Routine

This morning is our first day back to school after Spring Break, which has meant slipping back into our routines.  I was reflecting this morning over how little reading we did over the break, compared to our normal reading days.  It wasn't that we didn't do any reading, just not very much of it.  Which got me thinking... perhaps the only way we really ever have time to do anything is if we MAKE time to do it.  After all, isn't that what a routine is?  Blocks of scheduled times strung together in a predictable pattern?

Library Day #3

We’re back!  Spring break is coming to a close for us and we are spending today getting ready for the transition back into our usual school day routines.  We had so much fun this week and have lots of reading to share with you.   Let’s start with yesterday’s quick trip to the library, shall we?

Honey, Honey – Lion! By Jan Brett
This Place I Know: Poems of Comfort edited by Georgia Heard
I Got Two Dogs by John Lithgow
My Pumpkin by Julia Noonan
Oh The Things You Can Do That Are Good For You by Tish Rabe
Zero by Kathryn Otoshi
The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack
The Three Little Pigs We Both Read
Air is All Around You by Franklyn Branley

Mr. Putter & Tabby Take the Train by Cynthia Rylant

Deal Me In

Programming Note: We will be headed out of town for a bit a spring break fun, so I will not post tomorrow. See you Saturday!

Yesterday I posted about the board games that we are using to stave off boredom over our rainy spring break stay-cation.  In today’s post I want to share with you some of Kindergarten Kiddos favorite card games.

First up: Old Maid

For some reason this card game never fails to delight Kiddo. 

Next at bat:  Go Fish

Another classic game that I remember from my own childhood. 

Last, but not least: Crazy Eights

All of these card games (and yesterday’s board games) are perfect for the 4-6 year old set for a few key reasons:

1. They require little or no reading
2. The rules are easy to learn and to follow
3. They are games of chance, requiring almost no strategy, meaning your Kiddo can beat your socks off fair and square.

A word about chance:  One of the great lessons I’ve learned in life is the lesson of letting kids lose. 

A few years ago I was playing a card game with my highly competitive niece (then about 5 years old) and her grandmother.  Luck was not on my niece’s side that evening, and as the game drew towards its inevitable end, my niece grew more and more distressed (read: maudlin) over the fact that she was going to lose. 

I started manipulating the game so that the odds would be in my niece’s favor and was annoyed when I realized that her grandmother was not; instead, she continued calmly playing her cards until she delivered the final, devastating blow.

While my niece melted into histrionics over the game, her grandmother gently stroked her back and said, calmly but firmly,

“I know you're disappointed, but you don’t always get to win.  Some things are out of our control and you have to play the cards you’ve been dealt, even if they’re not the cards you want.”

Wow.  She was right. I’ve never forgotten that card game and the urge I had to “rescue” my niece from the uncomfortable feeling of losing.  But at what cost? 

See, I think that this is where games, like books, let us experience (in a small way) the bigger emotions of life.  We feel the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, the heady pleasures of luck, and the bitterness of having to play out a bad hand.

Who knew so much could happen during a simple card game?

Hungry and Bored Games

Well friends, here at our house Kindergarten Kiddo is on Spring Break, which means that there are a lot of hours in the day to fill.  As an only child, Kiddo has had plenty of practice in the art of occupying herself, but as the days at home stretch on, she inevitably turns to one of the grown-ups in the house for entertainment.

Being that we live in the Pacific Northwest, naturally the weather has been perfectly miserable: cold, wet, and unrelenting rain has been falling all day and shows no signs of letting up for the remainder of the week.  We’re starting to run out of ideas.  I’m wondering if you are too, so I thought that in today’s post I’d share with you some of the board games we’ve been playing this week.  

Side note: Kiddo has outgrown the likes of "Chutes and Ladders", and "Candyland", but these are good to start with if your Kiddo is new to board games.

