

The Life Lesson is about staying connected to loved ones even when you can’t be together and the Connections section asks your kids questions to get them to open up and discuss ideas with us like, “Have you ever missed someone? How does that feel?” The Learning Together section (one of my favorites) is a question and answer section that really helps our kids think back about what they learned and answer questions about the story. This is a great way to find out if our children are really understanding CORRECTLY what they read. Kids can easily misinterpret things and this opens them up to discuss the story and makes sure they did understand it correctly with questions like, “What do Gracie and Joe’s mom and dad do?” and “Where does Trooper go and who takes him there?”

Another great thing about the Cooper and Me stories that my children and myself love is that it rhymes. I love reading these cute rhyming stories to my children and I know you will enjoy sharing them with yours as well. The illustrations are also age appropriate and not so “grown-up” that the little ones don’t enjoy them. I think they illustrations are just perfect and help our children relate to the story even more."

http://its-the-simple-things.com/