school – Page 5 – Peaceful Reader

Summer Blues and 4 cool picture books

I am suffering a little from “What happened to my summer blues!!” It all went so fast and I only got a fraction of my (many) projects done. I set out to organize our home and only got a small amount accomplished. I am trying to round out my summer by going through my Food and Wine and Vegetarian Times magazines; saving recipes and tips so I can recycle the magazines and get them off my shelves. Because I’ve taken to reading books so much I lost track of the joy of paging through these lovely mags as soon as they come in the mail. I aim to get back to that tradition as soon as I get caught up. Really-(my husband 1. rolls his eyes 2. chuckles when I mention “getting caught up!”) The nerve!

I have four lovely picture books to share with you today; all thee are from my local library and have been added to my titlewave list (which is already overbudget).

1. I’m Your Bus by Marilyn Singer; pictures by Evan Polenghi (5 stars)

Cute happy cover which will attract massive amounts of children to check this book out. It begins: “Howdy, you can count on us. Morning, evening, I’m your bus. Sweepers sweeping, bakers baking. Dawn is barely even breaking. Time for buses to be waking!” It’s cheerful, high-energy “talking” bus will have every student wanting to ride the smiling bus! The illustrations show diverse children and a bustling clean city. I think it would be great paired with Kate McMullen’s series, I Stink, I ‘m Dirty,I’m Mighty.
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2. Country Road ABC; an Illustrated Journey through America’s Farmland by Arthur Geisert (4 stars)

This is a beautiful book with much needed information whether your a city kid or a country kid. My only complaint with this book is the very first page. “A is for ammonia fertilizer.” Hmmm. Not that thrilling of a beginning but hey, the glossary says A.F. is important for the soil and I don’t get how the picture gives us that info. Hey, it’s my only concern in an otherwise informative text. The next page is “B is for Barn Cats” and the illustration clearly shows us cats wandering around on the farm. I think students at my school will love seeing such an elaborate farm inside the pages of this book. I found an Iowa connection, while researching this book, and the article is from the Quad-City Times. Geisert based the book on a farming community in Iowa where he lived.

3. Animal Crackers Fly The Coop, egg-secuted by Kevin o’Malley (5 stars)

Kevin O’Malley cracks me up in all of his other books so I knew I was in for some serious belly laughs when I picked this one off the shelf. This is a unique retelling of The Bremen Town Musicians using humor as the catalyst instead of music. The first page: Hen loved to tell jokes. Jokes like: Why did the chicken go to the library? To check out a bawk, bawk, bawk. And: How do comediens like their eggs? Funny-side up! Hen dreamed of standing on a stage in a comedy club and cracking up the crowd. She simply had to be a comedi-hen.” And the book is FILLED with puns like that…My mom and I got the jokes but most of them flew right over my nephews and daughter in the bedtime story audience. They still thought it was funny and cute but theydidn’t get the play on words. Like I did, a teacher will just have to do some explaining-and that’s okay.

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4. Bobby Bramble Loses His Brain by Dave Keane; illustrated by David Clark

Another one with lots of puns to go around as “Bobby Bramble had ants in his pants, a thirst for adventure and evergy to spare.” and he’s been duly warned by his kind-hearted mother that if he’s not careful he will “crack his head open like Humpty-Dumpty.” He does just that when he falls on his head and his brain “ran off as if it had a mind of its own.” Its a wild rumphus as the whole town spots and looks for Bobby’s brain all over town! This will make a magical read-aloud as kids laugh at the puns as much as the pictues of Bobby, with the top of his brain hinged off! 5 stars

Enjoy your last bit of summer…

with more reading!!

Summer is here and the time is right…

I’m done with school as of today at about 4:39!! I’m not planning on going back tomorrow either! I’m not on the beach but this is just how I feel. Whoop Whoop!! I have a serious agenda for this summer and only some of it includes playing and reading. My day was jammed packed with finishing up three huge projects and now the bliss begins! I hope your day is ending well and you can think cartwheels if not do them!

The Homeschool Liberation League

by Lucy Frank

(2009)

Interesting book: great title,deep characters, extremely interesting topic.

What do you do if your kid is bored out of their mind at school? What if

that child seems to be self-motivated at home

learning about plants and animals all on their own? Homeschooling, unschooling, or regular schooling-which path do you choose?

This book eventually makes the case that there are many

different answers to that question.

Kaity, after a summer trip to Wilderness Camp, turns herself into” Katya” and decides to take herself out of school- on her very first day back! She leaves, walks out, on a day when many students are excited to see their friends, show off new school wardrobes and be a part of something but not Katya. She heads back home where she hides out in her treehouse for most of the day. Katya puts together a massive binder of researched information about schools and homeschooling as well as her reasons for wanting this so much and shares it with her parents-begging to be allowed to stay home and learn what she wants to learn. After meeting with the principal, the parents become frustrated with the school system as well so they decide to give it a try.

Along the way Katya meets Milo, a H.S. neighbor and young violin prodigy. Milo doesn’t want to be homeschooled any more because his dad is overbearing about the whole practicing, studying thing.
Several middle school and high school students who homeschool hate it…
they fight to go to school while Katya fights for one year of freedom.