First up:  "Sorry" by Hasbro

This classic board game is perfect for young players because it requires only basic counting skills (the highest number card is 12) and minimal reading.  The rules of Sorry are about as easy as they come - they are almost intuitive.  Even if your Kiddo isn’t reading yet, if she has played the game enough she will likely have memorized that the 4 card means move 4 spots backward, or that the sorry card means you get to bump your opponent back to start. 

Bonus Points: Depending on your Kiddo’s level and interest, you can play the game with only one pawn per player or all four, thus making the game easier (and shorter) or more challenging.  Besides, it’s a fun game for grown-ups and Kiddos alike.

Next up: "Sum Swamp" by Learning Resource

This is probably Kindergarten Kiddo’s favorite board game right now.  This game comes with a game board, two six-sided die numbered 1-6, a four-sided operations die (+ and -) and four figurines.   I cannot tell you how much fun Kiddo is having with this simple little game.  Seriously, I keep thinking: why didn’t I come up with this sooner?

Bonus Points: This game reinforces not only simple addition and subtraction, but also the concepts of zero, even, and odd.  

Science Saturday #3

Okay, so technically it’s Tuesday, but I promise you: this is a science post worth waiting for!  

This week’s experiment: Make Your Own Ghost 
(aka: how to make a light bulb glow without plugging it in)

The purpose of this experiment is to illustrate how we can generate electricity with our own bodies that can be used to make a fluorescent light tube glow.

Stuff you need:                                          

Latex balloons

Long fluorescent light tubes

A dark room (we used a storage closet and a bathroom with no windows)

Curious Kiddos (costumes optional) pictured l-r, Kiddo JPO, Kiddo LPO, Kindergarten Kiddo)

We began this experiment by asking our Kiddos to predict how we could make the light tube glow without plugging it in to a socket.  Our Kiddos guessed, “You can make it glow with the sun.”  And then… “You can use static electricity!”  Bingo.

This experience will be a lot more interesting for your Kiddo if you spend some time building up his or her background knowledge a bit.  Keeping in mind that this is an experiment for Kindergarteners (and one 3 year old sibling), we kept our overview pretty basic.

First, talk with your Kiddo about how light is a form of energy.  This is a concept that even very young children can grasp onto.  Next, explain that the fluorescent tube is coated inside with a special chemical (phosphorous powder) that is turned on (glows) when it comes in contact with energy.  Describe how you are going to use the balloon to create the kind of energy that the light tube needs to glow.  Finally, explain that in order to see the light tube glow, you must conduct your experiment in a very dark space.

Step One: Inflate and tie the balloon.

Step two:  Find a Dark room where you can shut out most incoming light.  We used a closet, but a dark, windowless interior room would work too.  You can try to do this under a very heavy blanket if your Kiddo gets too scared of, say, being stuck in a small dark room; just be sure that all ambient light is shut out.

Step Three: Place one end of the tube on the floor and hold it upright.  We found it easier for the grown-ups to handle this part of the experiment.  We also found that if you are working on non-carpeted surfaces, it works best if the grown-up holding the tube is also wearing socks and can rest one end of the tube on the top of her toes.

Step Four: Rub the balloon up and down the side of the tube as fast as you can.  Within seconds the tube will start glowing.

Here are two pictures that we managed to get of the glow.

Don’t they look like ghosts? 

Extra Credit: If your Kiddo is older (or a genius) you can spend some time explaining about the ultraviolet light that melts the drop of mercury inside the tube which turns into a vapor laden with electrons that then interacts with the phosphorous powder coating the inside of the tube.  This is explained in detail in Janis VanCleave’s book Physics for Every Kid, the book we used for this experiment.

VanCleave’s book says, “Once the tube starts glowing, even the nearness of the balloon causes light to be produced.”  We weren’t able to reproduce this result, but honestly – who cares?  This experiment’s results were neat enough on their own.

Cost for this experiment: the two pack of light tubes was $5.99 and the balloons were $2. 
A big THANKS to Momma K and Kiddos J&L for experimenting with us today!

