Feed Me Books Friday: Father’s Day Book Picks

Don’t Spoil the Surprise!

I’m running the risk of revealing my husband’s Father’s day gift by sharing my book choices this week, but what good would they be to you next week? I’ll just have to keep his eyes off my blog for a couple days…


Making Memories Cover to Cover


It’s a chicken-or-egg question: do books evoke such strong feelings and memories for me because I love to read, or do I love to read because books evoke such strong feelings and memories? In either case, books play a prominent role in vacation memories, birthdays, and holidays in our lives. It stands to reason then, that part of Daddy’s Father’s day present would be a book. In past years, I’ve chosen books that highlight special relationships between fathers and children or those that feature dad as the hero. This year, Daddy will be receiving two books to share with his two little boys.


The Big Boys

Daddy and B will hone their motor skills while they enjoy The Boy Mechanic Makes Toys, from the Editors of Popular Mechanics. As an honest reviewer, I have to admit I have not read all 275 pages. That said, I was sold after reading the jacket, the foreword, the table of contents, and a few random pages. The book contains an array of 159 projects from the pages of Popular Mechanics magazine in the early 1900s. The foreword emphasizes the value of ingenuity and craftsmanship. Methods and materials have not been updated for modern advancements, and some projects are more entertaining to read about than to actually produce, such as the folding-chair sleigh or fighting roosters toy. However, the majority are intriguing and sure to result in some quality father-son time for anyone with some mechanical inclinations. Chapters include: Making Magic, The Science of Fun, The Really Great Outdoors, Fun for Little Ones, Fun for Older Kids, and The Toy Workshop. I know B will be excited to learn the old-time magic tricks, and will definitely want to try out projects like the toy water plane or dry cell toy tractor.


The Little Guy

T is not yet big enough to participate in the “projecting” that B and Daddy enjoy together (though he thinks he is) so the book I chose for him to enjoy with Daddy will help them spend some quiet time together and is sure to lead to some giggles. Toddlers like T who spend all day with Mommy need special time to develop an emotional bond with Daddy, too. Daddy Cuddles, by Anne Gutman and Georg Hallensleben depicts six different animal daddies cuddling their young. The text is repetitive, but that’s comforting and developmentally appropriate for toddlers. Each page reads, “Daddy [animal] cuddles his [young].” The illustrations show how the animal families exchange “cuddles” and I’m sure Daddy and T (and even B) will share some laughs as the boys cling to Daddy’s belly like the baboons or nuzzle noses like the tigers. We already enjoy Mommy Hugs and Daddy Kisses from the same series, and this one is sure to become a bedtime favorite too.


Appropriate for: babies, toddlers, preschoolers, primary grades, Dads


What are your favorite Daddy books? Will you be doing anything special to celebrate fathers this weekend?

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Feed Me Books Friday: Sensory Stimulation (and other great vocabulary…)

Never Out of Style

Some of our favorite board books have been languishing on the shelves or in the book bins since B has been voraciously devouring “fresh” books from the library each week with a newfound passion for the unfamiliar. However, thanks to T’s continued (albeit slow) progress toward literary appreciation, we’re enjoying a re-introduction to some beloved titles. I’m discovering that as much as I enjoy some of the books we’ve borrowed (and often renewed) there is a reason I purchased many of the board books we own. The classics are classics for a reason, or for many reasons. And board books are ideal because they are so durable and inviting!

Leave the Dictionary on the Shelf

Our latest renewed affection is for We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. If you’re unfamiliar, the basic story line is thus: Father and children head out into the wilderness to find a bear. Must conquer much challenging terrain. Find bear and hurriedly retrace steps to hunker down safely at home. While the suspenseful trip home and climactic barring of the door generates some fun adrenaline, it is not the plot that makes this story so engaging. Rosen’s treatment of the traditional song makes it enjoyable for readers and listeners alike. The rhythm and repetition of the text is buoyant and fun, begs for pre-readers to join in, and perfectly punctuated by the alliterative sensory descriptors chosen for each geographic challenge. The family travels through “swishy swashy” grass and trudges “squelch squerch” through the mud. The descriptive words are great for building vocabulary and for enriching cognitive concepts of each place being described.


