bibliomom

So while perusing the Hoagies’ Gifted Education site, I came across this fabulous link to Scholastic’s Teacher Book Wizard which is so amazingly cool. Their “BookAlike” search allows you to plug in the name of a book your kid likes, adjust the the reading level up or down, and then searches for similar books.

I’m not going to claim it’s perfect, but what a fabulous resource!

And it’s especially useful when trying to find books that work for kids reading below or above the “standard” level.

(If you do have a early/advanced/gifted reader – 0r a kid that’s just significantly ahead in any given subject – by all means check out the Hoagies’ site: they have some fabulous links and great book ideas.)

So on a rare foray to a brick-and-mortar book store, I happened upon this little book. It had an eye-catching cover that grew creepier the longer I looked at it: people with bizarrely wide gaping mouths in a darkened theater. No wait … were those eyes inside the mouths? Eyes and teeth? Wah! Those are monsters in there! Wearing full head people masks! Ewww!

And that’s largely how the best of the book is: creepiness, supplanted by uneasiness, followed by a large, “Wah!” as you figure out what was actually going on.

In other words, some wonderful examples of the kind of “gotcha!” moment that really good super-short stories have.

Now, I’m not going to claim all the stories are great – they aren’t. And they aren’t all traditional stories, either. There’s graphic stories, poetry, parody, even “Horrorku”, as one author phrased it. One of my very favorites stories consists of one page. One page. One picture. One set of numbered captions, and a truly amazing, “Wah!” as I finally figured out what was going on.

I don’t even like horror stories!

But this is a good book with some really tight writing. If you have a kid who likes scary stuff, it’s a no-brainer. I bought it for my soon-to-be-twelve year old niece as a birthday gift, but the writing is good enough for any medium t0 advanced reader to enjoy. Selections can also be used to study effective writing – how to establish mood, character and setting in just a few sentences – as well as being able to read the subtext of the story – many of the stories require the ability to accurately predict what comes next or logically deduce what’s really going on in order for the story to work. Great work for kids with social delays if they can handle the scariness.

And about that scariness … it’s too much for my son. He’s nine and doesn’t like scary things, and even the not-so-scary stories disturbed him. This is a book where the kids really can die or be eaten and they won’t come back again. So as much as I’d like to work with him on appreciating the writing and logical outcome, it’s not going to happen. Not all the stories are scary – some go for more of a humorous twist – but you need to be sure your kid can deal the ones that are really disturbing. And mine isn’t able to deal with a world where the monster under the bed eats the dad.

Back to the good stuff, some really well known authors contributed to this book – Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, R.L. Stein, Margaret Atwood, Jon Scieszka – so the variety really is amazing.

Now the Amazon page for Half-Minute Horrors does give examples of some of the writing – some of my favorite pieces, actually – but if you think this if for you, I’d suggest saving the pleasure by waiting till you read the book.

Preferably someplace warm and well lit.

My Monkey likes art. He likes it sooo much that when he was a preschooler, he refused to draw for almost a whole year because his circles weren’t round enough.

(Really, you’d think that would have tipped me off that we were swimming in the deep end of the gene pool, but nooo, you can’t teach me anything.)

Eventually, he started drawing again and we’ve never looked back. But now that he’s all big, we actually have to start officially linking art into his curriculum, or at least log what we already do. And since I’m am now a) part of an impromptu co-op with adoptingmama and another friend and b) the one with the art history minor, I am also c) the one teaching an art class to a group of eight or nine kids on a semi-regular basis. All of which has made me start thinking more seriously about curriculum type stuff.

Before I get started, I would like to state the obvious and say there are as many ways of teaching art as there are people, and what’s important to one person might be deemed unnecessary by another. Teaching your child about the life cycle of a frog or building a baking soda-and-vinegar volcano is not what my husband would call real science. Real science (to keep up my husband’s inflection and attitude) is far more than spitting out random facts or blowing things up. It’s fun and useful, but has about as much to do with real science (there go those darn italics again) as, well, Michelangelo’s Pieta does with the tissue paper handprints my child brings home from Bible class.

