Valentine’s Day News
Weekly Lo
w Down on Kids Books
Title: Slugs in Love
Author & Illustrator: Susan Pearson and Kevin O’Malley
Join Herbie and MaryLou, two slugs on a farm, in their quest to find each other and true love. They write poetry and love letters back and forth on garden hoes and barn doors, leave messages in strawberry patches and on tomato vines. It’s really cute and a household favorite of ours year round, but is especially wonderful when celebrating Valentine’s Day with small children.
Also, tonight at Half Price Books Humble…
As it is the second Thursday of the month, we’ll be journaling at the table in Metaphysics and Health from 7-9 pm. Bring your love or come alone, either way it should be fun to journal with art together.
Featured on the right is a Valentine’s piece from a journaling/art blog I found today.
If you’re not into journaling, you should still come into HPB Humble before the Valentine’s display comes down. The Store Inventory Merchandiser did a pretty rockin’ job on it:
My Classical Re-Education Part 2
Kiddo and I started the year reading The Confessions over breakfast… we got caught up in The Magic Tree House Adventures and that got put on the back burner, but I intend on putting a good dent in this list this year, so we need to get back on it. Feel free to join me.
The Story of Me: Autobiography and Memoir
PART TWO of The Well-Educated Mind
Augustine – The Confessions
Margery Kempe – The Book of Margery Kempe
Michael de Montaigne – Essays
Teresa of Avila – The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself
Rene Descartes – Meditations
John Bunyan – Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
Mary Rowlandson – The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Confessions
Benjamin Franklin – The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Henry David Thoreau – Walden
Harriet Jacobs – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
Frederick Douglas – Life and Times of Frederick Douglas
Booker T. Washington – Up from Slavery
Friederick Nietzche – Ecce Homo
Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf
Mohandas Gandhi – An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
Gertrude Stein – The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Thomas Merton – The Seven Storey Mountain
C.S. Lewis – Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
Malcolm X – The Autobiography of Malcolm X
May Sarton – Journal of a Solitude
Aleksandr I. Solzhenistyn – The Gulag Archipelago
Richard Rodriguez – Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
Jill Ker Conway – The Road from Coorain
Elie Wiesel – All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs
More Homeschooling with a Toddler – Pirates!
It took longer than expected, but we read through Magic Tree House book #4 Pirates Past Noon
While reading the companion book, kiddo sorted sea shells and counted her treasure…
After that we learned about Vikings and ancient maps… even learned how to spell “Map.”
And that’s what homeschooling a two year old looks like.
Weekly Low Down on Kids Books – Green Eggs and Ham
The problem with toddlers, and kids in general, is the second you pin down what they like and don’t like they immediately turn into liars. Coincidentally, my kid did this with the infamous Dr. Seuss title Green Eggs and Ham.
As you probably well know, Green Eggs and Ham is about a guy discrediting something entirely without ever trying it. He insists through the whole book that he doesn’t like Green Eggs and Ham, he won’t like them here or there or anywhere, he’ll never try them because he knows he’ll never like them. Of course, as the twist of fate will have it, to get Sam-I-Am to leave him alone about the matter, he agrees to try them and discovers that low and behold they are GREAT!
That’s kind of how kiddo has been the last week or so about the book. I picked it up thinking, here’s a classic my kid needs, and read it to her (and some other kids) for the first time during Story Time at Half Price Books Humble. In a retail environment you don’t really have the freedom to take full advantage of all the exclamation points, so I bought it and read it to her at home.
Halfway through our first reading at home she said, “No, no mommy, no green eggs and ham. No, no.” She put her hand over the book, shook her head at me, and instantly replaced it with another title. The title she wanted instead was a Max Lucado picture book from the library called One Hand Two Hands
A few days later, it hit me, but not until after second breakfast. At second breakfast, I started reading Green Eggs and Ham, which she insisted I put down. So, I went to pick out a different title and when I did this she protested!
“No, mommy, I like Green Eggs and Ham.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, now I like Green Eggs and Ham. Read.”
Like the star of Dr. Seuss’ little book, Kiddo had to warm up to the idea of Green Eggs and Ham. For whatever reason, when first introduced she was certain she would not like the book. Maybe it seemed to long. Maybe it was too repetitive. Maybe too loud. Who knows, maybe Sam-I-Am just annoyed her with all his persistence. But at the end of second breakfast, after trying to re-read it for over a week, my kiddo decided – finally – that maybe she liked Green Eggs and Ham after all.
Homeschooling a 2 Year Old
Looks like this…
I read Magic Tree House #3 Mummies in the Morning and its companion research guide Mummies and Pyramids while she looked at lots of pictures. The books with pictures were The Kingfisher Atlas of the Ancient World, a Reader’s Digest What Life Was Like, a coffee table book called The Pyramids and Sphinx, and a hardback I plan to use as a textbook when we do this again called Life in the Ancient World
Then we learned that P is for Pyramid. After several pictures, lots of blue lines, a few attempts to write some letters, she can at least say the word and identify the drawing – mostly – sometimes she says triangle or boat instead. I think she sees triangles and thinks of the sails on a crude drawing of a sailboat.
Anyway, that quickly turned into this:
And that’s what homeschooling a two year old looks like.
Little Monster Friends Part Two
Awhile back I did a Weekly Low Down on Kids Books that I titled Little Monster Friends. It was about Eleanor Taylor’s picture book My Friend the Monster. Then the other night I was recommending one of my kiddo’s favorite books to a friend who has a little girl kiddo’s age and when I went to link to my review of it, I discovered there was none. Or, I just can’t find it. So it’s about time I tell you (or remind you) of my little toddler’s new favorite monster book. It’s one I’ve enjoyed reading to her for quite sometime, but has recently become the most exciting thing in the world to her… at least a few times a day when something else isn’t more exciting. You know two year olds – maybe.
So here’s to our newest little monster friends…
Title: Jumpy Jack and Googily
Author: Meg Rosoff
Illustrator: Sophie Blackall
Jumpy Jack is a delightfully nervous little snail who is terrified of pretty much everything, completely convinced there is a monster lurking around every corner. Googily is his adorably huge friend who checks for monsters everywhere they go, just to be safe. The catch? The terrifying monsters of Jumpy Jack’s imagination are always exact descriptions of his best friend and neither one of them know it.
This is a fantastic little picture book about imagination and friendship. The illustrations are fantastic and the story and the images both give the kiddo and I the giggles before bed at night.
Now that kiddo is chattering up a storm all the time, intelligibly, she does the cutest things and it’s even clearer than before what things resonate with her. Now she jumps around the house in the day time saying, “No monsters here,” and waggles her finger at me. Sometimes she brings me a sock and waves it at me and mimics the last page “Boo! Said the sock!”
Click the front cover to hear a little girl named Sarah on youtube read the book, check out all the pages. Then come back and click the title link to amazon. Just like Sarah says herself, if you don’t already own the book you’re gonna wish you did.
Guest Post by Joey Pinkney
I’ve been peeking in on Joey Pinkney’s blog for awhile now. It’s a book blog too. We’ve been playing follow-tag on Twitter for ages… you know we follow each other, for whatever reason someone un-follows someone, and then a while later says “Oh Hey, That Person Looks Neat,” and then we’re back to following each other again… I’m sure you’ve played it with a few people too.
So this time I said something about it. The guy is super cool about being pleasantly called out on this game we’ve been playing… a game I only noticed because his profile picture is unmistakable and I genuinely enjoy his posts.
After a little chat, he agreed to guest blog for me. Yay! I love having guest bloggers and doing interviews. It makes me feel like Oprah. Meet Joey:
Southern Strife Book Review by Joey Pinkney
Title: Southern Strife
Author: Valerie Stocking
“Southern Strife: A Novel of Racial Tension in the 1960s” is Valerie Stocking’s sophomore effort. The notion of “sophomore slump” does not apply. This novel is a powerful portrayal of America’s not-so-distant history in dealing with the false concept of this country being a melting pot.
“Southern Strife” is refreshingly offensive. I say that because Valerie Stocking sculpted the characters in a realistic manner and not in a way that would fit in a neat, little box. Stocking’s portrayal of racism within the pages of “Southern Strife” is like an honest parent’s portrayal of Christmas. (“Honey, there is no Santa Claus. I bought you those presents under the Christmas tree…”)
The author uses Willets Point as a microcosm of the effects of racism on both black and white people in 1960s America with twelve-year-old Joy Bradford uncomfortably stuck in the middle. With her scotch-loving aunt being one of Willets Point’s key socialites and her narcissistic mother seeking the affections of her divorce lawyer who is also the leader of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter, Joy’s experience with racism is more than casual.
