Legends Series by Anthony Horowitz – Book Review

Legends Series by Anthony Horowitz – Book Review

My daughter has always loved retellings of the Greek and Roman myths. I picked up ‘Legends: Tricks and Transformations’ by Anthony Horowitz for her at the library, and once she started reading it, she zipped through all the stories in just a few days. She has since read the ‘The Wrath of the Gods’ volume as well, and told me she would like to read the rest. From a kid, I think that’s a darn good recommendation.

The reading level for these books are listed as 9 and up, and my daughter was 8 when she started reading them, and did not have any difficulty with the reading level. However, the old mythology itself, as most of you probably know, can be brutal. While I believe this is a child-friendly version, if you have a sensitive kid, these myths may not be a good choice, no matter who is telling them.

Draw Your Own Comic - Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

Draw Your Own Comic - Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

I recently printed out some blank comic strip templates, and had the kids make up their own stories with them. I thought it might be a little more fun than a normal writing or drawing lesson, but I was happily surprised by their enthusiasiam. Every frame they drew, they would rush to me to show it off.

I used the printable comic templates at http://donnayoung.org/art/comics.htm

I had some difficulty getting them to print well. My printer wanted to cut one edge off no matter how I adjusted my settings, but the kids didn’t seem to mind.

When my oldest was really struggling with her writing, we also used http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/ to make writing a little more fun. We printed out one of the comics that had characters, but no words. Then my daughter had to look at it, and imagine what might be going on, then add the dialog. She enjoyed it enough that it completely overcame her dislike of physical writing. It looks like the updated site will let you type instead now, but I bed you could still print out a strip without words if you wanted to try it the way we did.

Bob Books – a Book Review

Bob Books – a Book Review

If you have young children, then you have likely already heard of Bob Books. They are very early readers for children who know their letter sounds, or most of them at least, and are ready to start reading very simple words.

With my first born, I actually refused to let her use Bob Books when I realized she wasn’t actually reading, but making educated guesses from the beginning letters and the pictures. That’s what eventually lead me to the Alpha Phonics reading program. I caught on when she read ‘blanket’ when the word was ‘rag’. After I was sure she had her basics down, we tried the Bob books again, but she didn’t find them all that interesting.

My new little reader at the moment, however, is in love with Bob Books. I still have to watch her, or she’ll start guessing at words instead of reading them, but she is easier to catch. She gets a huge grin when she finishes reading a book to us. I believe she is exactly the type of kid these books were designed for. They give her a sense of accomplishment, and pride as her reading skills progress. Even though she is working on set 4 now, which are slightly more difficult than the earlier sets, she still like to go back and read set 1 books from time to time.

From talking with other moms, Bob books seem like something they either love or hate. I think, like most things, they are something that will either work well for a child, or won’t, and maybe that’s where this divide comes from. Fortunately, almost every library has Bob book available. They may be popular, and not on the shelf much. I’ve had to place a hold on them when I wanted them at our library since they are never actually in the branch. But checking them out at your library is a great way to decide if they are a good fit for your new reading kid or not.

Sew a Monster Friend – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Sew a Monster Friend – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Sewing is a useful skill to have, for both boys and girls alike. A great way to start learning about sewing is to make something with felt. Felt is very forgiving, inexpensive, comes in lots of fun bright colors, and you don’t need to worry about raw edges. If you just need a good rainy day activity, and are not quite ready for sewing lessons, this can even be done with Tacky glue instead of stitching.

Monsters are fun to make because if they turn out looking a little strange, or goofy – well, that what monsters are supposed to look like!

Start by having your child make a simple drawing of what they might like their monster to look like. Emphasize for them to keep it simple. While thirty eyes and twenty arms might look cool, actually trying to cut out and sew them may not work so well, you could suggest maybe five eyes would be enough.

Next, you can let your child pick out a few colors of felt to use. Again, try to help them keep it simple.

Using their drawing as a guide, cut out the shapes you’ll need to make the monster. You, as the grown-up will have to make the call if this is a step your child can do on their own or one you’ll do for them. Any parts that you want to stuff, make sure to cut out both a front and a back for, this would include at least the body.

Simple chain stitches can attach any embellishments to the body of the monster. If thin parts like arms or antenna are needed, I would just keep those as a single layer of felt, and sew them into the seam between the two body layers.