P.S. Getting the photo of the glow was a bit tricky.  If you want to know how we did it, leave a comment and I’ll reply – otherwise, the post gets too long.

Raising a Writer Too #2

Last night we had our good friends Ruth & Jim over to our place for dinner.  Kindergarten Kiddo spent the better part of the afternoon performing her duties as the table setter.  This is a job that she takes very seriously, especially when we are expecting company. 

After carefully arranging silverware and napkin rings and placing the water glasses just so, Kiddo decided something was missing: hand-lettered menus.  Now, normally we like to keep it pretty casual around here, but occasionally Kindergarten Kiddo likes to channel her inner Fancy Nancy. 

Here’s what she came up with:

After finishing her first menu, she felt it would be prudent to make menus for each guest to enjoy.

Creating menus is a great way for your Kiddo to practice his or her writing.  Kindergarten Kiddo makes menus a lot at our house.  It’s a great way to keep her busy and engaged while I put the finishing touches on (okay – throw together) dinner.   Encourage your Kiddo to try to spell the menu items on his or her own, or, if it is a special occasion, write them on a separate piece of paper that your Kiddo can refer to.  It’s also fun to have your Kiddo illustrate the menu. 

One Hit Wonders #1

I was born smack dab in the middle of the 1970’s and grew up as a child of the 1980’s.  I’m sure that many of you reading this right now are conjuring up favorite books from your 80’s childhood – something by Shel Silverstein, perhaps…

…or maybe Judy Blume. 

Well, not me.  All of the books that I remember best from childhood were written in the 1960’s.  Why?    During my childhood, my mother was, as she liked to refer to herself, a “garage-saler”.  You read that right – garage s-a-l-e-r.  Trust me when I tell you that there wasn’t a single Saturday of my childhood that my mother did not hit at least three garage sales. 

While this had somewhat tragic results for my and my sibling’s trousseau, it did mean that over a childhood of summer Saturdays, we amassed a rather obscure book collection.  These were not popular series books, or Disney spinoffs.  These were the One-Hit-Wonders of the children’s publishing world.

The first one I’d like to share with you is the Teeny Teeny Tiny Giraffe.

Teeny Teeny Tiny Giraffe is a Rand McNally Junior Elf book.

These tiny tomes measure just 4.5 in wide and 6.5 in long.  They fit perfectly into children’s hands and were sold for the retail price of .49 cents!  I loved this book because of the rich illustrations.  I don’t recall ever actually reading the words in this book, and yet it remains an important part of my literary history. 

Which brings me to my point: a book’s value does not lie solely in its words.  Sometimes you just want to look at the pictures – and that’s ok too.  

Reasons Why I LOVE Picture Books with CDs #2

Yesterday I posted about the book diet that began when Kiddo was a toddler.  I realize that I forgot to mention one critical element of her diet: Picture Books with CDs.

As you may recall, I had determined, through no discernible scientific means, that Kiddo should consume ten books per day as part of a healthy reading habit.  In the beginning I became somewhat obsessed with this number.  I was constantly on the lookout for space in the day that could be used for reading. 

It occurred to me that we spent a lot of time in our car, and wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to utilize that time for reading?  That’s when I discovered the picture books on CD shelf at our local library.  The first book we checked out from this collection was Paul O. Zelinsky’s  Rapunzel. 

The illustrations in this Caldecott winner are what tempted us to choose it in the first place.  Below is an example from the part of the story when Rapunzel first meets the prince.  Can you believe that these are modern drawings and not medieval iconography? 

Though we came for the pictures, we stayed for the story: a witch’s garden; a man’s love for his wife; a mysterious beauty trapped in a tower; banishment and wretchedness; and, in the end, redemption.  WOW! Name two books that you've read to your Kiddo this year that can claim the same.

No, seriously - please name them in the comments.  We're always looking for our next great read.