So first, think about what your actual goals are. Do you just want to do some fun, creative and messy projects? Fabulous. Because that’s what this section’s about. I love books like Mudworks which is full of easy, fun recipes for all kinds of different modeling doughs and ideas on how to use it. Basic playdough for daily sensory activities, baked dough for beads and jewelry, gingerbread dough for the creative baker, and novelty doughs using everything from peanut butter to dryer lint. Completely fun and great for preschoolers up through middle school.

It’s not art.

But it is a really fun and completely age appropriate craft. And you can find ideas for school appropriate crafts everywhere. Parenting magazines? Full of them. Holiday themed, Season themed – Usborne books like Pirate Things to Make and Do are also full of themed activities – and themes can be good if you have a reluctant artist. And yes, I just said “artist” in the same paragraph where I explained that this isn’t art. Art vs. Craft is not a fight I’m going to get into. Yes, I call these craft projects when I’m feeling all snippy and self-righteous, but I think they can also be completely appropriate for art class, especially for younger kids, special needs kids, kids with visual or fine motor skill delays or just plain old reluctant artists. (Which I think are usually kids who quit art because of some kind of delay, anyway.) Art should be fun in the same way that school should be fun, and process focused art – art where the doing is more important than the final result – has a very important role in making art accessible and enjoyable. Hopefully at some point, you’ll be able to start tying those projects into larger lessons about media, technique, and a variety of artists and works. At the very least, these projects can be great for fun, fine motor skill development and adding a kinesthetic component to other school lessons. (Can I tell you how many alphabet letters with beans glued on them my daughter brought home last year?.)

So, this section isn’t much of a book review, is it? But that’s okay – I mostly just wanted to get “school crafts” out of the way. These types of projects are as old as the hills and have about as many variations. Go online and search for “Art Projects for Kids” and you’ll get about a million results.

No, wait – I lie. Google says 17 million plus. My first ten search results include:

Enchanted Learning

Amazing Moms

Crayola’s Website

How Stuff Works

Bright Ring

and the blog that was actually titled Art Projects for Kids

Now, most of these are the old school, cut out handprint, paper towel tube, aluminum foil sculpture variety. Personally, I can’t stand 99% of these projects, but everyone knows what a pretentious snot I am. I know – “Egg carton flower bouquet not good enough for ya, heh?” Well, no actually, it isn’t. Transforming household junk into painted, themed junk doesn’t really turn my crank. But there are some genuinely fun and creative projects mixed in among the beaded toilet-paper-ring-napkin-holders, so sift my darlings, sift.

The Bright Ring link is a little different as it seems to be run by the publishers of the aforementioned (and much loved) Mudworks book. This site is nice because it gives sample art projects from a variety of their books – a try-before-you-buy kind of scenario. It stinks because they left out the illustrations, so you have to rely on the text alone.

The Art Projects blog is also a little different, since it seems to include information about specific artists and DIY projects for sale, as well as focusing a bit more on technique and materials. Please remember this list is not made up of my personal favorites – it’s merely a sampling of what’s out there.

So there you have it - Part 1. Next time I’ll try to include something that’s actually useful.

So, I think the last time I blogged about Bug’s books, it was all Maisy, all the time. Wow.

It’s really amazing – she’s changed so much. She used to climb all over me while we read very short books (like her beloved Maisy). Since then, she taught herself to read, obsessively read every word in sight, and then refused to read aloud for anyone. It’s as if she was desperate to decode those letters, but once she had it, she just didn’t care that much. We could still read aloud to her – she moved on to Sandra Boynton and then Dr. Seuss – but was still limited in her ability to deal with a high text to picture ratio. And her complete refusal to read aloud.

I’m sure others with Spectrum issues and a tendency towards hyperlexia have seen this before – reading as a code to break, not a tool for enjoyment. It was nice and everything, but don’t expect her to do it.

And then Scott started bringing home Elephant and Piggie books. First of all, they’re brilliant. Second, they star – get ready for it – an elephant named Gerald and a small, pink, girl, pig. Pigs are pink. Bug loves pink. Hence, Bugs love pigs. Or at least that’s our best guess for the sudden case of porcine passion that overcame her last year.

But in addition to the sometimes glamourous Piggie, the books had another wonderful attraction: dialogue bubbles. Big, color coded dialogue bubbles, one per character, rarely more than one per page. No quotes, no narrator, just an elephant and a pig talking to each other. Dialogue in it’s simplest form.

