Weekly Theme: Pirates

September 19 is Talk Like a Pirate Day and we are totally stoked! We are going all out this year. We'll be doing some really fun experiments making and floating our own boats to learn about the properties of water. We'll make our own pirate hat and eye patch (of course). You for sure won't want to miss math day this week when we get a special treat to keep the scurvy at bay. Arrrrr!! Stay tuned :)

Books we are using this week:

Pirates is a great nonfiction book all about, well, pirates. It is in the Beginners Series, which means the text is really simple and the information is pretty broad. Just perfect for the kiddos. We'll be covering our history and geography section of this unit using this book.

My son LOVES this book! Often when the baby goes down for a nap Tommy and I snuggle under a blanket, share a bowl of chocolate chips, and search for Pirate Things. It's great for counting practice and number recognition, but it also teaches an important pre-reading skill. Apparently it's really great for kids to be able to pick out small items in a busy picture. It will help later on when they read big paragraphs and have to sift out the important information from the background noise. Who knew that doing something so fun could be so educational?

Tommy carries Illustrated Stories for Boys around in his backpack everywhere he goes. I don't know why, except that he really likes this book. Maybe he's afraid of being bored somewhere? Or needing a weapon to throw at a bad guy? I'm not sure. At any rate, this beautiful book contains a couple of pirate stories that we will be reading this week: Treasure Island, the classic by Robert Louis Stevenson; and The Masked Pirate, a fun fictional story about - you guessed it - a masked pirate.




Update: Here are the links to all of the activities we did this week!
Pirate Science
Pirate Math
Pirate Arts and Crafts

What are some fun pirate activities you are doing this week?

8 Ways to Teach Your Child to Love to Read

Some kids LOVE to read from a young age. My 21-month-old baby, Lily, is one of these. Before she was even one year old she would crawl past toys to get a book in her hands, and then she would sit contentedly for several minutes flipping through the pages. If we ever invite her to read a book with us she comes quickly and excitedly.

Some kids, however, don't have a natural affinity for books. My four-year-old son, Tommy, is more like this. Most days he would rather play with toys, wrestle, or work around the house than sit and read a book. He enjoys reading sometimes, but it has to be on his own terms.

We all know how important it is to read out loud to our kids. In Jim Trelease's The Read-Aloud Handbook (a must-read for every parent, BTW), he states, "We read to children for all the same reasons we talk with children: to reassure, to entertain, to bond, to inform or explain, to arouse curiosity, and to inspire. But in reading aloud, we also:

• build vocabulary 
• condition the child’s brain to associate reading with pleasure 
• create background knowledge
• provide a reading role model
• plant the desire to read "

So how do we inspire children to read? Especially those who don't naturally gravitate toward books? Here are a few things I have learned as I have worked to teach my son to love to read:

1. Read books your child enjoys. I can't tell you how often we read Everyone Poops in this house, but because it's a classic that my children (and their friends) love, we read it all the time. Often after we read it a few times they are excited to pull more books off the shelf and we end up reading many different books. Tommy has this book memorized. Lily learned to say "poop" as one of her first 10 words. Awesome.
2. When Tommy was younger I used to read to him during meals. I had a captive audience! It has turned into a tradition now that my kids love, so we read together most mornings during breakfast.
3. Read at bedtime. This is a time when kids are tired and will lie down and listen as they relax. We like to read chapter books during this time so that the kids can just lie in their beds and listen without being stimulated by lots of bright pictures. The Indian in the Cupboard and The Chronicles of Narnia are some of our favorites.
4. Share a treat while you read. Note that I didn't say, "Bribe your child to read by offering them a treat." Bribing is bad and doesn't typically work. However, snuggling up together on the couch, sharing some chocolate chips, and reading together is a cozy, fun, bonding activity. Tommy and I do this many afternoons while Lily sleeps. He thrives on tradition and structure, so it's always a bowl of chocolate chips and it's always 1001 Pirate Things to Spot. But that's just Tommy :)
5. Set the example. If you want your children to love to read, they need to see you reading your own books.
6. Change it up a bit and get some books on CD for your child to listen to. Many children's books have CD's that the child can listen to while they follow along with the pictures and text in the book. This is a great quiet-time activity. There are also tons of chapter books on CD that you can listen to in the car, while preparing meals, or while doing work around the house together.
7. Get your hands on some really fun books that your children can play with like toys. Sticker books, noisy books, and drawing books are great for this. They may not actually "read", but literacy is so much more than just reading. It's teaching a child the correct way to hold a book. It's teaching them how to turn the pages. It's teaching them that books are fun.
8. Read out loud while the kiddos play. Or turn on a book on CD. Even passively listening to a book is good for kids.

And here are a few don'ts:

1. DON'T make reading a chore. I cringe every time I see "Read 15 Minutes" on a child's chore list. Do we really want our kids to associate reading with unpleasant things like scrubbing the toilet?
2. DON'T threaten, bribe, punish, or shame a child into reading. If we make it an enjoyable and positive experience they will be lifelong readers. Some kids may take longer to learn how to sit and listen to a book, but they will get there if we are patient and make it fun. They won't ever get there if we make it miserable.
3. DON'T compare your child's reading abilities to those of any other child. Nobody likes to be compared to someone else. Each child will learn to read when they are ready and it doesn't help to know that their cousin or their best friend is already reading.

