Parent Child Reading

Gingerbread Friends crafts

This book lends itself well to crafts of various types.  The obvious one would be to make gingerbread men, whether they be the actual decorated cookies, or paper ones that are decorated. 

One I am going to try with my kids is making pretend lollipops.  The easiest way to do so would be to get a paper circle, have your child decorate it, and glue it onto a straw.  I am going to try to decorate coffee filters with markers, and then fold it up very small.  Finally, dip the corner in water and turn it upside down.  Let the colors run together, and open to dry.  Finally, glue it onto the straw.  I'll let you know how it works out. 

Please post your craft ideas too!

Eating the Alphabet food activities

Eating the Alphabet is a great springboard for learning about fruits and vegetables:  different types, textures, tastes, colors, etc. 

• Take the book with you on a trip to the grocery store, and go on a scavenger hunt.  See how many fruits and vegetables your child can find in the produce section.

• Buy two foods from the book that your child has never eaten before.  Then eat and enjoy!  Talk about the taste, texture, color, feel, smell, etc.

• Name a color, and have your child find as many fruits and vegetables in your garden, refrigerator, or store that are that color.

 

• Gather several foods from the book.  Have your child sort, or classify, the foods and explain how they sorted.  Or, give them a way to sort, such as put all of the soft foods in one group, and the hard foods in the other group.  Or, yellow foods in one, green in the other, etc.

• What food activities did you and your child come up with? 

Eating the Alphabet letter activities

Today, after you read Eating the Alphabet, try one of these activities with your child.  They would probably work best with your child if he is 4 or older.  Even then, you would likely have to talk them through the activity.  But, it is worth the effort, since you never know when your child is ready to learn something.

• On index cards, print in large print five of your child's favorite foods from the book.  Put one word per card, and make sure each card has a food from a different letter's page.  Help your child lay the cards on the table in alphabetical order. Help them by showing how the book goes from A to Z.  Also, saying the alphabet with them or writing the alphabet out for them helps.

• If your child easily completes the above activity, repeat it using the words all from one letter of the alphabet.

• Name a food from the book, making sure it is one with a common English pronunciation, and have them try to find it in the book.  Emphasize that they should figure out the beginning sound and look on the corresponding page to find the answer more quickly.

• Give your child a few index cards or pieces of paper.  Have them draw a picture of a food(not necessarily a fruit or vegetable) they like on each piece of paper.  When they are done, ask them to bookmark pages in Eating the Alphabet using their pictures.  They should bookmark them according to beginning sounds.  For instance, if your child drew a picture of cake, they would put it in the Cc page. Then, help them write the letter or the name of the food on their picture.

 

• Put your own letter idea here, and then let us know what it is!

Berenstain Bears Halloween fun

As I was looking at the Berenstain Bears website today, I found a bibliography of their books.  They have written 252 books!  Wow!  I read through the list and found all of the titles that seemed to be spooky books for the Halloween season.  I haven't read all of them, but I did list the titles below.  The first two titles are ones I will be writing about in the next few days, and I know with certainty that they are good spooky Halloween reads.   

The Spooky Old Tree, Bright and Early Books, Random House, 1978. 

The Berenstain Bears Go On a Ghost Walk, HarperCollins, 2005.

The Berenstain Bears In the Dark, First Time Book, Random House, 1982

The Berenstain Bears and the Ghost of the Forest, First Time Readers, Random House, 1988.

The Berenstain Bears Prize Pumpkin, First Time Books, Random House, 1990.

The Berenstain Bear Scouts and the Humongous Pumpkin, Scholastic, 1995.The Berenstain Bear Scouts Ghost Versus Ghost, Scholastic, 1996.

The Berenstain Bears And the Galloping Ghost, Big Chapter Books, Random House, 1994.

The Berenstain Bear Scouts in Giant Bat Cave, Scholastic, 1995.

The Berenstain Bears And the Ghost Of The Auto Graveyard, Big Chapter Books, Random House, 1997.The Haunted Lighthouse, Stepping Stones, Random House, 2001.

The Berenstain Bears And the Haunted Hayride, Big Chapter Books, Random House, 1997.

Spend some time looking at the Berenstain bear's website:

www.berenstainbears.com

The website has lots of fun areas to explore. A few parts of the site that you and/or your child will especially enjoy at this time of year are:

• The Berenstain Bears Mystery Mansion video that you can watch on your computer if you download and have Quicktime.
• Send a Halloween e-card to a friend.
• E-mail one of the Berenstain Bears characters.  Help your child write an e-mail telling them what they liked the best about one of their stories.
• Check out sister bear's Fall 2008 Mystery Message.

The Berenstain Bears Trick or Treat, First Time Books, Random House, 1989.

Pumpkin Faces

Halloween is only a few weeks away now!  My kids are very excited, so my husband pulled out the Halloween decorations and books this weekend.  We found a much read and beloved book in the Halloween box:  Pumpkin Faces,written by Emma Rose, and illustrated by Judith Moffatt!

The simple text along with the fabulous GLOW IN THE DARK pictures make for a fabulous read!  Just charge up the pages with a light, and you're ready to go. Each page has only a few words(i.e.: silly face, mean face, etc.) that describe the pumpkin face. It is a fun book to read both with the lights on and the lights off. 