And Bug loved it. She wanted to read Piggie’s part, use Piggie’s voice; for the duration of the story, she wanted to *be* Piggie.

For most kids, this is probably a “whatever” moment. I mean, great – it means they want to learn to read the text. But for my Bug – for a Spectrum kid with social and speech delays – this was huge. She knew how to decode the text; this made her want to read. She wanted to hear the story unfold; she wanted to see the humor and the drama; and as in all the Elephant and Piggie stories, she wanted to see the humorous twist at the end.

The Elephant and Piggie books really are wonderfully written and perfect for any emergent ready. They’re an amazing example of a good story condensed into its simplest form and shows the kind of focus, brevity and wit that I’m so badly lacking. But for a kid with social delays, the simple layout and clean illustrations also provide a distraction free arena to match what is being said, to what the character is feeling. Piggie is excited: “Today, I will fly!” Gerald is distainful: “YOU WILL NEVER FLY!” Piggie is hopeful: “I will try.”

Really, just a fabulous series I’d recommend to anyone. Sure, my Bug can read. She still surprises us by quoting things like assembly directions and game manuals (“After the dragon completes his journey, the game continues where it was paused.”). But very little makes us happier than to watch our little bug dancing around on the couch saying, “I’ll be Piggie! And you be Gerald!”

So after all these years, I finally got to go to New York. Not that it’s ever been super high on my list of places to go, but it’s there. Besides, I was getting really tired of mumbling, “Yeah, still haven’t been …” at dinner parties.

Scott had to go on business (again) and this time he made sure that I got to come, too – sans children. Museums, subways, getting lost (repeatedly) in Central Park – and yet one of my favorite moments was getting to have Tea at The Plaza.

Some of you might remember the old Eloise books, or at least the newish Eloise movies featuring a mischievous little girl who lives at the top of The Plaza hotel in New York. After getting lost (twice) on the way to MoMA and a full morning of museum crawling, I was tired and hungry and more than a bit overwhelmed. As Van Johnson said, “It’s not the heat – it’s the humanity.”

Needless to say I decided that much like Eloise, I needed tea at The Plaza immediately and charge it, charge it!

And it was nice, a true relief from both the August heat and the New York humanity. It was quiet and cool with big comfy chairs and a harpist. The few other guests who where there seemed to mostly be mothers and daughters having an Eloise moment. And as The Plaza has both an special Eloise Tea and a portrait of Eloise peaking in from the hall, the atmosphere in the Palm Court remains light, despite the gorgeous Tiffany style skylight and the wonderfully restored gilt and moulding that festoon the room. It could feel stuffy and ominous, oppressive and overly formal, but somehow it doesn’t. It’s rather like going to have tea with a sweet old neighbor lady. Yes, she has antique, fussy furniture and antique, fussy teacups, but she’d rather see them enjoyed and broken than mouldering on a shelf, so please sit down and help yourself. There’s plenty, and have you ever had this kind of tea before?

So I had tea. Four courses of the most expensive tea I’ve ever had, just so you know before rushing over and making an appointment. A course of tiny tea sandwiches, filled with delectables like Peekytoe crab and lamb loin; two lovely, flakey scones: one blueberries, one with currants; a nice berry fruit salad, with no melon filler so I could actually eat it; and a finishing plate of tiny little desserts like lemon tart and miniature eclairs.

Mind you, the food varies on the tea you order, but there really isn’t a “just a scone and a cup of tea, please” option. It’s Prix Fixe all the way, at a Prix that blew my food budget for two days.

The service was attentive but leisurely. Occasionally a bit too leisurely, as in “there is food coming at some point, right?”. I think I was there around two hours, start to finish.

Still, the tea itself was quite good, and the food was all well prepared. It was a lovely break for both the body and sprit on a hot and noisy summer day. Best of all? Whenever I’m reading Eloise with my own daughter or my beloved nieces, I can finally say, “And I’ve been there, just like Eloise.”

Well, spring’s a comin’ and tulips are popping up at grocery stores all over Seattle. Amazingly, we found a great book a the library that fits the spring theme and is perfect for early readers.

The Great Tulip Trade is a darling book about a little girl named Anna who receives tulips for her birthday. Of course since it’s set in 17th century Holland during the great tulip craze, amazing things begin to happen when passers by spy her beautiful flowers.