Sew around the outside either with a chain stitch or a whip or blanket stitch, making sure to leave an opening for stuffing. After the monster is stuffed to your satisfaction, go ahead and sew the stuffing hole closed.

As an extra little sewing lesson, I like to have the kids use buttons for eyes. It’s always useful to know how to sew buttons on! If you want to make a no-sew monster, just use Tacky glue (it works much better than Elmers on felt) to glue on the decorations, and a line of glue around the edge for the seam. You’ll want to let the body seam dry before stuffing so it doesn’t pull apart once you start to add the stuffing, then just close the stuffing hole with a line of glue as well.

Ta Da! A little monster friend!

Measure the Rain – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Measure the Rain – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

With the rainy season starting up here in the California Bay Area, and reports on the news of storms in other parts of the country, my kids have been very interested in the weather lately. Weather can be a fun topic to learn about together. Even just tracking the weather can be fun.

Help your child make a simple chart to keep track of the weather for a period of time, however long you think they may be interested. It can be as simple as drawing a picture of what the weather was like each day, or older kids could take measurements of the temperature, or other factors they are interested in. Maybe they’d like to compare the weather forecast to what actually happens.

Making a rain gauge is easy to do, and kids like to measure things. I remember being fascinated with our rain gauge when I was a child. Here are the first two results I found when I Googled how to make a rain gauge (but the later links were all basically variations of these same instructions):

http://www.scholastic.com/resources/article/make-a-rain-gauge/

http://weirdsciencekids.com/RainGauge.html

Websites for Learning to Read

Websites for Learning to Read

When you’d like a change of pace from regular books for your little beginning reader, there are some very good websites out there for teaching early reading and phonics. There are probably many more than I will list here, but these are the ones we have used and enjoyed.

Starfall.com – I list this one first because it has y far been the favorite of both of my kids when they were learning to read. It has a few sections, beginning with learning letters and letter sounds, then beginning phonics, and on to more advanced early reading stories. AS the child tries to read a story, if there is a word they are stuck on they can click on it and the site will sound the word out for them. There are also worksheets that can be printed out to go along with the online stories. In addition to the stories, there are a few games and videos that teach letter sounds or other reading rules.

Reading Eggs – This is a subscription site, and we have not used it very much. I signed my youngest up for the free trial, and she said she liked it a lot, but whenever we decided to do some reading on the computer, she would always ask for starfall. That may be mostly out of habit; however since that’s what she started with. They offer several levels of reading instruction as well, so you can personalize it to your child’s needs. On many of the parenting and homeschooling groups I follow, there are many families who rave about Reading Eggs, and since they offer the free trial, it is at least worth checking out.

While preschool television associated websites like PBSkids.org, and NickJr.com, do have some educational games and content, I haven’t found them very focused on learning to read. They can be fun for other things.

If your family enjoys a learning to read website that I haven’t mentioned, please leave a comment and tell us about it. I’m sure there are many other great websites out there that help kids learn to read that we haven’t tried yet.

If you'd like information about a good ole paper book for helping kids learn to read, check out my earlier review of Alpha-Phonics.

Book review: Fancy Nancy: Poet Extraordinaire!

Book review: Fancy Nancy: Poet Extraordinaire!

Fancy Nancy was my own wake-up call about not judging a book by its cover. I avoided these books for my girls because I assumed they were about being pretty and having the right clothes, and things that I didn’t want my girls to get caught up in.

One day, my youngest found “Fancy Nancy: Poet Extraordinaire” at the library and asked to check it out. I do my very best to let them pick out whatever interests them at the library, so I let her. Naturally, then she needed me to read it to her. I was happily surprised by the story.

It turns out that Fancy Nancy like fanciness in all aspects of her life. Yes, her clothing and appearance is one aspect of her fanciness, it is also treated in the book as somewhat of a given, and not discussed. I suppose the illustrations do that part. She also loves fancy words, and this it turns out is the theme of this book. Fancy Nancy is trying to write a poem, and read other poems in her quest to write a great fancy poem. She learns new fancy words along the way, and their meanings. It reminded me more than a little bit of the “Martha Speaks” book and television series in that way.

More importantly, my daughter loved it, and wanted to talk about some of the words she learned. So it has been a lesson to me. My original rule to myself – to not judge what books my children pick out to read – has served us both well again. And making assumptions about a book I haven’t read or bothered to learn anything about almost cost us a wonderful read, and vocabulary building experience. I don’t know if all the Fancy Nancy books follow this same theme, but I do know that I will no longer be hesitant to check out more to read with my daughter and find out.

Read Aloud - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Read Aloud

I’m a firm believer in the benefits of reading aloud to kids. Not just little kids who don’t read on their own yet. All kids. No matter what the age of your child is, read aloud to them. A picture book, a novel, a poem, a news article. Whatever.

In my opinion this should not be a one time, fun thing to do. This is the time to start a habit. If you’d like more inspiration to read aloud to your kids, or want to be convinced about the multitude of benefits that reading aloud to your children can provide, I highly recommend the book “The Read Aloud Handbook” by Jim Trelease. 

Alpha Phonics, How My Kids Learned to Read

Sticking with the reading theme, since it's time now for Summer Reading Programs, I thought it was past time for a review of the Alpha Phonics reading book. I used Alpha Phonics to teach both my kids to read the summer before they began kindergarten.

Originally, I didn't think I needed a formal reading instruction book. We are big readers in our family. They kids were read to from before birth. Bedtime stories are a ritual, and we read together throughout the daytime as well. Once they knew their letters, and letter sounds, I tried just starting in on some of the very early reader books, like the "Bob Books", and other similar phonics early readers. I believe we were on the third Bob book when I realized that my daughter was not actually reading. She'd been fooling me. She'd look at the pictures, then the first letter or so of the word, and make a good guess. She made it through 2 books perfectly that way. What tripped her up was the word "rag". She read it as "blanket" based on the picture.

That was when I started researching reading programs. So many of them seemed so complicated, with games, and videos, and songs, and. . .oh yes, at last books too. There were some darn pricey ones too. I chose Alpha Phonics in the end because it was simple, and reasonably priced. The Alpha Phonics website offered the first several lessons for free. We used those first, and they went very well. My daughter gained confidence, and since there are no pictures, I knew she could really sound out her words.

The Alpha Phonics book has been everything I wanted in a program for learning to read. Simple, and organized. There is no preparation or extra work I need to do. We just open the book up to where we left off, and work through the next lesson. There are some lessons that are very long in the beginning, and new sounds are repeated over and over for the child to get a good grasp on them. There were usually more than my kids wanted to deal with in a day, so we didn't always do one lesson a day - when we hit those big ones, we just worked thought one page a day instead. We still made great progress, but with less stress.

I still strongly believe that in order to raise kids who love to read, they must live in a house that loves to read. Parents who read to them often, and just as importantly, read for their own pleasure, and let their kids seem them reading do a lot for the child's attitude toward books. But Alpha Phonics has helped us so much too. it made the process of learning to read smooth, natural, and painless. Despite the rather dull appearance of the book, with no flashy colors, and no pictures at all, both of my kids lit up when I pulled it out, ready to work through the next lesson. Although, in all honesty, they both were more resistant in the very beginning, maybe up to around lesson 10 to 15 or so. By then, thought, they had the hang of the program, then knew how it worked, and more importantly, they knew they could do it. It built that sort of confidence in them. It is a program that I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn to read, or to help someone else learn.

Our Favorite Books for Learning About Maps

I'm so happy my daughter didn't inherit my lousy sense of direction. In fact, she adores maps and globes. We have a few books that she will sit and study and red for large chunks of time. I wanted to share them with anyone who also has a map loving, or learning kid in their home.

Besides these books, our globe gets a lot of use. I've seen fancy ones, and plain ones, ones with cute little pictures on them, and ones that just show the land with almost no markings, my child loves them all. I don't know if it matters how fancy your globe is, ours is fairly dull, but it shows the oceans, the continents, and it spins, and that seems to be enough for us so far.

Also, if you know of a great book for kids to learn about the world, or about maps, please share it in the comment section. I have a feeling we will always love maps in this household.



Usborne Children's Picture Atlas by Ruth Brocklehurst, and Doriana Berkovic, Illustrated by Linda Edwards

The Usborne Children's Picture Atlas is a great book for map lovers. It begins with some general information about the different regions and climates around the world. Then there is a map of the world, and individual maps of each continent.

The continent maps have little pictures depicting some of the wildlife that's native to an area, and noteworthy landmarks. There is also a small picture in the corner to show where each continent is on the globe, to put it all into perspective.