More on the Menu

Opportunities to expand on We’re Going on a Bear Hunt with art, literacy, and games are plentiful, but here’s a few of my favorite suggestions:

• Define and internalize those fun descriptive words by applying them to food (and then playing with it)! Think squelch squerch pudding, swishy swashy carrot tops or herb bunches, splash splosh ice cubes into water, creating a puff of blizzard blindness with a hoo-woo through a straw into some loose flour, stumble-tripping over pretzel “sticks” and walnut “rocks,” and grains of rice tip-toeing in an empty margarine tub or yogurt cup. You can find a pdf file of the words flash-card style at schoolsnet.
  
  
• Practice retelling and ordering the story using pictures and/or key phrases. Great activity for flannel board, but also fun for book-making. Kizclub has printable graphics and matching word strips.
  
  
• Focus on the spatial vocabulary highlighted in the repeated lines, “we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, oh no, we’ll have to go through it!” Discuss what kind of obstacles we might try to go over, under, and through. Schoolsnet has matching word and picture cards for practice if you need inspiration.

Appropriate for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, primary grades.
What books to you return to again and again? What makes you come back?

 
Please link up your book recommendations or activities, visit some others you find here, and if you just can’t get enough, check out more book-lovers at Read.Explore.Learn!

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Feed Me Books Friday: Grown-ups Get Sick, Too?

And We Keep Plugging Along…

It was during a conversation about why kids nap and grown-ups don’t that B had this revelation about adults and illness. I told him grown-ups nap sometimes when they are sick to help them get better faster, and he responded incredulously. B is a pretty observant kid, so I think the fact that it had never occurred to him that Mommy and Daddy get coughs and runny noses was less due to inattention than our habit of trying to keep up the pace. As parents, many of us feel compelled to make sure our kids don’t suffer for our infirmities, so we have some hot tea with a day-quil chaser and try to go on with our normal day. Last couple days, I’ve been fighting some virus that B has been battling all week. My throat is sore, I’m achy and tired, but he’s feeling worse than me, so I’m putting aside my complaints to try to make him feel better.


If Laughter is the Best Medicine…

Bring out the silly books! We are entertained by Farm Flu, by Teresa Bateman, anytime, but it’s especially good to coax out the grins when we’re under the weather. In this playful rhyming story, the young narrator is left in charge of the farm while his mother is gone. He finds a cow has come down with the flu, so he takes her inside to care for her. As time passes, other animals all over the farm begin to exhibit symptoms, and each is dutifully cared for by our sympathetic narrator who continues to base his treatment on the refrain, “I knew what Mom would do, If it were me that had the flu.” He also gets a taste of any mom’s frustration when her coddling has been taken advantage of. When he sets some limits for the “sick” animals and cuts out their unlimited TV, games, and popcorn, they quickly decide they aren’t so sick after all! They do, however, show their appreciation for the treatment they received when the boy comes down with the flu himself and they attend to him. I like both messages in this book, first (and funniest) that while being babied might feel nice when we’re sick, there is a limit to the “have-it-your-way” treatement; and second, sometimes the caretaker in the family needs some care too. Makes a nice springboard for discussion of caring for others and not taking advantage of others – both social emotional skills to cultivate.
Appropriate for: toddlers, preschoolers, primary grades.
How do you take care of yourself when you’re under the weather without letting your kids down? After another cup of herbal tea, I’ll be visiting all the links you leave as well as those over at Read.Explore.Learn.

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Feed Me Books Friday: All Aboard for Reading!

A Little Engineer Lives Here

We have 4 different kinds of train tracks, and B asked me for another set in the store today. He loves creating tracks and their surrounding cities, forests, or farmlands. He loves making long chains of cars and towing them around loop after loop. It is no surprise that train books are always popular at our house. Our most recent find capitalizes on his love of trains and his growing interest in reading to provide a cognitive experience of participating in the storytelling.


Chugging Along in Rhyme and Picture

I’m Taking a Trip on My Train, by Shirley Neitzel, uses both cumulative rhyming text and rebus pictures to make the story accessible to pre-readers. Each page adds another car, accessory, or location to the train story. The repetition of the rebus pictures used to replace key nouns (engine, tanker, people, trestle) not only emphasizes key vocabulary but also allows young readers to become familiar quickly and join in with the reading. This book became a favorite of B’s very quickly, and he not only fills in the words for the rebus pictures, but often finishes the rhyme with the descriptive text as well.

Appropriate for toddlers, preschoolers.

I’m on the hunt for other good rebus stories. Neitzel has several (we also enjoyed The Bag I’m Taking to Grandma’s). Anybody have other good rebus suggestions?

Enjoyed the new friends I met last week at Read.Explore.Learn. with JDaniel4’s mom, so you’ll find me there again. Leave a link with your book suggestion(s) and then check out the others listed both here and there!

