B is for Bed

"Manda, this book will be my blankie"

Now say it with me..."awwwww"

B is for Budding Authors!

We read a book called Barn Dance! by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault (they wrote Chicka Chicka Boom Boom if you're wondering why those names sound so familiar). The girls liked pointing to all the different animals and finding the "skinny kid" as the owl ushered in the "magic time" and the scarecrow began to fiddle.

We listed all the animals in the book and talked about what we knew about them. There were the regular farm crew: pigs, cows, chicken, sheep, horses, goats, mules, mice, geese; and the other "country kin": raccoons, foxes, bunnies, porcupines, crows, skunks and pigeons.

The girls made all the animal noises for the farm animals but some of those other critters were a little more perplexing...what does a porcupine say anyway? Ash Lee let us know raccoons say "Raccoon, Raccoon" but there were some interesting suggestions when we got to the others.

I found a fun book at the library that had pages to reproduce and make our own books. It's published by Scholastic and called 25 Fun-Filled Collaborative Books. I found it at the library a couple of weeks ago and have been waiting for Book week to use it. If you're looking for good summer activities I think this would be fun for the older kids too.

We made our own version of Barn Dance! featuring the 3 girls and their choice of animal dance partners. They learned that making a book was hard work...even a 3 page book!

At circle time they all read their books to each other and all of them were very proud of their accomplishment. I think they all also enjoyed the chance to "read" to their buddies. I think we'll need to do this more often.

What's Your Favorite Children's Book?

We're celebrating Children's Books this week. There are so many out there that sometimes it's hard to sift through the mediocre ones to find the greatest among them.

I'd like to read the best of the best this week as we celebrate so please let me know your favorites!

My favorites are:

Bark, George! by Jules Feiffer










and Tuesday by David Weisner

Field Trip

The girls and I agree that we need more Field Trips in our lives.

Wednesday is International Children's Book Day and I thought that was definitely cause for an outing.

If it's ok with everybody's moms and dads we'll be heading out to the Clackamas Mall Barnes & Noble for their storytime at 10am. Then we'll head over to the Play Center in the mall until we get bored. I'll bring a sack lunch to eat while we're there. After that we'll head to the library and let each girl check out a book to keep at my house during the week.

That should be a pretty good field trip...AND it's free! WOOT!