After finishing our journey through the alphabet, we’ve moved on to using Before Five in a Row for our preschool “curriculum”. I love Before Five in a Row and Five in a Row for the preschool years because they center around reading books and because they are so flexible. We started this week with Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom. This rhyming book is perfect for preschoolers as it follows Jesse Bear through his day. It was also perfect for my sartorially gifted preschooler as we expanded on the getting dressed theme and read a bunch of fashion themed books.
Ella Sarah knows what she wants to wear. She wants to wear “ 
my pink polka-dot pants, my dress with orange-and-green flowers, my purple-and-blue striped socks, my yellow shoes, and my red hat.” She doesn’t care if her family thinks it’s crazy. She knows what she wants and she means to wear what she wants. Preschoolers everywhere (and their parents) will identify with Ella Sarah and appreciate the ending when all of Ella Sarah’s friends turn up for a tea party in equally outrageous outfits. Our library copy didn’t have the medal on the cover so I was interested to see that Ella Sarah Gets Dressed won a Caldecott Honor in 2004. I think that was a tribute to Margaret Chodos-Irvine’s bright illustrations full of color and texture.
In this cute book by Jean Reidy, a litlte girl tries on outfit after outfit only to declare Goldilocks style that each one is “too purpley” or “too princessey” or “too polka-dotty”. In the end she finds an outfit that is just right. There is nothing particularly original about Too Purpley! but Ruth enjoyed it. My favorite part was that when we got to the last page Ruth declared “Acutally, I wouldn’t wear that,” and then proceeded to critique the girl’s choices.
Other books we enjoyed:
Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London
Bear Gets Dressed: A Guessing Game Story by Harriet Ziefert
I’ll leave you with one of our favorite outfits of Ruth’s from about 2 years ago.
Stop by Hope is the Word for more Read Aloud Thursday (and a review of one of my all-time favorite series)!
Last week we celebrated Z week. What? You didn’t celebrate? Well, we did. Pink cupcakes with sprinkles and everything. Z week marked the end of Ruth’s preschool Letter of the Week journey. Z is a special letter to her for reasons that will remain nameless. All alphabet she’s been asking if it’s Z week yet so she was especially excited last week to get to the best letter of all.
Based on one of Kate’s own childhood experiences, this is a funny and sweet look at a parent child relationship. Sadie wants to go to the zoo but things keep happening everytime she and her Dad plan an outing. Her Mom breaks her foot, their dog gets lost, relatives come for a surprise visit. But today they are going no matter what. So when Dad notices that it’s begun to rain on their way to the zoo, Sadie points out that it isn’t raining on HER side of the car. The dialogue between father and daughter gets funnier and funnier as the book goes on:
My own offering is a new book in the “A True Book” series: Understanding Diagrams by Christine Taylor-Butler. I really like the books in this series. We’ve used quite a few of them this year for science. They aren’t always the most complex book on the topic or the kind of beautiful non-fiction stories that win awards. However, without fail they give a good solid foundation on a topic. They are also written at a simple enough level that my first grader can understand the information and they have enough illustrations that keep him interested.
So I’m a little late today with this post but it’s still Thursday so it’s all good. Today I have three books starring fairy tale wolves to share. The first is Huff & Puff, an interactive version of the Three Little Pigs, by Claudia Reuda. There is actually no wolf pictured in this version as the reader plays the role of the wolf, huffing and puffing through die-cut peepholes. This is a great version for a younger reader, it was right on target for my Ruth, age
What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf? by Debi Gliori was our favorite of these three books. It’s also full of nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters (from Little Red Riding Hood to those pigs to Humpty Dumpty to Little Bo Peep). It’s Mr. Wolf’s birthday and we see him progress through his day as each page asks “What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?” (The accompanying illustrations also have clocks, so it could make a nice book for talking about telling time.) Mr. Wolf is a little bit grumpy as noone has remembered his special day but unknown to him the other characters are all preparing for a big surprise party for his birthday. The watercolor and ink illustrations are marvelously detailed and it’s fun to search for all the different familiar characters.
Oliver is a little different. And that’s ok. He’s never really alone. He has his stuffed animal friends to share in his adventures. He’s clearly a boy who lives in a world of his own imagination and is quite happy that way. Then one day a stray tennis ball leads him to the next door neighbor’s house and he meets Olivia. She’s a little different too. We all liked this charming first book by Birgitta Sif. As a bonus, when we read it a second time we discovered that Olivia is there from the beginning, cleverly in the background of every illustration.
First, the summary. Ralph is a boy (in maybe 1st grade) who struggles when it comes time to write stories in class. His teacher tells them that “stories are everywhere” and that “stories happen to those who tell them”. All the other kids (especially Daisy, the girl in the desk next to his) seem to have no trouble finding the stories all around them. Daisy even writes a book about Ralph. But Ralph can’t think of anything until one day when his classmates help him figure out how to turn a seemingly small incident into a great story. It didn’t surprise me to learn that the author is a creative writing and first grade teacher. There is definitely an element of inspirational you-can-do-it-too in this book. What bothered me is that I don’t necessarily agree with the methodology used here. I think for some kids who are natural writers it’s fantastic to encourage them to be creative and let them go crazy (that would be Daisy in this book). But I subscribe to the idea that for other kids where writing is much more difficult you have to give them more tools than just “stories are everywhere”. It struck me that Ralph was having a problem in the first place because of an unrealistic teacher.
We never hire babysitters. Ever. We are blessed to live close enough to family that our kids get to stay with grandparents or an aunt or an uncle when we go out. Our kids typically cheer when we are leaving. And why not? Pop and Grandma do everything they want. Auntie brings bags of special book and activities with her. And Uncle is about 1000 times more fun than either of us. In fact, uncle is so much more fun that David likes to say that when he grows up he’s going to be an uncle. Willie has a pretty fun uncle also in this newish book by Amy Schwartz. Willie and Uncle Bill is three short stories about the adventures that the two title characters have when Uncle Bill comes to babysit. The adventures get wilder each time and border on the unbelievable but it’s all fun. It’s a sweet celebration of the special relationship between an uncle and a nephew.
Did Jonathan Swift’s precoocupation with sex and filth result from a neurological condition that might also explain his late-life surge in creativity Why did W. B. Yeats’s doctors dose him with toxic amounts of arsenic? Did James Joyce need several horrific eye operations because of a strange autoimmune disease acquired from a Dublin streetwalker?
The
I’ve been trying to do more art with the kids this year. I’ve long wanted to do more artist study but I’ve been kind of paralyzed by feeling like I should do it in some kind of order: chronological or by style perhaps. However, I’ve never gotten around to figuring out the right way to do it so we just didn’t do much. This year, I’m mostly using newish picture book biographies of artists that look interesting to me to decide which artist we will study next. This makes for a slightly disorganized approach to artist study but it means that it is actually getting done. So far we’ve talked about 
