What My Child Is Reading – April 30, 2012

Another month has gone with so many good books read. Our average is about 30 new books a week, so I always barely scratch the surface even with an Amazon widget. However, this week Anna didn’t have any problems picking her favorite books, and for once our picks were the same with one exception.

Crepes by Suzette by Monica Wellington was recommended by Storied Cities as part of “April in Paris” series, and it was hands-down favorite for both of us. I lived in Paris for more than a year, so this book brought up a lot of longing to visit this wonderful city again and see all those places for real. I was surprised and pleased that Anna could match some of the artwork in this book to another Monica Wellington’s book Squeaking of Art that we read and reviewed before. She loved pointing out familiar details and enjoyed the story of various people buying crepes from the street vendor. We are yet to make crepes from the recipe in the book, but it’s on my list!

I am very grateful to have a terrific library close to where we live. Our previous library had good children book section, but most of the books were heavily used, which made flap books not very useful. This library has this brand new Usborne See Inside books, and we definitely take advantage of them. Anna enjoys flap books, and she learned a lot about our planet from this book – just in time for the Earth Day. She continued to enjoy this book this week and picked it as one of her favorites. The book focuses a lot on climate change, so people who don’t believe in human impact on climate might find it somewhat biased. It generated a lot of discussions about how we can reduce our CO2 footprint.

Mary Ann Hoberman is our most loved poet. We read a lot of her books, and they were all instant hits. All Kinds of Families made a repeat visit this week, and I also love illustrations by Marc Boutavant. The story rhymes well, and more musically inclined people could probably turn it into a song. This book also opens a door for all kinds of sorting play that my daughter chooses from time to time and an opportunity to look for unexpected “families” around us.

Our opinions split on LaRue Across America by Mark Teague. We haven’t read any previous LaRue books and while I enjoyed the illustrations and the map, I really wasn’t sure what the target audience for the actual story was expected to be. Sarcasm is not something that my 4 year old understands, and there were innumerable “why” on each page, many of which I was not able to explain. However, she did love the book, and her favorite part that LaRue’s “died in the Death Valley”. She found this twist very amusing. Therefore I am sure she will be delighted to receive her own copy of this book that we won at Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile giveaway.

Month in Review and May Goals

April was a busy month for me at work, which took its toll at home. Daughter has been swinging wildly between cooperative and whiny. She seems to be in a desperate need of a reliable playmate. Unfortunately, all her closest friends are boys, and we are entering the age where boys really like wild games involving taking prisoners, shooting enemies and so on. Anna is not into these games, and some playdates ended with her coming home vowing never to go outside again. I think I need to make more effort in May to find her some new friends. Now, let’s see how we did on goals for April:

• Time Outside deserves an A. We spent a lot of time outside this month since the weather was good most of the time. We took some of our art projects outside, but Anna’s favorite things to do is to play tag or blow bubbles.
• Health and Exercise – B-. I hurt my back early in the month again, so I am trying to take it easy with my Pilates program. We walk a lot, so this counts as exercise. I hope my husband shakes off the cold that daughter generously shared with him, and we will have more energy for joint activities too.
• Organization – C-. Ouch, we are behind in our plan here. We did a couple of very small projects, but lacked energy to tackle anything big.
• Traditions – B-. Well, we definitely played more this month, but I felt that the more we play the more daughter expects me to be always available to her. Even though I enjoy our time together, sometimes I also need some time to catch up with work or with home duties. And we still don’t have a family game night.
• April-specific plans. I did fairly well except the part about starting our backyard remodel. That one slipped to May. Overall I give myself a solid B on month-specific goals. So now on to May:
• 1. Backyard remodel yet again.
• 2. Field trip (we went to SF zoo in April).
• 3. Sailing trip with our friends.
• 4. Dentist appointment

Not a Box

We love books by Antoinette Portis in the house, and read every single one of them so far. When I read about Tissue Box Challenge on JDaniel4’s Mom, I thought it would be fun to participate even after the fact (last week just wasn’t working out for us). So I brought home Not a Box to get creative juices flowing. Eventually I put a tissue box in front of Anna and asked her what she could do with the box. She generated three ideas right away – a “jewelry” holder, a flower pot to grow something in, and a snail house for snails that she likes to catch outside.

We had a lot of difficulties lately with daughter not knowing what to do with herself, especially when parents are not available to play with her. Even if we are available, she seems to only want to play tickling games or “hide-and-seek” or chase around the house game. I am at a loss to explain why it happens, but I can only play tickling so much every day after work without losing my sanity. So we created “an activity box” and brainstormed all different things she can do when she has one of those “what shall we do?” moments. For once I got to use one of those small notepads I had from attending trade fairs. We have probably about 40+ different ideas – from “do a science experiment” to “play a racing game”. Anna was excited to participate in this activity and suddenly she saw that we do have a lot more options than tickling games. It didn’t diminish her appetite for them, but I am hopeful that we can have more fun times together and less fights when I try to get her to do something on her own. Perhaps we can also “prettify” our question box next and do more projects with recyclables. Anna was quite proud to take these mini-baskets to her teachers – idea of them came from fantastic Valerie at Frugal Family Fun.

A Witch School

I believe I heard about Abby Cadabra, Super Speller by Joan Holub before at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn blog, so I was very pleased when Anna unearthed this book in the easy reader section of the library. It’s a great story about two competitive witches that try their best to win a spelling bee. Now almost every day Anna asks me to play “a witch school”. I am happy to oblige, since I sneakily modified an original rule. We take turns, and each of us has to spell the word, explain the spelling rule, then make a short story about the word, draw the picture about the word and then write the word. It seems like a lot, but each turn only takes about 5 minutes, and it’s a lot of fun for both of us. I try to rhyme my stories while Anna comes up with elaborate and hilarious scenarios for hers. In the meantime I discovered that she is quite adept in spelling three letter words, and I am hoping that she will learn some new spelling rules as we keep playing this game. I think we are going to add acting out the word too… on the other hand, my last word to spell from Anna was a paper airplane.

What My Child Is Reading – April 23, 2011

We read a good mixture of longer and shorter books this week. Anna is still on Magic Tree House kick, so I took her to the chapter book shelves in the library and let her pick a few to read. While there she also discovered Magic School Bus chapter book series and wanted to grab all of them. Eventually she picked two, and one made it to her list of favorite books of the week:

Expedition Down Under from Magic School Bus was definitely Anna’s favorite of the week. I didn’t read the whole book, but she wanted me to read her two favorite chapters to her – about jumping on pogo sticks with kangaroos. Anna really connects to the kids in these series, especially with fearful Arnold, and she is always happy when he manages to overcome his fears and have fun. She also read Dingoes at Dinnertime this week, which was also well received. I was a bit surprised that she was not more excited to see an actual live baby koala with his mommy in San Francisco zoo, but, of course, they were both fast asleep in the tree.

The Luck of the Loch Ness Monster was recommended by Almost Unschoolers. I wasn’t sure reading this book whether daughter finds it funny or scary, but she opted for funny. Anna was wondering why she didn’t grow up to the size of Nessie yet, since she eats oatmeal every day for breakfast with great enthusiasm. Apparently, this magic doesn’t quite work on humans. We also discussed whether any part of the story is true, and Anna expressed big desire to go to Scotland and look for Nessie.

Our poetry book this week was The Big Book of Poetry compiled by Bill Martin Jr. We own and love this book, and the illustrations are awesome! Pretty much every well known illustrator contributed to this book. Anna loves to read this book on her own and definitely has her favorites. I already recommended this book before, but wanted to highlight it again as a “must-have” for home library or at least “must read” if you can find it in your public library.

I picked up Disney Celebrate the Year with Winnie the Pooh at the library, because the book looked like something Anna will love – a big fat book full of stories about different holidays. I didn’t really get to read the book, but Anna was falling asleep with it every night, and is still refusing to give it to the library, so I have to assume that it’s a good age-appropriate book. It also has a craft for each holiday, but they are not especially spectacular, and she didn’t ask me to do any of them.

My personal favorite this week was a rather obscure book – Annie… Anya a Month in Moscow by Irene Trivas. A friend gave this book to us as a present, and I really enjoyed the story even though some parts of it are somewhat dated (the book is written in 1992). An American 5-year old girl Annie spends a month in Moscow and makes friends with a Russian girl named Anna. There are many Russian words in the book since learning Russian is part of the story. Anna really enjoyed this book before and kept asking me for more Russian words all evening. This book would be a good find for someone who wants to do a unit on Russia as part of country studies.

Week in Review – April 22, 2011

Anna is 4 years 6 months old. The spring break is over, and we are trying to get back into the routine. It’s always hard after a break, because our daughter is not an early riser. She is naturally inclined to read herself to sleep and turn the lights off at around 10 pm and then sleep until at least 8:30 am. She was not too pleased to be woken up at 7:30 am on school days. Her theme in school is One World for Earth Day. At home I am trying to follow more her lead in what she wants to do and to let her play outside as much as possible. I am reading Playful Parenting by Lawrence J Cohen as a Parenting Book Club April choice at No Time for Flashcards, and it made me rethink quite a few things about how we approach our time together. I plan to share my insights in a separate posts once I finish the book.

Math. Daughter still likes her Mighty Mind game and usually pulls it out when adults are not available to play with her. Then she uses an excuse of completed challenge to interrupt parents, because she wants one of us to take a picture of her achievement. She also spent some time building with her magnetic pattern blocks, and we played Shapes Up together. No workbooks these week – not interested again :)

Traditions. Anna was happy to prepare for Easter, paint eggs with papa and help him decorate the house. We did some crafts to celebrate spring and Easter and, of course, read a lot of books. She was just as happy to receive a special Passover “care package” from her Babushka and Dedushka. She doesn’t know it yet, but Easter “care package” arrived from Germany too and is waiting to be opened on Sunday.

Arts and Crafts. Anna was not in a very crafty mood lately, but she draws more lately, and a couple of times surprised me by making me elaborate “Valentine cards” (mostly with stickers). She also enjoyed basket decorating craft that was good scissor practice too. You can find printable here if you need a short activity for Easter Sunday. It works well with multiple kids, since there are several baskets to decorate. 

Earth Day. We didn’t do any dedicated Earth Day activities at home – Anna’s school had the whole week dedicated to this theme. But we made a point to use some of the suggestions from the book Ten Things I Can Do to Help My World. Anna loves helping papa in the garden, and we hope our first attempt at gardening will bring us some herbs and maybe even radishes and tomatoes from our own backyard.

Play. Anna has been kind of stuck in “entertain me” mode again lately, probably because she is battling a major cold. She spends all her rest time reading and the moment I come home she wants me to play with her. She loves balloons and pillow fights, and she also enjoys building from Legos with papa. She also had fun with this pretend egg hunt – it was fun to see which eggs she missed. I had to play “cold-hot” game to guide her to this particular egg.

An Egg Artist

One of the best Easter books we read this year was Henri, Egg Artiste by Marcus Pfister. It worked really well with my attempt to expose daughter more to famous works of art, since that’s where the main character finds an inspiration for his egg masterpieces. There is also a nice twist in the book, since Henri’s eggs look “almost” like original paintings, and Anna enjoyed playing “find the differences” game (they are included in the back of the book together with information on artists).

I was very intrigued by alfoil paintings that I first saw on Superheroes and Princesses, and so I set up the same activity for Anna. She was not fully on board at first, since she already spent some time crafting in the library earlier that day, but cheered up when she found out that she will be painting with acrylics. Acrylics is still a big (and messy!) deal around here. She doved right in and first of all recreated the wooden striped egg that her  father made for our seasonal candleholder. Then came Van Gogh swirls (but I started them to give her an idea) and finally some point art. I really like how these eggs came out. I wanted to give them out as presents, but so far Anna only agreed to give away my egg (not pictured). Thank you, Christie, for the terrific idea!

 

A Letter From Mama – 4 Years 6 Months Old

Dear Anna!

You are half way to your 5th birthday now, and it’s the best year yet. I enjoy to see you personality grow and change in front of my eyes.

You are super sweet. You love cuddles, hugs and kisses, and we are still most important people in your world. I love it when you run to me when I come home from work and shower me with kisses. You really try to do the right things and get upset when you make mistakes. We try to let you know that it’s OK to make mistakes sometimes, especially when you try new things. Lately you’ve been a lot more adventurous and open to new experiences. You love special trips and you talk about seeing the whole world one day, you enjoy meeting new people and you chat up any adult. You are also friendlier to kids and start making more friends lately. I am also excited that you eat so much better, and our food fights are disappearing. You  still have your preferences, but you are open to try anything as long as we don’t expect you to eat the whole dish. And, of course, you continue to love books. You read everything, any time, anywhere. It’s a lot of fun to watch you love books so even though sometimes I wish you spent a little bit more  time playing and a little less time reading. You do love playing, especially when one of us can join your fantasy world or you have a playmate.

I know that very soon you will enter a new world – kindergarten. Hopefully, you will meet new friends and have teachers who will encourage and challenge you. I am really looking forward to our next 6 months together, my Anna girl.

Love, mama.

Week In Review – April 17, 2011

This was a spring break week for Anna, and she really enjoyed her time off. On Thursday we all attended a very intimate wedding of our close friends. This is a preview of the dress Anna was wearing to the wedding – she was very pleased with its “twirliness”. She was disappointed that the wedding didn’t have any dancing – it was a civil ceremony in San Francisco City Hal. Our wedding party had another boy her age, and the kids hit it off right away. A ring bearer and a flower girl were soon off chasing each other around City Hall. Luckily, it’s a touristy spot, so nobody minded them. I am looking forward to getting some pictures from the wedding eventually.

Our other close friend also had something new this week – a new car! Anna was thrilled with a ride in a convertible and didn’t mind a wind at all. She said that she wants to ride in this car for the rest of her life. We joke that we need to stay away from boys with fast cars when she is a teenager :) We all went for a drive to the mountains – something that Anna wanted to do for a while. Everything is still so new to her, since she seems to have very little memories from the same things we did last year.

On Friday I took a day off as well, and the three of us went to San Francisco Zoo. The weather was perfect, and we all had a blast. Again, Anna had very little memories from previous visits except one – the petting zoo. It was interesting to see how much more relaxed she was around the goats and how enthusiastically she took in every new animal we saw. Interestingly, she said that her favorite part was an insect zoo. My husband and I couldn’t get out of that hall full of big bugs fast enough – ewww!

The rest of Anna’s spring break was spent at play and with books. She spent a lot of time outside “helping” papa with the garden work, blowing bubbles and taking care of her plastic farm animals. Her favorite toy this week was a big balloon – she just loves inventing games with it. It’s amazing how quickly the time can pass when one is having fun. I hope she will be excited to go back to school on Monday and meet her friends and teachers again.