Do you have other thoughts on how to inspire children to read? Please share!

Dinosaurs

This week we are learning all about dinosaurs! We are having tons of fun. How about you?

I am using First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life as our "textbook". I use the term loosely because it's a whole lot more fun and interesting than most textbooks I ever remember using in school. It provides a great framework and helps spark the interest of my little guy. The illustrations are beautiful and captivating while the text is simple and easy to follow.

My most favorite feature of this book (and many other Usborne books, I might add) is that it is "Internet-Linked". This means that on each and every page you will find a little icon and a blurb explaining various enrichment activities you will find if you go to Usborne's designated webpage. For example, here is the page about early sea creatures:

I circled the "Internet Link" box for easy viewing. It reads, "For a link to a website where you can watch video clips of prehistoric sharks, go to..." If you go to the provided link this is what you see:

So just from this one page you watch various videos and animations, look at photos of rare "prehistoric sharks", print pictures to color, and make a model of a trilobite. Pretty cool, huh? If your child was really into sea creatures you could literally spend an entire afternoon looking up these different links, thereby expanding your child's knowledge, interest, and passion on the subject. Just awesome. There are nearly 60 pages in First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life that each contain a link to a page like this for further enrichment.

We'll be working our way through this book this week and we hope you'll join us for more dinosaur fun!

For more info on Usborne Quicklinks go here.

Update: Here are the links to all our fun dinosaur activities this week!
Dinosaur Science
Dinosaur Math
Dinosaur Arts and Crafts
Dinosaur Free Play 

Jurassic Volcano

For dinosaur week we made and erupted our very own volcano! We read in First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life that lots of volcanic eruptions may have led to the dinosaurs becoming extinct so Tommy wanted to see if he could "erupt" his own dinosaurs.

The recipe for the dough was very simple (that's the way we roll around here):

6 C. Flour

2 C. Salt

4 Tb. Oil

2 C. Water

Mix together and shape a volcano around an empty plastic bottle.

I like to set up my science experiments at the table the night before we do them. The purpose of this is two-fold: first, I'm sure to have everything ready so that we actually do it; second, it's kind of like an "invitation" that piques the interest of my little guy so that he is begging me to make the volcano and erupt it. I LOVE IT!

My "Invitation"

I know there are other recipes out there. We could have let our volcano sit to dry overnight and then paint it, but my little boy just wanted to get to the fun stuff: explosions!

We used the recipe for the Foaming Monster experiment from 50 Science Things to Make and Do to make our "lava". It's just vinegar, a squirt of dish soap, some food coloring if you want it (we chose blue lava this time), and then add the baking soda. If you put the baking soda on a little square of toilet paper, crumple it up, and then throw it into the bottle it takes a few extra seconds for the eruption to start. By the end I just let Tommy add more vinegar and baking soda directly to his heart's content. I think he made 4 or 5 eruptions total, which was awesome. Check it out. Also, at the end of this video is a clip of my baby making dinosaur noises, which is adorable.

Theme Week: Dinosaurs

 This week we are learning all about dinosaurs! We are having tons of fun. How about you?

I am using First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life as our "textbook". I use the term loosely because it's a whole lot more fun and interesting than most textbooks I ever remember using in school. It provides a great framework and helps spark the interest of my little guy. The illustrations are beautiful and captivating while the text is simple and easy to follow.

My most favorite feature of this book (and many other Usborne books, I might add) is that it is "Internet-Linked". This means that on each and every page you will find a little icon and a blurb explaining various enrichment activities you will find if you go to Usborne's designated webpage. For example, here is the page about early sea creatures:

I circled the "Internet Link" box for easy viewing. It reads, "For a link to a website where you can watch video clips of prehistoric sharks, go to..." If you go to the provided link this is what you see:

So just from this one page you watch various videos and animations, look at photos of rare "prehistoric sharks", print pictures to color, and make a model of a trilobite. Pretty cool, huh? If your child was really into sea creatures you could literally spend an entire afternoon looking up these different links, thereby expanding your child's knowledge, interest, and passion on the subject. Just awesome. There are nearly 60 pages in First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life that each contain a link to a page like this for further enrichment.

We'll be working our way through this book this week and we hope you'll join us for more dinosaur fun!

For more info on Usborne Quicklinks go here.

Last Day!

Today is the last day to get the starter kit for $69. This thing is valued at over $350, so definitely a steal! Get it while you can (click on the 'Join' tab above) and let me know if you have any questions!

Dinosaur Week!

It's Dinosaur Week here at Books Everywhere! That means everyday we'll be learning about dinosaurs and doing special activities centered around our theme. We'll read about different kinds of dinosaurs, make our own dinosaurs from paper and paint, and even make our own jurassic volcano erupt. Stay tuned for more fun activities!

Here is a list of books we will be using this week:

- Dinosaur Fun for art

- First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs - great for history, geography, and science; includes lots of illustrations and simple text as well as lots of free internet links to do more activities online

- 'Foaming Monster' experiment from 50 Science Things to Make and Do - we will make a volcano instead of a monster
- How Big is a Million? for math

- There are tons of other fun dinosaur books that we won't have time to use this week, but you can look them up here if you want to get a dinosaur sticker book, learn how to draw dinosaurs, or gift a dinosaur board book to your little one!