I think it’s important to note that this book was FAR above Kiddo’s reading level when we first listened to it.  It still is.  But even at the age of three, she fell in love with it.  And why not?  Its pictures are stunningly beautiful, the storyline is compelling, and the voice of the narrator on the audio recording is just spooky enough to keep the listener engaged without being creepy.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that we checked this book out three times in a row (the maximum allowed by our library system).  We have subsequently checked it out many more times over the last two years and the paperback copy that we purchased for our own home library is still in heavy rotation on the nightly bedtime story slot.

P.S. For those of you expecting a Science Saturday post – it will be coming early next week.  Check back with us soon!

The Book Diet

When Kiddo was an infant, I spent those first glorious months at home pouring over parenting books and consumer reports on everything from car seats to baby bottles, memorizing facts about height/weight restrictions for cribs and lurking in the horror-filled recall lists for manufacturers of baby products. 

One day when Kiddo was a toddler, just after polishing off the book How to Get your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much by Ellen Sayter (written, by the way, for parents of much older children but hey – why not be proactive about these things?) I had a brilliant idea: why not put Kiddo on a book diet?

Whoa – wait, what's a book diet, you ask?  Well, if we consider the definition of diet to be “daily nourishment” rather than its more sinister definition “restricted intake”, a book diet makes perfect sense.  My plan was this: commit to a certain number of books per day that Kiddo would have read to her.

Once that decision had been made, I went to research what that magic number of books should be.  I found lots of studies that recommended reading 20 – 30 minutes per day to your child.  I did some mental calculations and determined that, on average, it took 8 minutes to read aloud a picture book, and only five minutes to read a board book.  Adjusting for my child’s taste in books, our lifestyle, wind speed, and the relative position of the stars, I came up with the perfect number for Kiddo’s book diet. 

My child’s daily recommended intake of books would be 10.  You heard me – TEN. 

What became immediately clear was that 20-30 minutes a day was just not going to cut it.  I would have to find more time in the day for books. 

In the beginning, trying to meet the daily required intake of ten books felt like a game.  It was something akin to wearing a pedometer and trying to get 10,000 steps per day; you park your car a little further from the grocery store, you take the stairs, you get up to change the channel on the tv.  Except in our case, it meant that we were reading books at the breakfast table and at snack times; during the bath and on the potty; first thing in the morning and right before bed. 

It also meant that we needed more people on our team to read to Kiddo.  Our Nanny was a natural ally in this endeavor.  Here is Kiddo, age three, and her beloved Nanny:

Sure enough, the book diet soon became a daily habit.  Reading books became just another part of the rhythm of our day, like eating or playing or brushing teeth.  The number 10 itself wasn’t important, but I needed that number in the beginning to be big enough that I would have to change our family’s habits to accommodate more time for reading.   At guess what?  It worked! 

The Meanest Squirrel I Ever Met

My sister and I are both raising young readers.  This may seem like an otherwise unremarkable statement; but when you take into consideration that I am almost nine years older than my sister, the fact that we started our families only two years apart becomes a little more unusual.  I only mention this because of the impact our age difference has on the story I am about to tell you .

About the time I was growing out of children’s books, my sister was growing into them.  I have vivid memories of, as a twelve-year-old, reading books to my then-three-year old sister.  We shared a bedroom, so in order for me to get in some bedtime reading for myself, I’d have to get her to go to sleep first.  As a result, I, have my own special connection to the books that were important to my sister when she was a growing reader.

Which brings me to The Meanest Squirrel I Ever Met by Gene Zion.

My sister and I were chatting over the phone earlier this week about the books that were important to us when we were the age our children are now.  I was telling her about a few of my favorites (which I’ll post about later on) when she asked, “Do you remember the book about the squirrel?”  

And I did – vaguely.   

I got on amazon, where one seller had a copy listed for something ridiculous like $66.  I did some more poking around and – thankfully- found a used copy for just a few bucks.  When it arrived in the mail today, it was like being reunited with an old friend. 