“Southern Strife” is much, much more than a story about racism. There are many points and counterpoints cleverly woven into the fabric of this novel. Coming in at a healthy 435 pages, “Southern Strife” is not a short read. There were a few lulls in the plot here and there, but that is to be expected in a book of this length. The author makes great use of non-linear storytelling. As the time periods ebb and flow, situations become more clear yet more complicated.
Weekly Low Down on Kids Books – Baby Bear
Title: Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?
Author: Bill Martin, Jr.
Illustrator: Eric Carle
Publisher: Puffin
The Kiddo has definitely picked her favorite for the week, and Oh-My-Lands, if I never have to read this book again it would be too soon! It’s actually not that bad, I’ve just read this book about seven times a day for a week straight, and that’s at a minimum. She’s at the age where she likes familiar, predictable, and oh so repetitive things.
She likes being able to tell me, “This Red Fox,” except fox sounds like something else entirely, something unprintable and disconcerting coming out of your two year old. The x sound is not her forte. She’ll get there, after all, she hears it enough.
Her favorite animal is the Striped Skunk. I’m not sure if it’s the stark black and white contrast of the picture or the way the phrase sounds, but that’s definitely the page we go back to over and over again.
She likes to explain to me that the Mule Deer and the Striped Skunk are like Bambi and Flower. That is important to her, knowing that I know that she recognizes that these are similar but not the same thing.
I like that book goes through one particular region. When you open the book, the first thing you see, even before the title page, is that Carle has painted a forest. It seems insignificant, but I think it’s a nice touch that sets the tone for the animals to come. It says, “this is where you are going, the animals you discover live here…” Then we start meeting them and it’s like taking a trip to Colorado without even leaving her bedroom.
One day, I’d like for us to build a Baby Bear diorama. I think she would really like reciting the book while sliding a paper doll of baby bear past all his friends and on towards his mother.
Polar Bear, Panda Bear, and every other Bear book by Bill Martin are definitely on our To Buy list. If you’re still on the fence, check out this other reviewer’s take on it: http://www.daddyfiles.com/baby-bear-baby-bear-what-do-you-see/
Magic Tree House Adventures – Knights!
The Kingfisher Atlas of the Medieval World
(… Castles! And Medieval Times!)
Today we read up on everything Knights and Castles
“A Feudal System has four parts! From top to bottom it goes: King, Barons, Knights and Serfs!” Sadly, I’ve already forgotten the tune to which we were singing/chanting this bit of information, maybe one day it will come to me again, or maybe we’ll find a new tune. Either way, munchkin was climbing in and out of the laundry basket this morning singing, “King! Baron! Knight! Serf!” so I win.
It was at this point that I decided: in addition to reading through this pairing and prepping kiddo’s future education (when she’s old enough to tackle these projects properly with crafts, writing assignments, and vocabulary tests), I’m going to blog our prepping routines… separate from the Weekly Low Down on Kids Books installments. I know I will find it handy for when we repeat this reading exercise in a few years, but maybe someone else can find it handy now.
I can’t wait to take the kiddo to Medieval Times. I’ve always enjoyed the place and once she is old enough to go, I think it would be a great way to end an educational adventure. As she’s only two and today’s reading was somewhat (though not completely) impromptu, I took her to the closet thing to a castle we have readily available.
The Spring Community Playground, part of Liberty Park looks like a giant, wooden castle to me. It has several keeps, a palisade, horses to ride, and all sorts of castle/fortress styled fixtures. According to the park’s website:
This playground was built by the Spring community for the betterment of the Spring community ultimately for the enjoyment by our children with community donations and community volunteer labor. It was built in 5 DAYS from January 29th to February 2nd 2003 with over 900 community volunteers. A large majority of the volunteers were parents, grandparents and friends of students from Hirsch, Smith and Jenkins Elementary Schools. We also had volunteers from Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, Kingwood, Conroe, Laredo, and Mexico.
Obviously, there’s a huge difference between this and an actual castle! But it’s fun to walk the park and read the engraved pieces of wood that tell who donated what. I want the kiddo to grow up with a strong sense of community… our neighborhood is our manor, and all that.
