Entering Narnia with a Four Year Old Boy

I have to admit that I was both thrilled and disappointed when I learned that a movie version of The Chronicles of Narnia was to be made. I couldn't wait to see it, but was dreading the desecration of what is a perfectly constructed work of art in its own right. My husband and I went to see it, and other than being too close to the screen in the sold-out theatre, we enjoyed the movie very much. I was pleasantly suprised. I won't spoil it for you but I will say this much:

It was beautifully done.

I wouldn't take my son to see it until he's a little older--maybe 7 or 8 (He's 4 now).

I decided to refresh my own memory of the stories that I read first as a girl of about 9 or 10, and then again later on as an adult. I think I've read the whole series three times, not including this reading. I started reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to my son, not knowing if he would be able to listen that much. I now feel guilty for underestimating him. He absolutely loved it. At different points in the story he actually got so scared (in a good way) that he would jump and hide behind me, or start jumping around with relief at the outcome of and exciting moment.

At the conclusion of that story, he was practically begging me to start Prince Caspian immediately. We are now reading that, and he would have me read it at every free moment.

I decided to help his listening comprehension with a project, and we started it yesterday. He is enthusiastically making a picture book of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.

It's an easy project. You can put absolutely anything in the book--we cut out winter scenes, pictures of coats, and a beautiful spring landscape picture from catalogs and magazines. Then I "Googled" whatever I wanted a coloring sheet of. For instance, I typed in "faun coloring sheets" and wham-o! I had my choice of coloring pages of fauns. We are now coloring the pictures of all of the different characters that we printed out--a lion of course, a faun, a minotaur, a centaur (he's especially interested in the armies), beavers, a castle that can be Cair Paravel, and we'll probably cut out photos of boys and girls from magazines to be the children. He will then tell me the story in his own words and I'll write it down just as he tells me, and we'll put the pictures and story together.