Melissa Taylor from the blog Imagination Soup has posted her Top 20 Children’s Books of 2011. There are recommended books from infant to readers 10 and older. A few of the ones appropriate for younger elementary readers are
You can find the rest of her list at
Last year Amy Dickinson, of Ask Amy fame, started a literacy campaign in her column called “A Book on Every Bed”. Along with the Family Reading Partnership she wanted to put one million books at the foot of one million beds for one million children on Christmas (or Chanukah) morning. Seven of those beds belonged to our seven grandchildren. They were delighted with our choices and we plan to provide the books again this year and every year in the future. If you missed the Ask Amy column in today’s Press Democrat, you can read it here.
While I was looking through toy stores this afternoon on my annual quest to find a boat load of gifts, I came across a couple of interesting games and a digital bookmark. All three of these items are less than nine dollars.
Let’s look at the bookmark first.
The Mark-My-Time Bookmark can be used like a regular timer or it can keep track of accumulated reading time up to 99 hours and 59 minutes. The really cool thing about it is that it can do both. Most teachers ask that your child read at home for 20 minutes each day. The timer can be set for 20 minutes and a buzzer will go off after the time is up. But it can also add that 20 minutes to the reading times from the previous days. This website has videos that show how to program the bookmark and to change the battery: bookmark.
The first game is one our family has played called Scrabble Slam.
The game cards have a letter on the front and on the back. Either side can be used. The game starts with a four letter word such as GAME. The remaining cards are distributed to the players. For older children and adults, the game can be played like the card game of War. For younger children, we follow these rules: in turn, each player takes a card from his hand to change the word into another four letter word. If a player does not have a letter that will make a word (according to Scrabble rules), that player passes to the next one. The first player to use all his or her cards wins.
My daughter found the second game, Rory’s Story Cubes.
There are nine cubes and each of its six sides has a different picture. There are many ways to play. One of the suggested ways is to roll all nine cubes, look at all the face up images and begin your story with “Once upon a time…” . The trick is to weave all nine images into your story. Last week a first grader of my acquaintance, had to write a story about a gingerbread man with a beginning, middle and end. He was having trouble coming up with ideas. These Story Cubes might have helped.
In honor of the fall season and Thanksgiving, an art project from Mrs. Facendini’s first grade class.
You can read what Tedd Arnold says about this book here.
The third story in book 2 is On The Map. Where do you live? What is your neighborhood like? The sight words are live, place, many and out. Here is the link to the spelling and vocabulary activities On The MAP.
The New York Times publishes a special children’s book review section every November. It was published today and can be accessed online at NYT Children's Book Reviews. Because of the ages of three of my grandsons, I was especially interested in the review of three books under the title of Picture Books About Boys With Heroic Alter Egos. Roger Sutton reviews The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man by Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Bumblebee Boy by David Soman and Jacky Davis and Superhero Joe by Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman. All three authors have written proven kid favorites. Chabon wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay which about ten years ago was a favorite of my oldest grandson . Bumblebee Boy was a character in Soman and Davis’s Ladybug Girl series. Weitzman earlier book was You Can’t take a Balloon into The Metropolitan Museum. One or more of these Superhero books might be just the one for your child.
Play Some Sight words are the words used most frequently in written language. Some like “play” can be sounded out using phonics but others like “some” must be memorized because they do not obey the phonics’ rules. Each week your first grader is given a short list of sight words to memorize. The more words your child knows by sight, the better reader he or she will be. The Educator’s Spin On It blog has some great ideas to help you help your child learn sight words: Sight word games and activities
Mo Willems is the author of the Caldecott Honor’s Book Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and a few dozen other children’s books. On May 5, 2011 he delivered the Zena Sutherland Lecture at the Chicago Public Library titled Why Books? This article from Horn Books is an adaptation of the lecture.
Last week I was having a conversation about exactly this topic with my son who has two young children. I think you’ll find the definitive answer to that question in this article.
Hat Tip to Imagination Soup
Family fun at the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County on Sunday, October 30th from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. The museum’s new home is at 1835 W Steele Lane in Santa Rosa. There will be a costume parade at 11 A.M., art projects, a Mad Scientist’s laboratory, a spooky room and much more. A $5 per person suggested donation includes a complimentary lunch. For more information go to http://cmosc.org/
As many of you know, Yulupa has a new reading program this year, Macmillan/McGraw-Hill’s California Treasures. We are a little late to the party but this blog intends to report weekly on what is happening in the first grade classroom. The first grade is working on Book 2, Our Families, Our Neighbors. Last week’s story was Animal Moms and Dads. How are our families like animal families? The high frequency words for the week are: two, our, her, they. This is the link to last week’s page http://treasures.macmillanmh.com for discussion questions and links to vocabulary and spelling activities. Mrs.. Buffleben’s First Grade class read several books by Eric Carle including:
After the class read the books by Eric Carle they made their own art using his collage techniques. First, they colored the paper with paints the same way Eric Carle paints his paper. It took several days for the paper to dry. When the paper was ready, it was time to make the collages. Each student chose a character from one of the books the class had read and chose papers that matched the colors of his or her character. The results:
