Homeschool Discoveries

Mr E and Mr K have gotten on a bit of a nonfiction kick again. Besides the usual books about Star Wars and super heroes, the boys’ library basket is filled with books about jets, rockets, weapons, motorcycles, sharks, bones and soldiers.  So, I thought I would share a few recent favorites:

Dem Bones: I picked this one out for a BFSU science lesson on the human skeleton, but the boys added it to their basket and asked for it many times.  This is a cute combination of the song “Dem Bones” (The one that goes, “The toe bone connects to the foot bone…” and so on) and facts about various bones in our bodies.  We all liked the fun skeleton illustrations. I think one of the reasons that the boys liked this book so much is hearing me sing the song.  Even Baby J would stop nursing and look up to watch me sing when I read this book.   🙂

Weapons of War:  We picked this one out due to Mr. E’s sudden interest in the history of weapons.  It is a really cool book.  Even Tony and I were fascinated with it.  This book has a two page spread for each of a variety of historical weapons (like spears, cross bows and early guns).  There’s a lot of text on each page, so a typical five year old might get bored, but Mr. E (who turns five this coming Sunday!) would listen to all the text on a couple different weapons in a sitting.

If I Were an Astronaut: This is a nice preschool level book that Mr. K asked me to read several times.  A lot of books in the children’s non-fiction section still have way too many words for Mr. K’s attention span.    This was one of the few in our library’s section on space/astronauts that was a good fit for him.  I also liked the fact that this book doesn’t dwell on the now-outdated space shuttle.

You Wouldn’t Want to be an Assyrian Soldier: I’m not sure what age group the “You wouldn’t Want to…” series is really aimed at,  but my guess is that most fans are older than five. 🙂 Mr E loved this book, asking for it many nights in a row at bedtime, and giggling all the way at how awful army duty might be for an Assyrian (until Tony finally told him he had to pick something else because he had picked it too many times in a row).  Mr E was thrilled to learn that not only are there more books in this series, but that several of them are about soldiers.  We grabbed three more titles in the series this week at the library!

Miss M and I are still enjoying Adam of the Road as our bedtime read-aloud. We are moving through it at a pretty good clip (two nights in a row we got carried away and read 4 chapters each night!).

I’m linking up with:

One of the things I’m eager to consistently share on this blog is the books that I read aloud with Miss M (Age 7.5 — 2nd grade).  I love discovering new books via the reviews/recaps that other bloggers write, and I hope to help others do the same!  I went back to the list of books we read this school year in the months before I started this blog.  There happens to be ten of them.  (How convenient…so I can link up to “Top Ten Tuesday“!).  🙂

I doubt I will find the time to write complete reviews or recaps of these books, so here is a tidbit about each of the books I read aloud with Miss M this fall/early winter:

1. Heidi — A classic story of friendship and unconditional love set in Switzerland.
2. A Wrinkle in Time — This was one of my favorite books growing up and I may have overshot a little bit by reading it to Miss M at such a young age.  It’s a fantasy/science fiction genre story, but I was surprised as I read it how much the story is really about personal exploration and finding a sense of self worth. Miss M seemed to enjoy it anyway (we also went to see a play based on the book), though I will have to encourage her to read it for herself again when she is older!
3. Alice in Wonderland — I’m not sure I actually read this growing up.  Parts of the story were familiar to Miss M and I from having seen two different movie versions.  It was a fun read, though I will admit we skipped over some of the song/poetry sections!
4. Through the Looking Glass — Somehow I find Through the Looking Glass to be even weirder than Alice in Wonderland.  Parts of the story were familiar since movie versions tend to combine highlights of the two books.  Miss M and I were scratching our heads at points wondering exactly what was going on, but I think we still had fun with it.
5. The Wheel on the School — This Newberry-award winning book tells the story of a group of school children who are very intent on finding a way to make storks come and nest in their small village, just as they do in the other nearby villages.  As odd as that premise sounds, this is a great story that Miss M and I both really enjoyed.  It’s definitely one of my favorites of the books we’ve read aloud this year.  I love how the story starts with one very determined girl, yet through the course of the story she really brings her whole village together.   I felt very drawn in to the lives of the characters, and how they were learning about hard work, friendship and valuing others as they tried to accomplish the goal of finding a wheel for the roof of their school (the wheel being the place for the storks to nest!).
6. All of a Kind Family — I had never heard of this book until I saw it mentioned in a positive light in a short list of books that also included my beloved Betsy-Tacy series.  This is story of a Jewish family of five girls in early 20th century New York City.  Miss M could have read this on her own (and did read the sequels on her own), but once we started reading it out loud, I wouldn’t let her finish it on her own because I really wanted to share it with her.  I really appreciated the look into the life and experiences of a Jewish family and their holidays and customs, and it was right up my alley as a story of “fun adventures” (though there is a bit of a plot arc as well).
7. Door in the Wall — Another Newberry winner (we’ve read a lot of those this year!).  I picked this to correspond with our history studies, since we’ve spent most of the year in the Middle Ages.  This was a bit more of a stretch for Miss M to listen to due to the vocabulary, but she still enjoyed this story of a young man learning to overcome a handicap and find his place in society.
8. The Family Under the Bridge — We had this one on our shelf for a while, and since the title wasn’t particularly appealing I avoided it for a while. But 0nce we got going, we read through this story quite quickly of a older homeless man in Paris who takes a family of homeless children under his wing.
9. Caddie Woodlawn — Having enjoyed the last few  books in the “Little House” series over the summer, we decided to try this pioneer adventure as well.  Caddie is a girl who doens’t fit the “pioneer girl” mold in quite the same way as Laura Ingalls.  While Laura definitely has her moments, Caddie is in another category all together as she is much more often to be found adventuring with her brothers than helping her mother. Caddie is a strong protagonist that learns how to use the ways she “doesn’t fit the mold” for good.
10. The Thirteen Days of Christmas — I chose this as a Christmas-time read-aloud after reading a review of it at the blog Orange Marmalade.  This is a fun, silly story of a suitor in Tudor England wooing his girl, based around…you guessed it, the song “The 12 days of Christmas.”  That’s Miss M’s favorite Christmas song, so we had a lot of fun with this book.

Happy Reading!

Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer is a book that surprised me in several ways.  This 1937 Newberry Award winner wasn’t on our read-aloud list.  I intended to start Adam of the Road as our bedtime read-aloud  after we finished Hitty (and we are reading “Adam” now).  But, in browsing the list of Newberry winners, the title of Roller Skates caught my eye as I pondered whether I could make it a goal to complete reading one entire decade of Newberry winners in 2012.  And having read only part of one review, I requested it from the library.

Roller Skates is the story of one year in the life of Lucinda, a ten year old girl in 1890’s New York City.  She is an “orphan” for a year while her parents travel in Italy and leave her in the care of two single women.  Lucinda takes every advantage of the new-found freedom this situation provides.  Her year is spent making all kinds of friends from every social class, reading Shakespeare and, of course, roller skating like wildfire through the city.

I started Roller Skates with pretty high expectations.  A story about the adventures of a young girl taking place in a similar era to my beloved Betsy-Tacy books? That’s something pretty appealing.  However, I was surprised to find myself having a hard time getting “into” the story at first.  Many, many characters are introduced early in the story.  After a while, when Miss M asked me to remind her who a particular person was, I couldn’t recall either and had to look back to discover the identity of this minor character, who turned out to be a neighbor. Some of the early chapters felt long as I read them to Miss M at bedtime.

As the story builds toward the celebration of Christmas and Lucinda’s ambitions to put on a puppet-theater showing of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the story grew on me more and more. One of my favorite passages in the book comes as Lucinda reflects on the Christmas celebration that she arranged for and with her friends, particularly a little neighbor girl from a poor family named Trinket.

“There is always one Christmas that belongs to you more than than any other–belongs by right of festival and those secret feelings that are never spoken aloud. This Christmas belonged to Lucinda in this way, and I think it belonged to many of her friends. I know it was the only Christmas the Browdowskis [Trinket’s family] kept everlastingly green in their hearts.” (p. 116)

After many mostly happy adventures for Lucinda, I was also surprised to find the story taking on a more serious note toward the end.  It turns out that this story has some passages that I could see upsetting some sensitive children.  Lucinda discovers one of her many friends murdered.  It took me so much by surprise I had to ask Miss M if she was okay after we read about it — she was.  It’s not graphic at all, but I don’t think we’ve really come across anything similar in other books we’ve read.

Lucinda also has an another experience with death late in the story.  I won’t go into too much detail as I think it might spoil the story a bit if you knew what was coming (again, something that might be upsetting if you have a sensitive child).  By the end of the book, you really get the feeling that Lucinda has matured in so many ways.  She is no longer just a carefree girl looking to make the most of being out from under the thumb of parents and governess.  She becomes a young woman who knows what it means to truly care for others and to appreciate the year of freedom experienced.

By the end of the book, I found myself wanting to know more of what happened to Lucinda (though you get the impression that perhaps her future years were not quite as exciting or adventurous as this one was).  It’s the kind of book I want to revisit again with Miss M as she gets older and could perhaps experience it on a bit deeper level.   There’s a lot that could be learned or studied further from this book about city life in the 1890’s, their fashions, views on immigrants and differing social classes, and so on.   For right now Roller Skates is going back to the library, but I could definitely see myself buying this one and adding it to our permanent collection.

I’m linking up with Read Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word!

Decades before Buzz and Woody came to life on the big screen, a doll named Hitty had many years of world-traveling adventures before finally residing in an antique store, where she is at leisure to write her memoirs.  I was inspired to add Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field to our read-aloud list after reading Amy’s review at the Newberry Project blog.  “Hitty” won the Newberry medal in 1930.

Hitty is a small doll who was crafted from mountain ash wood in the woods of Maine in the early 19th century.  Her first is owner is the daughter of a whaling ship captain.  Phoebe Preble accompanies her father on a whaling voyage, sending Hitty off to far away lands with her.   Hitty sees her first owner through many ordeals on this journey.  But, as things so often go for well-loved toys that go everywhere with her owners, she is eventually lost.  A fine doll made of mountain-ash wood fares well even through the most difficult of circumstances, however, and Hitty soon finds herself with other owners.  Thus Hitty journeys through the 19th and early 20th century owned by various little girls of differing social positions, as well as being “employed” as a fashion model, a portrait model and even as a prop in the act of a snake charmer!

Miss M and I really loved Hitty…a lot!  This is the kind of book that even after reading a long-ish chapter, we would often look at each other and one of us would say “just one more chapter?”  I really enjoyed the passing of time in this book.  The world and many things in it change, but Hitty fundamentally does not.  She makes her observations of the changes in the world from a sort of “outsiders” perspective as one who sees it but does not really participate.  Something about this grand sweep of time really appealed to me.   It kept me turning the pages to see how the fate would move Hitty on from owner to owner, wondering what situation she would find herself in next.

Hitty does have a flaw, which I hope you can forgive her for.  She is a product of her time, and this book is a product of its time.  So, it is very “non-pc” at various points.  While it didn’t bother me too much to hear Hitty describe natives on a remote pacific island as idol-worshipping savages, this might bother some readers.  I was a little more bothered by Hitty’s description of African Americans in the south in the post-civil wars years of the late 19th century.  While it is probably not too far from accurate as to how black girls of that time might have been thought of or portrayed, I did edit some as I was reading since I was not really prepared to discuss with Miss M right then and there why their skin color was such a big deal.   Racial prejudice is a heavy subject for bedtime.

Despite this small “flaw”, I think Hitty is a book that stands the test of time.  It’s a very enjoyable read-aloud, and it might just make it to the top of the list of my favorite read-alouds for this year.

