Happy Martin Luther King Day

I love Martin Luther King Day. While all the other kids in our area have the day off of school, my homeschooler announces to our pastor in front of church during children's message that homeschoolers never get days off. Good boy! Today is certainly not one that I want to take off. Celebrating an important historical figure and role model as Martin Luther King Jr. is something I want to concentrate on in our schooling. Today we read books about Martin Luther King. We took turns reading and listening. We learned a LOT of new vocabulary. Here are some of the titles I especially enjoy:

Center book title

You can tell Dr. King was an inspiring man by the art work he inspired people to create. The illustrations in these books are incredible. The Story of Ruby Bridges is a powerful one for young children. She was a very brave little first grader during a difficult time in the civil rights struggle. Matthew and Tilly is a great book for young ones. This story is the realization of Dr. King's dream. A little black girl and a little white boy are best friends, but it talks about friendship, anger and forgiveness. These are all very immediate topics for young children when the issue of segregation is thankfully so foreign to them. Martin Luther King day is the perfect opportunity to talk about the many shades of skin color and how we should be kind to everyone and get to know them without worrying about what they look like on the outside. These books are very applicable to our lives today.

My eight-year-old learned a lot of new vocabulary words today when we read the I Have a Dream speech. I'm sure he has heard some of them before, but you need multiple hearings to really cement new words into your vocabulary. Words like emancipation, poverty, prosperity, segregation, negro, manacles, divinity and reverend are difficult words that he will very likely not see again... until next year.

MLK timeline activity from the Mailbox 

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving.
I am thankful...

• that my children love reading! 
• for the new Junie B. Jones Thanksgiving book which we finished in less than two days. 
• for all of the wonderful things books can teach, like the book Thank You Bear by Greg Foley about thoughtfulness. 
• for waking up to the sight of my two kids cuddled up together sharing a good book. 
• for friends, especially other book lovers who share great ideas like making a literary advent calendar. 

Here are the books we are going to read this December, one a day through Christmas. I am looking forward to the new season despite all the busy preparations because I now have a plan to share wonderful Christmas stories with my children as we prepare our hearts for the holiday!

Make reading relevant

Conversations in our house often circle back to literature. It takes no extra time to bring books into our daily life. Connecting books to real life is a very powerful learning tool, and it is also just plain fun! Here are a few examples:

We often have "mice and beans" for dinner. Whenever I serve rice and beans, our beloved friend Skippyjon Jones comes up in conversation. He also gets brought up frequently in our house because we have a chihuahua who thinks he's a siamese cat. If you don't know Skippyjon, brush up on your Spanish accentito, head to your neighborhood biblioteca, and get ready for some imaginative adventure.

Sometimes it's fun to bring food into your literature. Not long ago we got some delicious animal crackers and dunked them in melted chocolate (mud) to go along with the story of Mrs. Wishy Washy - a fabulous, fun story for early readers. My daughter loved it as a baby because it is action packed. If you remember in an earlier post, she's a mover. Bringing that book back and adding some snacks gives it a whole new life.

Some books have recipes built into them, so it takes no extra creativity on your part. Just read the book and make the recipe!  One that comes to mind is Thunder Cake by Patricia Polocco. We loved making Thunder Cake in kindergarten! Or you could get multiculture with Bee-bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park. A story full of rhythm, rhyme and Korean cuisine as the family prepares a meal together. Recipes are always great for practicing reading (and writing - you have to make your shopping list). Tying in great literature can add that much more.

Fun! That's the name of the game. Be creative with your child's favorite book. Look for openings to reference a book you have read together. Take the time to make that recipe in the back of the book. Make reading relevant.

But My Kid Doesn't Sit Still

"My kid doesn't sit still." If there is a most common excuse for why parents don't read with their kids, this has got to be it. Especially in the toddler years, many children really don't sit still for long.  I was blessed with a "sitter" in my oldest, which probably helped him learn to read earlier. There is nothing that will absorb him more than sitting and reading, except maybe watching tv. My daughter is a mover! I understand the challenge this brings. If she isn't moving, she is sleeping. But she still loves her books. I even found her one afternoon listening to her Tag Reader while standing on her head!

So what do we do with those movers and shakers to get them to love reading? Look for books that include movement! I suggest "Mrs. Wishy Washy," "On Mother's Lap," or baby's first chapter book, "More More More Said the Baby." For the older set, "Jonathan and His Mommy" and Dr. Seuss's "Can You Do It?" are great for more challenging movements. If the book you are reading doesn't have movement in it, be creative in making ways to inject it yourself. Books with flaps or things to touch are often a hit with active children. Or look for books of fingerplays (like Itsy Bitsy Spider) or large motor games to do with your child.

It's also extremely important to seize those rare, often short, windows of opportunity when your active child is quiet and cuddly. With some it's at bedtime or first thing in the morning when they're still a little sleepy. My kids have often brought me books while I'm cooking dinner for some strange reason - maybe because sometimes it works :) Bedtime stories can be tricky with our daughter. When she is really tired, she gets squirmy. If she isn't sitting nicely to listen to stories, then it is time to go to sleep. I figure that is a good strategy to either get her to sit still longer or to know for sure it's bedtime. Other parents of busy kids have used snack time in the high chair to get them to attend to a story. Snacks in hand, whether on the couch or in a high chair, often help children sit still a little longer. Books work great in the car since they need to be buckled in anyway. Audio books are a lot of fun for preschoolers to follow along and turn the pages, helping them feel independent as readers while you concentrate on the road.

The idea behind getting the little busy bodies to sit still and enjoy reading is the hope that they will find reading materials they enjoy and choose to read as they get older. With plenty of activity to balance reading time, turning the pages of a book can enthrall their tired bodies as much as other quiet hobbies. It will also help them get a jump start to success in reading so that it will be more enjoyable later.

Your baby CAN read

You don't need fancy videos or flash cards. I am here to tell you, your baby can read. When you read that animal sound book that your child loves so much (you know, the one with the fuzzy lamb and smooth cow) for the thousandth time and they chime in with their sweet little, "Moo!" They are reading along. Sure they have memorized it. That is part of reading. Knowing the letters and sounds will come later. Enjoying a book with you and being encouraged to be a part of the process is the first step.

Later, when your child tells you they "don't know how" to read, pull this book out again. Or try the good old Blue Hat, Green Hat or No, David. Remind them that they DO know how to read. If they get stuck on a word, they can use the pictures to help them. They can read McDonald's and STOP, after all. (Tell me, parents, how many of the words in this blog have you had to sound out, for goodness sake.)

This is a good time, if you haven't already, to begin playing with letters and sounds. A great time for this is during a boring car ride. My husband likes to play the No Parking sign game with the kids. Do you know how many of those Ps there are on any given street? That game gets old fast, but the kids never seem to tire of it. I like to have the kids read the next word in a story, especially short words like "me" or "see," and fill in the rhyming words in a rhyming book. They get practice using context clues and using beginning letters as clues. And I get to tell them what great readers they are!

I have so much to say about learning to read, I could go on and on. And I hope to in this blog. I will share some stories of things we have done at my house. My son learned to read at 3 and my daughter is now reading at 4. I'm not much for drill and practice. My son wouldn't have any of it even if I was. We just read and read and read and then we play with silly sounding words on our way to the library. So come along with me for some inspiration. I have enough love for teaching kids to read that some of it is bound to rub off!