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 

Happy Belated New Year

As if things weren't busy enough around here, then come the holidays! It was a great month. Things are settling back into a routine. We got a lot of WONDERFUL new books for gifts. My son loves non-fiction and he got some books with bright, colorful photo illustrations. DK readers, National Geographic and Eyewitness books are all winners with my boy. He can find an illustration that interests him and read about it. He is a very visual learner, so this type of book is right up his alley.

He enjoys chapter books if we read together, but when he reads on his own, he will more often pick up one of these books, a Lego magazine, Ask or Appleseeds magazine. All of which, in my opinion, are great choices. I'm amazed at the things he knows from his reading. He would not learn as much reading novels, even though novels are my idea of fun reading. To each their own!

On a sad note, my daughter turned 5, so she received her last Imagination Library book. This program has delivered a much anticipated book to our mailbox every month for FREE thanks to Dolly Parton, our local United Way, and many more sponsors. It is available for all children in our United Way service area from birth until their fifth birthday. We have loved this program and graduation is bittersweet. I will have to look for a quality magazine subscription to take its place. We have enjoyed the Cricket family of magazines for their high quality publication that is completely free of advertising.

If you are struggling with a young reader in this new year, maybe you need to find materials your reader enjoys. Or maybe one of these tips will help you: 12 Best of 2012. Happy 2013!

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!

It's how they felt...

A colleague of mine said something recently that has stuck in my mind and keeps coming up as I'm reading with my kids. I wish I could remember the name of the wise person who said it, but if I wait until I find out, I'll never share it. So here goes... It was regarding those favorite books a young child brings to you again and again. This wise person noted, it's not usually the book itself that is the draw for them. It is the feeling they got from reading it with you. That is what brings them back to a particular book. When you think about it, there is usually a special book that MOM reads, or DAD reads, or GRANDMA reads. The child wants to relive the emotion that is associated with that book and its reader. As you are reading, think about the feelings and emotions you and your child experience. How can you make these feelings be the kind that will make that child want to come back to experience reading again and again?

In my search for the name of the wise woman who noticed this phenomenon, I came across this fabulous list of quotes about reading. I enjoy goodreads for their book reviews and the ability to create your own book lists. This is just another reason to go back again. I get warm, fuzzy feelings when I read these thoughts about enjoying a good book.

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.

Stealing

Today I am linking to this mom's blog post. I subscribe to her blog because I love her creative lunch ideas and today she included a book list! Some I have never heard of and want to check out. What are the read alouds that you and your children have loved the most? Right now my son and I are reading yet another Magic Tree House book and we have The Borrowers on the night stand. My daughter and I just finished another Junie B. Jones book and enjoyed the picture books: A Sick Day for Amos McGee and Where's Jamela?

Comprehension strategies

I hear so many great things about Pinterest, but haven't joined. I just got on to look at what's out there today and found this cute video to demonstrate comprehension strategies of monitor, clarify and reread. I decided to share it here. As parents, we have the luxury of being able to work one-on-one with our children, enjoying a good book together. This gives us the opportunity to be detectives. What areas does your child need to improve? Do they need more sight words in their vocabulary? Are there certain sound combinations that are giving them trouble? Are they struggling with fluency? Without fluency it is difficult to hold concepts in memory and achieve comprehension or understanding. Reading programs can be helpful, especially in classrooms when you have many children to teach and can't sit down individually as much as you would like. But they cannot replace one-on-one time reading and enjoying books. This is also why classroom teachers utilize guided reading or small group reading so they can focus on each child, hear them read at their own reading level, and intervene exactly where they need help most in the moment. Maybe these comprehension strategies are what your child needs most. If not, there's always Pinterest :)

Updated to add: I should have used these strategies myself today. If it sounds too good to be true (monitor), it probably is. I should have clarified and carefully reread that recipe a little sooner to realize that my meat needed to cook for 50 minutes PER POUND, not just 50 minutes. Looks like it's tuna for dinner tonight. On the the plus side, dinner is figured out for tomorrow night, which never happens because I am obviously not much of a planner.