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Alternatives to TV

When Your Child is Glued to the Couch

Thanks to a bout with the stomach flu, B has pretty much lived on the couch or in bed for the last few days. He has been absolutely drained of energy. It’s times like these that I most appreciate the worthwhile children’s programming on PBS. However, even on a sick-day, I just can’t live with myself if I let B sit in front of the TV all day.




Books for a Busy Mom


photo courtesy ginnerobot

B would be perfectly happy to listen to me read books all day. And when he’s feeling icky, I really try to put aside as many items on my to-do list as possible and do just that. Unfortunately, T has not yet acquired the interest or attention span for our read-a-thons, so we can only read a couple at a time before he interrupts, or wait for naptime. Technology comes to my rescue to feed B’s book appetite (which seems even larger when his food appetite shrinks). So these are more situationally than developmentally appropriate recommendations, though I would have to say exposure to books is better cognitive development than most passive TV viewing.

Audio Books


You can find many of your favorite books on CD, older ones on tape, and even some on MP3. The challenge for preschool age kids is that most picture book readings don’t last as long as their attention spans. We have two selections in our personal library that occupy a little more of B’s time and attention than others. First Disney’s Winnie the Pooh CD Storybook was a gift from B’s aunt. It has 4 stories in 125 pages, which actually prevents it from being a frequent read-aloud choice because B isn’t very amenable to breaking mid-story. Putting on the CD when B is lounging in bed is very successful, and it runs well over an hour. My only complaint is that there are no page chimes, but B doesn’t seem to mind; he sometimes follows the pictures and other times he just sets the book aside to sit back and listen.

We also have a compilation CD featuring Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? And Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? All read by Gweneth Paltrow. We have board book versions of each story, and even with the lack of page chimes, B is able to follow along easily thanks to the repetitive pattern of the text and the illustrations. For bilingual families (or those who’d like to be) the CD also includes the Spanish version of each story.


Books on Screen

Like audio books, the number of books on DVD is rapidly growing. Normally, I would pass over DVDs in favor of experiencing the real thing, but during weeks like this one, they come in handy. B received theDVD version of Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom and he loves it. I don’t know if it’s because he already loved the book, or if it’s thanks to the songs and animation, but this is a much requested feature at our house. It includes 6 other stories, bring the running time to 60 minutes. B loves to get his copy of the book and read along with the story. I’m still working on purchasing copies of the other featured stories.


Tumblebooks Mascot


B also enjoys selections from the Tumblebooks library. Tumblebooks is a subscription ebook service that you can access from the internet, but thanks to our public library system, if we access it from their portal page, it’s free! Book selection and page navigation is pretty simple, meaning that when B had the energy to sit at the computer desk for a while, he could listen to some virtual books and enjoy the original illustrations brought to life with some extra animation.
Appropriate for: preschoolers, primary grades
Linking Up with Show and Tell at ABC and 123


What do you do to occupy sick kiddos who have the energy of a slug?

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Big Fun, Little Guy

Playing with the Big Guys

My son, like many 4-year-olds, vacillates between feeling he can take on the world and being afraid to enter his own dark bedroom alone. My husband (shout-out to a super dad!) tries to include B in many of his activities. It accomplishes two things: first, Daddy gets projects done and spends quality time with B at the same time; second, B gains a real sense of pride at being able to do grown-up things. He loves to work on projects around the house or yard with Daddy (and thanks to Papa he has kid-friendly versions of all the requisite tools). He accompanies Daddy to the driving range to practice his golf swing. He’s even tagged along for a couple of casual lunches with Daddy’s colleagues. Unfortunately, sometimes B’s sense of big-boy entitlement goes a little too far, and he has to be reminded that Mommy and Daddy make the rules, and not all activities are appropriate for kids.

It’s a book! It’s a toy! It’s a souvenir! It’s a lesson!

I’ve shared my affinity for books as souvenirs before, and as anyone whose read my last two posts knows, I just returned from some family vacation time. Most of our time was spent blissfully unscheduled, relaxing at the resort pools and recreation areas, but we did fit in an aquarium visit. B’s souvenir from the aquarium trip was a fun book by William Boniface, The Adventures of Max the Minnow. First of all, the book caught B’s eye (and proved entertaining on the car ride home) because of the googly eyeballs protruding from the cover. A rigid clear ball encases each greed-irised “eyeball” which glide and jiggle and are weighted such that no matter which way you turn this board book, the pupils continue to “look” at you! Now, while Minnows weren’t exactly the feature creature at the aquarium, I think a book about fish is enough of a connection to jog our memories and discuss our vacation excursion.