Seeing the title page flooded me with memories of sharing this book with my sister.

I can’t wait to read it with Kiddo tonight.

What are some of your favorite books from your early reading life?  Do you still have them?  Do you share them with your kiddos? 

Dragon's Fat Cat - an Easy Reader Review

Have you met Dragon yet?  No?  Let me introduce you to Kindergarten Kiddo’s newest favorite book,  Dragon’s Fat Cat by Dav Pilkey:

The book is divided into four chapters of about seven pages each.  As you can see below, the pages are not too densely worded, which means its text-to-picture ratio falls right in the sweet spot  for emerging K-2 readers that want to read it on their own.    

This charming book tells the story of well-meaning, but dimwitted Dragon who finds a fat cat outside his door huddled in the snow.   Kind-hearted Dragon brings the cat inside and names her, aptly, Cat.  Hilarity ensues as we watch Dragon learn to care for Cat.

There’s a twist to the story that we won’t reveal here, but rest assured that in the end all is well.

Easy Reader chapter books like this one are great for several reasons, three of which I will list here: 

1. If Kiddo reads the book straight through she feels like a big kid reading a chapter book. 
2. If Kiddo doesn’t feel up to reading the entire book alone, she and I can trade off- I read a chapter, she reads a chapter. 
3. Kiddo can read one chapter, then set the book aside and finish the next chapter later.

I will expand upon the good, the not-so-good, and the just plain ugly of Easy Readers in a later post - I promise. 

THANK YOU MOLLY- faithful blog reader and frequent leaver of comments – for recommending Dragon’s Fat Cat by Dav Pilkey.  Kindergarten Kiddo has enjoyed reading this book on her own and with me.  

We can’t wait to read more of the books in the series:

A Friend for Dragon

Dragon Gets By

 

Do You Really Read All Those Books?

Remember these from Library Day #1?

And these from Library Day #2? 

When we visit the library, Kindergarten Kiddo is free to pick out as many books as she can carry – note that I didn’t say as many books as she can read during the 21-day loan period- but as many books as she can carry. 

So, gazing at this gluttonous haul, you may be wondering; how it is possible for Kindergarten Kiddo to read all those books before their due date?  The answer is simple: she doesn’t.  That’s right, I’m outing us; we here at ellieraisesareader do not, in fact, read all of the books we borrow from the library. 

So there. 

But you know what? My gut tells me it’s not important that Kiddo reads all of them.  When I look at my own reading life, I can point to countless examples of books that I’ve acquired and never cracked the spine on… or that I’ve flipped through, but never quite got around to reading.  Does that make me a weaker reader?  Of course not; it seems silly to even suggest it.  So, why then would that same non-reading behavior be off-limits to my Kiddo?

It’s not just my instincts that tell me I’m right.  There’s actually a lot of research that backs me up on this, the most recent of which was published in 2010.  In a 20 year study of children in homes in China and in the US, Mariah Evans of the University of Nevada and her team found that the number of books in a home – not the number of books read- but the size of a home’s library – had slightly more of an impact on a child’s education level than did the level of the child’s parent’s education.  What this means is this: if a child lives in a home surrounded by books with non-educated parents, that child has a greater chance of going to college than a child living in a home with college-educated parents, but without many books. 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  OF COURSE Kiddo reads books – a lot of them.  In fact, she reads MOST of what we bring home from the library, but not all, and I don’t think there’s a reason to change that.  And how would I go about doing that anyway?  Limit her to, say, 5 books instead of as many as she can carry?  What would be the point: to make her a more efficient chooser of reading material?  That doesn’t seem to serve her growth as a reader. 

It’s more important to me that Kiddo knows her way around the library than for her to know her limits when it comes to reading through what she’s checked out before their due dates.  Heck, even I don’t know my limits!  How many times have I walked out of the library with more than 2,000 pages of material and only 21 days to read them?

