March Read Along: Anybody Hungry?

For a Story, a Craft, or a Snack?

Helping Little Hands is hosting a smorgasbord of reading this month. Have you checked out all the great books and activities yet? I’m pleased to be joining in the fun and sharing a entertaining books and easy craft.


A Mouth Full of Surprises

Lift-the-flap books are popular with the youngest babies (as long as they’re sturdy) but bigger kids enjoy the interactive aspect too. What’s for Dinner, by Ann Garrett and Gene-Michael Higney engages young listeners with rhymes, bright animal illustrations, and large flaps representing the mouth of each animal. The poem on each page identifies the animal as well as a snack the animal enjoys, which is revealed in the illustration by opening the mouth flap. Animals include a cat, a walrus, a frog, a bat, and a shark. Both the poems and the illustrations are full of humor, such as the cat “playing with her food,” which is a rat who is munching some cheese of his own. The final page is features a kid, whose snack has a funny reference of its own: a hot dog is not a dog at all! B enjoys repeated readings of this one, and he’s learned to contribute some of the under-the-flap sound effect words, like gulp, slurp, and crunch. The flaps and pages are both heavy cardstock, but I wouldn’t leave this one in the unsupervised hands of an inquisitive toddler (like T).


Feeding Your Face

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The giggles that ensued from the silly snacking in the story prompted me to put together a simple munching craft with a free printable, a paper lunch bag, and some clip art. Visit DLTK’s Growing Together for a long list of printable paper bag puppet parts. We started with a frog, but you can also find a cat and a bat, and the hippo could be pretty easily adapted to a walrus. Haven’t found a shark, but we could probably design our own. (Unless anybody wants to suggest a place to find one?) While B colored and cut out the puppet pieces, I found a clip-art fly from Microsoft and printed it out as well. When we assembled the puppet, we could “feed” it the fly! You could also use other animals to create new snackers; perhaps a bird munching a worm or a pig crunching some corn? Kids learn about animal behaviors while getting some fine motor practice in the assembly process. You could even extend this craft to a nutrition lesson by printing out some examples of food and discussing which are healthy choices to “feed” your puppet.

Appropriate for: some toddlers, preschoolers, primary grades.


Thanks, Polly, for including me in the read-along. If you’re a new visitor to Little Sprout Books, welcome! Visit this week’s Feed Me Books Friday post for a spring garden book and activity, and link up your own book recommendation while you’re there!

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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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Have You Finished Your Candy?

A Reverse Psychology Picture Book


How many of us can empathize with frustrated Mama Pea who can’t get her Little Pea to finish his dinner before he has dessert? I became a fan of Amy K. Rosenthal recently, and was happy to find her humorous take on mealtime battles at our library.


Dinner Distractions

There are any number of reasons B claims to be finished with dinner before he’s had much of a meal: others getting up from the table, a visitor’s arrival, a toy or activity calling his name, hopes for a few more baskets to score before the sun goes down, or the prospect of a tempting dessert on the horizon. We’ve never tried to enforce a “clean-plate” policy because we want B to respond to his own cues for hunger and fullness, and in general he is a healthy and adventurous eater. If he wants to give up on his meal before it seems like he’s eaten a healthy amount, I’ll usually keep it aside and see if he’s hungry again in a short time. When there is a treat ahead, I may give him a minimum to finish to be “strong and healthy” before he gets the goodies. That’s when I find myself sounding like Mama Pea.


Making the Frustrating Funny

Little Pea is the story of a young pea who enjoys many activities with his parents but does not enjoy dinner: candy. Mama Pea issues an edict – he must eat five pieces. Each bite is accompanied by a exclamation such as, “Blech!” The first time we read it, B was a little incredulous that anyone, even a pea, could dislike eating candy for dinner. What scrumptious treat does Little Pea receive after finishing his five bites? Tasty spinach! Yum! Did B close the book and ask for a bowl of spinach? No, but I appreciated the cognitive dissonance it created for him. It gave us a chance to talk about both what’s healthy for our bodies and why it’s important to listen to mom and dad’s directions. Amy K. has two other satirical stories: Little Hoot (an owl who won’t stay up late) and Little Oink (a pig who won’t get dirty). We’ve already put in our requests for those at the library.


Appropriate for: Toddlers, preschoolers, primary grades.


Linking up with: Feed Me Books Friday at Gretchen Reads 24/7

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You Put Ketchup on What?

Kids' Eating Habits

For the most part, B has been a pretty adventuresome and often voracious eater. We count ourselves lucky and I still knock on wood. I know many other moms plagued by the picky habits or allergic limits of their children’s eating habits: only pasta and rice, chicken nuggets for every meal, scanning every label and quizzing every restaurant for peanuts, wheat, or eggs, avoidance of all things green, dipping all food in ranch dressing or ketchup. Sound familiar to anyone? T’s appetite has not been as adventuresome as B’s so far, but he’s super independent and interested in table food, so I’m hoping as his ability to chew and his dexterity improve, he’ll follow his brother on the path to broader dietary horizons.


A Book for Picky Eaters


Though we haven’t had to work hard to convince B to try new things, we had fun talking about the picky eating pigs in Mrs. Pig’s Bulk Buy, by Mary Rayner. I recommended it immediately to a couple friends who do have picky eaters, and I’m now sharing that recommendation with you. Read it with your child as a nudge toward trying new things or as a cautionary tale to avoid getting stuck in a food rut.



Ketchup Gets a Little Tiresome

The little piggy children in Mrs. Pig’s Bulk Buy are big fans of ketchup. They like it on EVERYTHING. Mrs. Pig gets a little frustrated when her children cover everything she works so hard to cook with ketchup. (Can we blame her?) So she comes up with a plan in the vein of that tried and true parental trick: reverse psychology. On her next shopping trip, she purchases 6 enormous jars of ketchup, and from the time she returns home, that is all she serves.
 As you can imagine, the piggies are excited at first, but it is not long before they are begging for something else to eat. Satisfied she has taught her piggies a lesson, Mrs. Pig goes back to cooking tasty meals for them – and they aren’t so eager to drench them in ketchup. The author attributes the rosy skin of pigs to Mrs. Pig’s ketchup experiment: “all piglets have been like that ever since,” and warns the reader against becoming too fond of ketchup or “who knows, you just might turn really bright pink yourselves.”


How do you deal with picky eaters or food ruts in your house?


Appropriate for preschoolers, primary grades.


Linking Up With:

What My Child is Reading This Week

Tackle it Tuesday

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