There is very real conflicting feelings in the story. It is tough to wonder, with one decision, am I going to ruin my child’s life? I liked the emotion the book brought out in me yet I didn’t love the book. Katya was screechy and drove me a little crazy but I also think that is how a middle school girl might be. I think I was like that-everything very dramatic!! I think I would like to read another Lucy Frank book to do a little compare and contrast. I don’t homeschoo lmy own children and I do teach in the public school system but I am a fan of homeschooling as a good friend taught me homeschooling fits a variety of purposes. My previous idea was more along the lines of parents trying hard to shelter their children from the reality of the world-don’t read “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” -you know.

My favorite quote:

“I thought you loved school,” I lied. “You’re Francesca Halloran, star of everything. Teachers love you, kids love you. Everyone wants to be you. You always have that sparkly, sprightly, spunky, everything is so fun and easy and interesting, I-live-for-school…You always know what you’re doing-“
Her look reminded me of Milo. “Did you hear anything I said before? That doesn’t mean I like it. I’m just good at it. It’s a game, Katya. So I play to win, okay? I’m so good at playing it, most of the time I don’t even know it is a game.” Her eyes shone with feeling. “But you said no, I’m not playing. I can’t do it. I really admire that.” p. 187

One of the themes I loved in the book was the idea of being true to yourself and both Katya, Milo and Francesca learn to stand up for what it is they really want. Just as it would be in real life, the hardest part was convincing parents that their children were mature enough to know themselves!
I discussed the book this afternoon with my friend (yes, the homeschooling mama) and she thinks it would make a great reading choice for the parents of her H.S. group! It will be interesting to hear what they think!

Recommended-Middle Grade Fiction

3.5 /5 peaceful stars

Other Reviews:

Lazy Gal Reads

and Jessica at Kiss the Book
***Library Book Project***

Oh the places you'll go

We celebrated the great rhyming man ~~today~~ yesterday in great style. About a week ago I talked my sweet husband into performing his skit, “The Sneetches” with three high school students and 12 fifth grade students at my school. He, reluctantly (only because he has much that he juggles at his own job), agreed to take it on. Monday night I brought him home a dryer box and he cut it and painted it to make the “wondrous contraption” for adding and removing stars. If I haven’t mentioned it before I love having a dramatic husband, who can act, direct and make his own scenery. I bought 12 yellow t-shirts from a near by big box craft store-hey, they were 1/2 price-and we were in the skit-making business! They performed the skit four times and my husband did a dramatic reading of Yertle the Turtle, which is his all-time favorite because it is about government crushing the little guy. Students talked about the skit all the rest of the day so I guess it was a hit. I’ve already mentioned to my husband he might want to pencil us in for next year and tonight at dinner I hinted he might want to add to his Seuss repertoire!!

Dr. Seuss has been a favorite of mine for years. I have lovely memories of reading early readers such as One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to my two little brothers. My son (the 14 yo) always wanted to read Seuss during that first grade period when we expected him to read to us…little did we know at the time he picked Seuss because he had them memorized!! He’s still talented like that because today he was one of the teenagers working with the younger ones. He played Sylvestre McMonkey McBean, the huckster.

I’m so glad, glad, glad for 1. having a family I can count on, 2. crossing this celebration off my list for the week, 3. and because it went really well for all involved!

Now I can move on to planning my next major school event-The Yoga Project!! Next week a certified yoga teacher will come to our school and work with 12 students to make a yoga DVD for classroom use. I have been working on this project for what seems like months (and its not exactly something you can throw together in a week-see top paragraph). I have a little anxiety-hopefully it will go well!!

I miss Dr. Seuss-not that I ever met him-but I would love to see what he would be producing today. Perhaps a look at pollution (did that –McGilligott’s Pool), environment (hhmmm, did that, The Lorax), war (did that too-The Butter Battle Book),diversity (oh, did that too, Horton Hears a Who)-Wow, okay still I’m sure he would find new ways to entertain, persuade and inform!

I hope you had a wonderful day celebrating in your own way and if you are new to Dr. Seuss I recommend almost all-there’s a wocket in my pocket-we don’t know what went wrong there-way too wonky for us!!
Click here and here for two great Seuss sites-I am now an expert at getting the gifts into the chimneys and the second site I used with 4th and 5th grade students-they had to read the whole article about Dr. Seuss and answer questions-it was good, fun and best of all, really made them think and process information! Some of them garrrrrumfed about it but they got it done (it was only 4 questions-jeez!)
Leave a comment and let me know what you did for Dr. Seuss’ birthday or what your favorite Seuss book/character is.

Happy Reading-

New Library

Here is one quick photo of the reading teepee in the library at our new school. I haven’t been to the new building yet but our lead teacher was kind enough to snap the photo on his tour so I could see it. The man in inside is a construction worker. I begin packing all library materials next week officially. I thought I should share a picture so as I continue to talk about this exciting new space you can see why I’m excited. The architect kept calling it a teepee but I don’t know if that is accurate or sensitive. I need a catchy name for it. Any ideas??