This is a book for younger children, and is probably too simple for high school kids. Usborne advertises it for ages 9 to 12, but it is a favorite book of my 4 year old too. Granted, she can't read it, so I have to do that for her, but she loves to see where the animals live, and study the other pictures.



Maps and Globes by Jack Knowlton and Illustrated by Harriett Barton

This is a nice introduction to how maps and globes work. It starts with a little history of the use of maps, and then goes into the different types of maps and the benefits and drawbacks of each.

Again, the publisher puts this in the 9 to 12 year old age range, but I think it could be used earlier. My daughter doesn't really understand all of it, so 4 is probably too young if you want a full understanding, but I know she'll be ready well before 9.



Rand McNally Kid's U.S. Road Atlas

This is a state-by-state road map of the United States. There is one state per page, so it isn't going to be useful for day to day driving around your city, it just doesn't get to that level of detail, but the major state highways are there, as well as rivers, and other big landmarks.

It is fun to use to talk about where out of state family lives, or if you take a big road trip, or know people in another city.

Printable Connect the Dot Puzzles

A Fun Way to Help Kids Learn Numbers and Letters

Dot-to-dot puzzles are a great way for children to learn number recognition and improve their pencil use. Finding great connect the dots to print from home can be trickier than finding coloring pages, but there are some wonderful resources available online. Printable online connect the dot games are also available from many popular Nick Jr., Disney, and PBS kid shows. This guide will help you find the best printable dot-to-dots for your child's learning level.

One of the great things about dot-to-dot puzzles is that they come in a variety of levels of difficulty. Children can start with very simple puzzles that only include the numbers 1 to 5, or 1 to 10, and gradually move up to more complicated pictures with as many as 100 dots. Some add an extra level of challenge by counting by 2s or 5s. Dot-to-dots also come in upper and lower case alphabet variations to help with learning letters.

I have a four year old with an insatiable appetite for dot-to-dots. From my experience, these are:

The Best Websites for Printable Connect the Dot Games

ABCteach.com

This website has a nice variety of connect the dot games of various levels of difficulty: from 1 to 5, 1 to 10, to 30, 40 or 50. They also have some that count by 5s, or use the alphabet. It is also the only site I've discovered that have spelling dot to dots. The child connects one letter to the next in order to spell a simple word. While my child isn't ready for these yet, I know she'll enjoy then when she's ready.

The printout doesn't quite fill the whole page, but the numbers are still clear and easy to read and follow, even for young children.

Printactivities.com

This site provides a nice long list of dot-to-dots, including many seasonal and holiday themed ones. Most are more advanced games that go to higher numbers. There are a few that stop in the 20s, but there are no simpler ones for children who are still beginners with their numbers. Alphabet versions are also available.

A word of warning about this site: there is an annoying audio ad that plays when you enter the site, so keep that in mind if you click in from work or someplace public.

Coloring.ws

There is a large selection of printable ABC dot-to-dot puzzles in both upper and lower case letters available here. There are also number dot to dots from a complexity of 1 to 9 up to 1 to 45. Two games are available that count by 2s.

These pages print out the best, with games that fill a whole page and nice, big numbers.

Nick Jr., Playhouse Disney, and PBS Kids

If your child has a favorite character, or show, finding character themed connect the dot games may provide an extra level of motivation to them to learn those numbers. These sites do have dot-to-dot puzzles, but don't make it all that easy to find them. The quality of the pictures and the printing, however, is far superior to any of the other sites mentioned. Also, these sites are updated often. If a favorite character isn't mentioned here, just wait awhile; new printable pages will become available from time to time.

Nick Jr. conveniently has all their pintables in one place: http://www.nickjr.com/printables/index.jhtml. Under 'Learning', and then 'Numbers and Counting' there are connect the dots for Dora, Go Diego Go, Wubbzy, and Wonder Pets.

Playhouse Disney also has a page just for their pintables:
http://atv.disney.go.com/playhouse/printables/index.html. There are 15 shows listed, and by clicking each one you can see thumbnails of the available pages. Currently available are Charlie and Lola, and Mickey (It's a picture of Daisy Duck).

As for PBS Kids, right now they only have printable connect the dot games for Clifford: http://pbskids.org/clifford/printables/index-sub03.html. There is an online Dragon Tales themed dot-to-dot game that can be played by clicking on the numbers in the right order. However, your child won't get any practice using a pencil with this method if that's one of your goals.