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?

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 

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.

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!

New January 2013 Titles

Here is a fun review of several new January 2013 titles! Personally, I'm most excited about the Busy Farm and Busy Town pop-up books. So cute!
Books in this review:
Wipe-Clean Dot-to-Dot
Wipe-Clean Doodles
Optical Illusions Tin
Doodle Tin
Phoenix Files Series
Amy Wild Series
Storms and Hurricanes
Bees and Wasps
Conspiracy Series
Busy Farm
Busy Town
The Children Who Loved Books
Noisy Noah's Ark
Noisy Orchestra
Astronomy and Space Sticker Book
Sticker Dressing Explorers
Optical Illusions Activity Book

*Thanks to Michele over at ThisCrazyBookLady for this review!

Tanks

This book takes you inside the world's best tanks, from the metal monsters of the First World War to today's high-tech robots. Read true adventures of tank combat and find out how weapons and crew protection have evolved to make the tank a deadly fighting machine. Since this book is internet-referenced you will find links to web sites where you can:

• Watch video clips of tanks in training
• Find out where you can go to explore inside a tank
• See a list of tanks used in the Second World War
• Read about the exploits of famous tank commanders

Tanks

This book is also available as part of the Discovery Adventures Collection

Books in this collection:  Fighter Planes, Helicopters, Motorcycles, Race Cars, Submarines, Warships

Volcanoes

This fascinating book will spark your child's interest in volcanoes around the world, both above ground and under the sea. You will read about amazing eruptions from Pompeii to the United States, learn about lava rivers, ash clouds, steaming springs, and much more. This book contains simple text designed for a new reader to master. It is also internet-referenced, meaning your child can go online via safe and approved websites to build their own volcano, explore a hot spring at the bottom of the sea, see a slide show of volcanic eruptions, and watch a movie about how volcanoes form.

Volcanoes

This book is also available in a Kid Kit, as part of the Beginner's Adventure Collection, or as part of the Beginner's Library Collection

Books in this collection: Bats, Cowboys, Dinosaurs, Elephants, Living In Space, Penguins, Pirates, Planet Earth, Reptiles, Solar System, Sun Moon and Stars, Weather, Your Body