For a book about girls and flowers, it’s actually not that girly. The drawings are charming, not sappy, and little Anna shows remarkable common sense when it comes to trading her beloved tulips. The story’s well written and enjoyable, balancing the historical frenzy (and underlying greed) with Anna’s practicality and ultimate choice to save her last tulip for herself, no matter what she’s offered for it. There’s even a nice little author’s note at the end providing further information about this fascinating time.

I was really surprised at how much my son enjoyed this sweet little story. Tulips are his new favorite flower and we actually have a reason to brave the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival traffic this year. A fun little story that introduces a new moment in history with nary a pouty little princess in sight.

If only I could hope for as much from the Tulip Festival.

Once again, Costco was full of fun stuff I just couldn’t resist. One such item was their big box o’ “Coloring Classics” - which is to say, 12 coloring books pulled from the Treasury of Illustrated Classics series - Pinocchio, Robin Hood, Alice in Wonderland, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Little Women, Beauty and the Beast, Black Beauty, Jungle Book (with Rikki Tikki Tavi), Peter Pan, Treasure Island, Wind in the Willows and the Wizard of Oz. Now, I don’t think my seven year old is going to give a flying flip about Little Women, but I know plenty of kids I could pass that one on to. And in the mean time, my boy is loving just sitting and reading these easy, illustrated editions of people running around with swords - I mean “classic adventure stories”.

In some ways, I think the market for these stories is a little weird – there’s only a couple of sentences per page, but the text requires a fairly proficient early reader or adult help. The stories have been super-simplified (like a Disney color book edition of a story) but it’s still enough to get the gist of the story. (And even as an adult, I can use the five-minute reminder of what each story is about.) The pictures are fairly simplistic as well, and usually far more cartoonish than the cover. Not bad, just basic, and probably really great for early elementary kids who are really visual and/or have short attention spans, as well as for slightly younger kids whose auditory comprehension skills are up to something more complex than “Maisy Drives the Bus”.

Best of all, it’s twelve coloring books for $11.49 with no t.v. characters, movie tie-ins, or bratty princesses in sight. Perfect for kids who love to color and parents who’d like to nudge their kids towards classic literature instead of the t.v.

Right up my alley.

As soon as Christmas is over and the new year rung in, thoughts in my household turn to one thing: Bug-a-boo’s birthday.

The problem is that a) it’s at the end of January and b) it’s just a smidge over two months away from her brother’s, and he’s come to expect epic parties with (shudder) the whole family. Being that “the whole family” plus the three families of our very best homeschool friends runs to around 45 people, there’s no such thing as a “small party”.

But I tried – I really, really tried. We had it on a weekday, the Friday after her birthday, and just invited her homeschool friends and the grandparents.

We had a total of 13 adults, 11 kids and 1 baby. And I made everybody help.

The theme was fun, though it could have been … timed better. My goal was to make a fun, casual lunch party for my kids and their friends. No party games, no immense craft projects and *no* 8 foot long paper mache dragons (I still have nightmares about the smell of hot glue and singed flesh).

So we decided to have a cooking party where the kids would cook their own lunch and then decorate cupcakes for after. (We sent the kids to go run around and play in between stages.) We also made individualized cooking tools by making beaded name keychain kind of things and attatching them to mini bamboo spatulas and spoons. (I have no idea how they’ll hold up, but they were cute.)

We made mini pizzas using Trader Joe’s bagged pizza dough and skewered fruit kabobs using a Costco fruit tray, trimmed strawberries, and some sliced kiwi. Then we pulled out the naked cupcakes, giant bag of candy (whoppers, gummi bears, mike & ike), assorted sprinkles, and about 6 bags of tinted buttercream frosting with different tips. I even provided plain cream cheese frosting for a base coat.

Here are some helpful tips in case you want to have a cooking party of your own:

1) make absolutely sure all the beads fit over the cord the way you want them to before you put them out for the kids. Apparently the craft store people drill their own, because the decorative ender beads shown in the craft sample weren’t going on the cord without a lot of adult assistance. And power tools. Finally, even though I bought of total of about 300 alphabet beads, we ran out of Bs before all the kids finished, so you might want to actually spell out their names and check total numbers of necessary letters before the party. (With almost 30 beads per kid, you’d of thought they’d have enough.)