 

Judith Moffatt, the illustrator, told me that while this book (and some of her other glow-in-the dark books) is out of print, it can still be found at Amazon.com or through her.  Her contact information is on her website.

Check out Ms. Moffatt's website:   

http://www.judithmoffatt.com/OLD%20index.html

for more information about her, her full listing of book titles, as well as some crafts that you can make with your child.  She gives clear directions with pictures.

What unique Halloween books do you read with your child?  What makes the book special? 

Halloween Fun!

Halloween is such a fun time of year!  I visited the bookstore today, and the Halloween and Autumn themed books were plentiful.  I spent some time reading most of the choices, and I chose several books to write about here.  Some of the books, which I will talk about over the next few days, I chose because they are part of a popular series of books.  The other books are quality books that are appealing to children.   You can enjoy reading them with your child AND have the chance to expand their vocabulary, counting skills, or pre-reading skills at the same time! 

Please leave a comment and let me know what Halloween books you read with your child. 

If you want to make the Ritz cracker pumpkin pictured here, check out the following website for the recipe.  It's a nice non-candy option for Halloween parties:

http://www.culinary.net/recipes/holidaytreats/2842-jackolanterns.html

Letters in Nature

When Megan and I were walking at a local botanical garden, I took this picture.  It is fun and sometimes quite easy to find letters in the world around you.  When I asked Megan what letter she saw, she immediately said, "X!".

Tana Hoban was a children's book author/illustrator with fabulous books that use mostly photos to illustrate all sorts of concepts.  Signs, symbols, shapes, opposites, prepositions,letters, etc. are all illustrated in her books using photos.

                                       

She has dozens of fabulous books for you to take a look at with your child.  She died in 2006 at the age of 88, but she sure left a wonderful legacy for children throughout the world!

The next time you take a walk with your child, try finding letters in the world around you.  And, if you like to take pictures, take some pictures too!  If you get REALLY ambitious, you could even make an alphabet book for your child out of the pictures you took!

Megan's Leaf Man collage

I finally figured out how to paste in a photo!
Here's the picture of my daughter's Leaf Man collage that we made two weeks ago after visiting a botanical garden.  We collected materials for our Leaf Man while we were there. We used a large 12x12" piece of paper and I had her glue her man on the paper diagonally so we would have some more room for her fabulous Leaf Man!

I look forward to seeing your child's leaf collages.  Megan is 2 and home with me all day, so we tend to have more time to make projects together than I have with my 5 year old son, who is in school all day.  I hope to gather leaves with him soon and make a leaf dinosaur collage, since he is sooooo into dinosaurs!

Classification with Growing Vegetable Soup

Lois Ehlert's book, Growing Vegetable Soup, offers opportunities to practice classification skills. This means learning to sort and group items based on particular attributes.  Classification is a skill that helps in reading, math, and science. 

Here's how Megan(age 2) and I practiced this skill together:

When we got to the page that says, "We are planting the seeds," I stopped and said, "Look!  This person is planting many types of seeds. (I pointed at each seed)  They are in different sizes, shapes, and colors."  Then I asked Megan the following questions:

• Which seed(s) are shaped like a circle?  (She pointed to the pea seed.)  I then expanded on this and said, "Yes, that is a pea seed, and it is round."
• Where is the smallest seed? (Megan pointed to the corn seed.)  I said, " I see some seeds smaller than the corn seed.  Do you see them?"  (She then pointed to the zuccini seed.) "What about these(carrot) seeds?", I said, while pointing at the carrot seeds.  They are so tiny they are hard to see."
• Which seed is purple?
• Which seed has the colors from the candy corn you ate earlier? (The reason I asked this question was to connect something in the book with prior knowledge.  Good readers do this skill naturally, and it helps to model this with young children.)  When Megan pointed at the corn seed, I said, "Yes, the corn seed has the same colors as candy corn!" 

What other classification questions have you come up with as you read this book?

Another multisensory way to classify using this book would be to gather a number of different vegetables and have your child feel them, smell them, taste them, etc., and then have them sort them by moving them into various groups, such as:

• Which vegetables are rough? 
• Which vegetables are smooth? 
• Sort the vegetables into two groups:  green vegetables and orange vegetables
• Sort the vegetables by where they grow: underground, root vegetables in one group, and vegetables that grow on vines or plants in another group.

The ways to sort are endless!  If your child gets the hang of this, then have him choose how he would like to sort the vegetables.  Then, after he has sorted them, ask him the categories he used in his sorting. 

I used to do lots of sorting activities when I was teaching, and the kids oftentimes would come up with new sorting criteria that was well thought out and not something I would ever have thought to ask.  If you try this activity, let me know what clever sorts your child comes up with!

Leaf Man: We made a collage!

My daughter and I collected some leaves a few days ago at our local botanical gardens.  It was a beautiful 80 degree day.  Megan had lots of fun putting together her leaf man! I have been trying for days to post some photos of our day and her leaf man collage. but I cannot get my photos to go into my posting.  I have tried everything the help menus have told me.  Do any of you out there have any tricks?  I am new to blogging, and the only pictures I have been able to get my blogging platform to accept are book cover pictures.  I would love to show you all my photos!