When she’s older, we’ll be able to spread the study over the course of a week and add more books and activities. For instance, on day two we could read The Time Warp Trio
This unit would also be a great opportunity to spend the week going through one Sir Cumference book a day for the start of math lessons.
For lunch, I’ll take the opportunity to serve “feast foods.” I found an entire web page dedicated to recipes of the day, and I love to eat to match our educational themes. Plus, I want my daughter to know her way around the kitchen before she goes off to college, unlike me. So as she gets older, we’ll be making all our meals in the kitchen together – themed or not.
I would definitely try to work in her first horseback lesson during this week if she hadn’t started them already, after all knights, caballeros, Ritters, and chevaliers, are all just soldiers on horseback, as the MTH Research Guide will tell you.
Click image to visit a lapbooking tutorial website.
For the most part, though, we will spend our days reading, making lap books, journaling what we’ve learned, playing dress up, and gearing all our artistic energy at the topic. Homeschool Mom and Blogger of My 2 Small Boys has images of her kids’ notebooks on Knights and Castles here: http://my2smallboys.blogspot.com/2012/01/middle-ages-knights-and-castles.html.
When the weekend roles around, if the study lands in the summer, perhaps we will go to the beach and build sandcastles; If in the fall, maybe we’ll head out to the Texas Ren Fest.
Knights and Castles Library List
Saint George and the Dragon (a great precursor to have on hand for Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, we’ve already read it quite a few times)
Castle Diary by Richard Platt
The Knight at Dawn by Mary Pope Osborne
Knight by Christopher Gravett
Knight ~ A Noble Guide for Young Squires
100 Things You Should Know About Knights and Castles by Jane Walker
If You Lived in the Days of Knights by Ann McGovern
Castle: Medieval Days and Knights by Kyle Olmon
Knights in Shining Armo by Gail Gibbons
Knights and Castles by Seymour Simon
The Usborne Book of Castles by Lesley Sims and Jane Chisolm
What If You Met a Knight? By Jan Adkins
Imagine You’re a Knight by Meg Clibbon
Take Care, Good Knight by Shelley Moore Thomas
The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie DePaola
In the Castle by Anna Milbourne
The Castle That Jack Built by Lesley Sims
The Tournament by Heather Amery
Some more ideas: http://www.angelfire.com/dc/childsplay/castleunit.htm
Anakalian Whims 
Happy Birthday Pride & Prejudice
January 28, 2013 at 11:24 pm (Reviews) (200 Year Anniversary, book to movie, books, happy birthday, illustrations, jane austen, Pride and Prejudice, review, romance, satire, social commentary)
“[…] Jane Austen is the greatest writer ever – because she was the first storyteller to make me care about an old-fashioned love story.”
– Adam Jones
I have to say, I think Jane Austen is one of the greatest writers ever, but not because she was the first to make me care about old-fashioned love stories. I always liked those.
In fact, the first time I read Pride & Prejudice I was too young to catch all the subtle things that make Austen great, I think. I read the book because I thought Emma was funny. It’s easier to recognize the humor in Emma, P&P takes a few more reading years under your belt. At least it did for me.
What is so awesome about Jane Austen is that shallow readers may enjoy the romantic notions of it all (hence loving the books in elementary school when I was devouring them along side Anne of Green Gables) and still have more to offer as you age. The greatest of writers can be enjoyed by the young and reveal themselves over time with multiple readings. I think I was twelve or thirteen before I realized that most of Austen’s work is pure satire and subtle hilarity.
Even though I adore the Bronte sisters, the mastery of language and social fantasy Pollock talks about is what makes Austen’s work accessible to a much wider audience. Wuthering Heights is all dark secrets and emotion, whereas Pride & Prejudice is social commentary, comedy, romance, and more.
Look at Darcy, the most introverted socially awkward geek of all time. The only reason he is considered desirable by such a wide array of women is because he has money and a pretty face. Without those two things, he would be Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory. At least, that’s how I read him. Apparently, I’m not the only one or the movie made in 2005 starring Keira Knightley would have been a bit exasperating. Instead, it has become a favorite on rainy sick days.
So Happy 200th Birthday Pride & Prejudice and well done, Jane.
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