2) While working with real pizza dough was fun, you might consider par-baking it or just using mini-boboli crusts for groups with more than four kids or a significant number of kids under 7. It’s just a lot of work and the extra thick crusts take a really long time to bake.

3) The fruits kabobs were awesome - I got short bamboo skewers for cheap at a local Japanese import store, and they just threaded the fruit onto them. If you buy a fruit tray, like I did, you’ll probably have to cut down a lot of the pieces to make them more bite size. If you want to go really simple, you could do more canned mandarin slices, grapes and blueberries. And if you want to get really fancy, I did a test batch of 1/4” sliced mango cut into butterfly shapes with mini-cookie cutters. Pretty, but a fair bit of work for younger kids who don’t really care. The older girls thought they were awesome.

4) Everyone thought the cupcakes were awesome. And what kid hasn’t dreamed of going crazy with a frosting tube? They all did, and we still had tons of frosting left over, which was my intention – I didn’t want to hear about how so-and-so used the last of the sky blue. Oh – and due to the preponderance of pink-loving girls in our party, I made two tubes of pink in order to reduce waiting time. I used disposable piping bags which I sealed with duct tape – it wasn’t particularly attractive, but there was no nasty leaking out the top. I also used the trick of keeping the icing tip down in heavy glasses to make it easier to carry, take up less room on the table (and in the fridge), and make less mess.

The boys especially loved the candy. One of my favorite creations looked like an alien landscape where a mineral deposit of technicolor mike-and-ike had forced its way to the surface.

Finally, you might want to only use half as much cupcake batter per cup than usual – this way the kids can decorate two shallow cupcakes instead of one standard size.

5) Multiple cheap plastic tablecloths were good – I switched out after the pizza.

6) With so many younger kids, giving each their own birthday candle and then hurrying through the presents while they sat around and ate their creations worked well for us.

7) We contemplated ordering plain canvas aprons from Oriental Trading Company and doing paint on handprints as a take home, but one of my girl friends volunteered to make all the kids chef’s hats instead. I still think it’s a good idea, though you may want to check drying times before you commit.

Now, because I was so utterly disorganized, there was a lot of “go play in the basement, kids” while the moms and grandmas tidied up and prepared the next round, but at the end of the afternoon the kids had played hard, eaten well, and largely filled up on fruit and homemade pizza before they ever got near the cupcakes. If I were to do it again … okay, no – I can’t see myself ever doing this again for a group of eleven mixed kids aged 3 - 8. However, this is still a fun idea and would work really well if you have a smaller group of kids of more uniform age and skill level. If you really must do it for a large group of kids, then I’d go with sandwich wraps with a variety of fillings and topping instead of something that needed to be baked.

You could also try other fun things like just doing a cupcake party and even go as far a having illustrated decoration cards that show how to make your cupcake look like a ladybug or a hedgehog. The book Cupcakes from the Cupcake Doctor has some neat ideas, though I don’t care much for boxed cake mix.

(For easy cupcakes, try Nigella’s super easy, food-processor fairy cake recipe in How to Eat - you chuck softened butter, eggs, flour and leavener into the food processor, whiz it around a few times, add a little milk, whiz till smooth and you’re done. Easy-cheezy.)

For boy-boys or more serious cooks, pick something fun and really hands-on (that you’ve learnd how to do in advance) like actually making your own pizza dough or stuffing wantons or designing the ultimate sandwich - there are tons of ideas online.

Cooking with kids is fun – just plan for their age and interest and keep it simple.

And be sure to get someone to take pictures.

Okay, you know I’m all about the wiggly kids – the ones who can’t play Candyland or Chutes and Ladders, or any other game involving card drawing, spinnners or endless turn taking. I can barely stand these games, so I don’t know why I think kids under 5 have any chance of making it through alive.

Having said that, we recently repurchased Cariboo for my 3 year old and I remembered 1) why we loved this game so much the first time and 2) why we needed to buy a new copy.

First, this is possibly the best game ever for bright, non-verbal, sensory-happy, and/or attention challenged young children. The game is basically a box with three holes at the top, a grid of 15 doors beneath that, and an empty tube (for balls) that leads to a treasure chest on the right. (Amazon has good pictures.)