I’m linking up with:

I just love finding picture books that make the boys giggle.  Today I’ll share a few particularly funny ones we’ve discovered at the library recently:

Not a Box by Antoinette Portis: This simple board book has inspired a lot of imaginative play over the past couple weeks.  It’s a pretty simple concept – a box being used in creative ways. But the execution of that idea is very well done in “Not a Box”.  You know the book is good when the boys beg me not to take it back to the library even though we had already read it many times!  We may end up buying this one for ourselves.

Harry Hungry by Steven Salerno: A baby with an over-sized appetite eats everything in sight and grows to giant proportions.  We had a fun time imagining our baby J growing as large as Harry Hungry.  🙂

Zombie in Love by Kelly DiPucchio and Scott Campbell: This was one of our read-alouds last week for Valentine’s (selected by Mr. E), but the boys requested it several times last week.  A zombie desperately wants a date to a dance, but he just can’t please the ladies with his diamond ring (still attached to a finger!), dead flowers, and “interesting” attire.  As long as your kids know that zombies are, as Mr. E puts it, “just pretend dead people monsters”, then they might enjoy this one!

Gimme Cracked Corn and I will Share by Kevin O’Malley:  Call me corny, but I really like puns.  In fact, so does my entire family, which is why I grabbed this book at the library. I laughed a lot at the puns, but I had to explain a lot of them to the boys the first time through in this story of two chickens searching for a hidden treasure trove of corn.  My having to explain the puns didn’t seem to diminish the boys’ enjoyment of the book however, since they requested it several times.  An egg-citing read!  😉

Do you have any favorite funny picture books?

I’m linking up with Read-Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word!

When I selected “The Borrowers” by Mary Norton as a bedtime read-aloud with Miss M, I had no idea that I was actually making a timely choice of sorts.  I added it to my list of potential read-alouds at the beginning of the year. We picked it up at the library a couple weeks ago because I didn’t have any other read-alouds on our own shelves I was excited about that day, and I hadn’t planned ahead and requested or ordered anything else.  The Borrowers happened to be on the shelf at the library.

Miss M and I were then very surprised over the weekend to see a preview for a movie based on The Borrowers called “The Secret World of Arrietty” opens in theaters tomorrow (February 17th)!

Back to the book — “The Borrowers” is the story of a family of very tiny people (only a few inches tall) that live under the kitchen of an English country house.  Homily, Pod, and their teenage daughter Arrietty are the only remaining Borrowers in a house that once supported many.  Although her parents (like all Borrowers before them) go to great lengths to not be seen by “human beans” as they call them, Arrietty is willing to break the status quo to befriend a human boy.

I had mixed feelings about the book.  I have vague memories of reading this as a child and it is a fun and exciting story.  On the other hand, I had a sense of dread on behalf of the characters as I read the book, knowing the fate that befalls them at the end of the book (both just from an educated guess as to the plot arc and also from reading the description on the back of the sequel!).   It’s nothing too awful (small spoiler here) — they end up being forced to leave their home — but I did feel bad for them knowing what was going to happen.

I was also able to put some new knowledge from “Uncovering The Logic of English” to work.   The word “draught” has always puzzled me though, I must confess, not enough to have looked it up in the dictionary (I know, terrible for a homeschool mom and a former English major).  I thought it rhymed with “taught” and I really couldn’t quite figure out what it had to do with beer (this being the context in which I had seen it).  In “Uncovering the Logic of English,”  the word “draught” is used as an example of another word like “laugh” where -augh makes an “af” sound with a short “a”.   All of a sudden, the word “draught” makes so much more sense as the British spelling of the American English word “draft” — a word used for beer and for a breeze across a room (the context in which it is used in “The Borrowers”.

Miss M enjoyed The Borrowers quite a bit — enough to pick up the first sequel and start reading it as soon as we finished the original as a read aloud (we already had this book, “The Borrowers Afield” on our shelves from a library book sale last year). She’s also very eager to see the Arrietty movie as well.   We don’t go to many theater movies, but perhaps we’ll make our way to this one.  While I am sure they took artistic liberty with the story, it has to be better than the movie adaption of Mr. Popper’s Penguins, which had almost nothing to do with the original book (and much to my dismay, Miss M liked the movie version better!).

I’m linking up with Read-Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word!