I want Kiddo to experience the thrill of possibility as she browses through the stacks.  I want her eyes to be bigger than her stomach when it comes to choosing books.  This is all part of being a reader, and raising one too!

 

Where Our Books Live #2

This is a picture of the bookshelves in our family’s bonus room. 

See how neatly arranged they are?  My husband, who is phenomenally tidy, took it upon himself a few years ago to tame my riotous book collection and bought this book shelf in an attempt to corral some of the more unruly volumes.  He worked happily at this for a few hours; artfully arranging the books by height, width, and overall aesthetic composition, which explains why Women Who Run With the Wolves is shelved with The Doll People and Book Lust.

When he was finished, he turned to me and asked, “Have you actually read all of these books?” 
I’d love to report that I had some witty reply, like “Some of them twice…”, but in reality, I probably muttered a vague, non-committal response. 

Unsatisfied with my reply, he followed up with, “Well, if you’ve already read them, why do you keep them?”  At which point, my head exploded.

I am not the first writer to be plagued by this seemingly innocent question.  In his excellent book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes about the age-old question of how (and if) we use the books we live with.  I’ll share this excerpt:

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.

Umberto Eco and I are in the esteemed company of countless other writers who have been asked this same misguided question.  Okay, so I realize that this is pretty much the only thing that Umberto Eco and I have in common, but a girl can dream, can’t she?

In the July 1865 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, writer Thomas Wentworth Higginson describes a similar, albeit hypothetical, conversation between a graduate student and a carpenter whom he’d hired to build (what else) bookshelves for his expanding library.  You can read the full essay, Books Unread here, or you can enjoy this excerpt:

Sooner or later, every nook and corner will be filled with books, every window will be more or less darkened, and added shelves must be devised. He may find it hard to achieve just the arrangement he wants, but he will find it hardest of all to meet squarely that inevitable inquiry of the puzzled carpenter, as he looks about him, "Have you really read all these books?" The expected answer is, "To be sure, how can you doubt it?" Yet if you asked him in turn, "Have you actually used every tool in your tool-chest?" you would very likely be told, "Not one half as yet, at least this season; I have the others by me, to use as I need them." Now if this reply can be fairly made in a simple, well-defined, distinctly limited occupation like that of a joiner, how much more inevitable it is in a pursuit which covers the whole range of thought and all the facts in the universe. The library is the author's tool-chest. He must at least learn, as he grows older, to take what he wants and to leave the rest.

All right, all right: enough of the nerdy quotes.  In tomorrow’s post I’ll talk about what this means for raising a reader. 

 

A Card of One’s Own

Kindergarten Kiddo is now a card-carrying member of our community’s library system!  She’s been asking about getting her own card for some time, and FINALLY – last week - the big day arrived.  We had an agreement that she could get her own library card once she was old enough to do two things: sign her own name, and convince me that she wouldn’t lose the card.

So, here she is…

… holding her SECOND library card.  Yes – she was able to sign her own name, but her original library card went MIA in less than 24 hours (sigh).  

No matter; I noticed that having the card in her pocket made a instantaneous and measurable difference in her browsing habits.

She took her time wandering the stacks...

...and, is it my imagination, or is she walking a little taller today than usual?

If you are contemplating a similar milestone with your little one, might I suggest a book to pair with the experience? 

Beverly Billinglsy Borrows a Book by Alexander Stadler tells the story of young book-lover Beverly who gets all dressed up for the big day: the day she gets her very own library card.  Beverly revels in the delicious responsibility of checking out her own library book, but trouble ensues when she forgets to return her book by its due date.

When Beverly realizes her mistake she spends a few days in agony over what might happen because of it.  She shares her dilema with her classmates over lunch.  She feels worse after Carlton shares this tidbit:

I love this book because it is written in the language of children and contains a tension-filled (but not terrifying) storyline.  We were lucky enough to get this book with an accompanying CD audio recording, so we were able to listen to it in the car on our way home from the library.  This is the perfect book to complement this momentous occasion.

Happy Reading!