You take turns drawing a card, matching the color/shape/number to a door on the grid, opening the door by poking a “key” into a little hole, and seeing if there’s one of six brightly colored bouncy balls is inside. If there’s a ball inside, you get to add it to the tube on the right; if not, the turn moves to the next person. After all six balls are put in the tube the treasure chest pops open, everyone says, “Yay! We won!” and you start over.

Basically, it’s opening little boxes (with a key no less) and looking for pretty balls. What could possibly be more fun? Unless you’ve deeply offended the luck fairy, everyone will find at least one ball and as long as you emphasize, “That’s okay - try again next time!” it’s a great chance to work on turn taking (especially since the key moves with the turn). It’s also really fun to have a game where everyone legitimately gets to share an obvious win.

My oldest loved this game, eventually loving it to death, popping off all the doors and losing the balls.

The new one seems even better – the doors come with reversible cards for more advanced matching – but it’s still just as popular. It took my daughter about three minutes to master it and only about five to get her to echo back, “That’s okay - try again!” when she failed to find a ball. Considering her speech and social delays, I was thrilled – matching she can do, but dealing with disapointment and taking turns can be a challenge.

Anyway, what with Christmas looming I thought I should through out my suggestion for an oldie but a goodie.

Cariboo gets a 2 chair rating in my household – as in, ‘my daughter dragged two ridiculously heavy chairs into the library in an attempt to liberate her beloved game from the top shelf’.

And if that doesn’t convince you, then nothing will.

Well, okay – so one of your kids wants to be a ninja for Halloween. How hard could it be?

Being me – fair to middling.

A quick perusal of the local Stuff-Mart confirmed what I already knew – most commercial costumes are either combustibly flimsy, heinously overpriced or (more likely) an unhappy marriage of the two. Oh – and don’t forget stupid. Either that or I just missed the giant yellow shoulder pad trend in ninja-wear.

So of course I decided to make one. Silly bunny – don’t you remember that you haven’t sewn since middle school? I’m going to blame the time lapse on my other memory failures – that satin is satan’s fabric (you’ve seen the red suit) and that all patterns are evil.

So this nice, easy Simplicity pattern (that also conveniently made sorcerers robes and princess dresses) was the only kids ninja pattern I could find. (Teen and adults were swimming in ninja goodness – perhaps it’s the lack of ninja department stores.) Since my kids were screaming through the fabric store at mach 4, I just grabbed the pattern, a couple yards of the on-sale satin and ran.

It’s Simplicity, right? Aren’t they supposed to be easy? I suppose it was rendered easier by the lack of pants – hmmm, the kid on the front *is* wearing tights, I guess …

And oh, look – it’s not a one piece ninja mask, it’s a … sorcerer’s hood with a sash tied around it. Hmm. And why does it take this many pieces to sew … a graduation gown.

That’s when I said, OMG – my son is the valedictorian ninja. And he’s going to kill the other graduates with his plastic katana.

But don’t worry yourself – it’s been … fixed? Well, I wouldn’t really say fixed. I did rip out some seams and spend an ungodly amount of time fooling around with it while the satin attempted to unravel into a pile of black dental floss. Once I achieved a shelf stable consistency, we pulled out the big guns – accessories. Sashes and sweatpants, gloves and shurinken – the whole ninja kit and kaboodle. We even made our own (really bad) tabi socks.

My final thoughts?

1) Simplicity should be sued for false advertising. Either that or I need Patterns for the Incompetent.

2) Patterns made to work for many things will inevitably look like the worst thing in the set. If I want to make a valedictorian princess dress I’ll be sure to pull this one back out.

3) I should have bought a friggin’ bath robe to go over his sweat pants – it would have looked better. That, or I should have sprung for the pricey ‘real’ ninja costumes online. At around 15 woman hours and $50 in materials, it had to have been cheaper.

In short – go buy black sweat pants, a black yukata or bath robe, and a $10 ninja toy set that includes a face mask. Either that, or tie two sashes around the head and face, like a real ninja. Now cut the fingers out of a pair of super cheap black gloves and use velcro sticky tabs to artistically attach a couple of shurinken (throwing stars) to the back of the gloves or open neck of the robe. If it’s cold, make them wear a black turtleneck.

And whatever you do, don’t use satin.