Braun vs. Brains

The story of Max the Minnow is told in rhythmic couplets – iambic septameter to be exact. Unnecessary terminology, I know, that’s the Lit. major in me coming out. What that means to the reader is that every other syllable is accented in slightly shorter lines than Shakespeare wrote most of his works. It makes the text very bouncy and light. The illustrations are bright and cartoonish, and holes through to the back of the book allow a different creature to show off the googly eyes on each page. Max begins the story frustrated that little guys (remember he’s a minnow) must hide and watch the big fish at play. Inspired by watching blowfish puff up, he sets out to try to become bigger by eating malts, pizza, and noodles, but discovers his new pudgy size makes him the target of some clownfish teasing. His last stop is Sharky’s Diner, where his new plump physique makes him a target for the shark chef. He’s sure hope is lost when he discovers his size has slowed him down, but remembers in the nick of time that “brains mean more than bulk” and finds a space just large enough for him (but not the shark) to escape. When children experience frustration because they’re not allowed to do grown-up things or because they’re not physically big enough to do certain activities, this story is a great way to start a discussion about all the special qualities they do possess or privileges they have.

Appropriate for: toddlers, preschoolers, primary grades

What special activities make your child feel grown-up? Hope you’ll share in the comments and/or add your own link to share a recommended book!

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Baby-Proofing: Where Do You Draw the Line?

Protecting Little Explorers

My house has been reasonably child-proofed years longer than I’ve had children. We always wanted our home to be a welcoming and safe place for friends and family with little ones, so breakables are up high, chemicals are locked away, and outlets are not exposed. When B came along, we added a baby gate here and there (mostly to corral him so I could accomplish something in one room) and the brick fireplace hearth got a foam bumper. T has been crawling for months, but he gets speedier by the day and he’s recently taken up “cruising” along the couch and cabinets so I know it won’t be long before he’s off and running! In my mind, there is some gray area between protecting your child from obvious hazards and letting him explore the world around him. Err on the side of caution or watch baby like a hawk? Depends on the situation.

Cruising the kitchen

A new view of the exersaucer

How Often Do You Tell Your Child No?

I’m not of the camp that believes “no” is a dirty word, but I also don’t want it to be the only word my sons hear all day. I’d rather have a kid-friendly home than fancy furniture and gallery displays, so my kids have pretty free reign in the house. In fact, a guest recently commented, “There are toys in every room!” I’m not sure whether she was amazed that we allow the toy sprawl, or merely surprised, but toys in the kitchen mean dinner gets cooked, toys in my bedroom mean laundry gets sorted, toys in the dining room mean we get to eat after we feed the kids. B knows his boundaries by now, but even 4-year-olds forget the rules and go for the occasional bounce on the couch or climb up the counter. T is just learning the boundaries, and testing them every time I turn around. Babies only begin to grasp the meaning of “no” around 7 months, and don’t have the cognitive development to fully process its use until nearly 18 months, so redirects and distractions are the most successful for T, while B usually gets a question to remind him he knows better. (Where do your feet belong?) That doesn’t mean “no” goes unspoken, but I try to reserve it for dangerous or urgent situations in hopes that it doesn’t fall on deaf ears.


Off Limits for Exploring

I’m not sure if B is naturally very curious or if I created the “why” monster myself by trying to explain actions and expectations – it’s one of those which-came-first kind of situations. I hope that he (and soon is brother) is more likely to follow rules if he understands the reasoning behind them. Sometimes his insistence for an explanation is a little infuriating, but that’s part of the age, right? A book that was first B’s and has been passed down to T is Don’t Touch, It’s Hot by David Algrim. It came from a discount store, but the message is great and the touch and feel, scratch and sniff pages are very entertaining! Each page features a food or cooking area that may be too hot to touch. The oven is hot, but the smell the tasty pepperoni when the pizza cools! The boiling pot is hot, but blow on the curly, stringy spaghetti and it’s ready to enjoy! The repetition in the text both drives the message home and allows pre-readers to learn the pattern and read along. B still thinks this book is a lot of fun and now he’s the experienced teacher issuing the “Don’t Touch” warnings.


Appropriate for: babies, toddlers, preschool


Linking Up With:
Tackle It Tuesday
What My Child is Reading this Week

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