Literacy Lava 2!!!

It's here! It's here! The second edition of Literacy Lava!! Come check it out with me!

Literacy Lava is a free pdf ezine for parents, offering tips on ways to incorporate reading, writing and communicating into family life.

In the second edition of Literacy Lava, you’ll find ideas: for motivating reluctant readers, for literacy on the go, for developing the imagination muscle, for linking math and literacy, for having a pirate party and a book picnic, for rhymes, games, activities and more!

Brought to you by bloggers and writers who are passionate about children's literature and literacy, Literacy Lava 2 is erupting with no- or low-cost activities parents can do with their kids.

So, if you think you'd like a little lava to read with your java...

If the price tag FREE appeals to you...

Grab Literacy Lava 2 today, via The Book Chook blog.

Garage Sale

You may have noticed my lack of post this past Thursday. Sorry! Me, the hubby, and kiddo are in Chicago having a MASSIVE garage sale to raise funds for our adoption. It' been an awesome weekend and it's not over yet! I'll share more on Monday (hopefully), when we're back in town.

Kidlit Superheroes

Photo by Dashu Pagla

I'm having one of those weeks... or maybe months, where I look around at all the brilliant kidlit bloggers and tweeters, and wonder how they have the time to read so many books, keep up on everyone's blogs, maintain awesome blogs themselves, stay informed of all the latest kidlit news, and work jobs and/or care for their families. Seriously, how do they do it? How do you do it?

I am certainly no kidlit superhero. There are never even close to enough hours in my day. Being in the midst of the international adoption process, and doing major fundraising for said adoption doesn't help, but I was far from Wonder Woman even before all that began.

So I'm laying it all out here. (Not that there will probably be any big surprises for anyone.), in the hopes that others will do the same, and make me feel better. I love to try to put on the pretty Literacy Launchpad face, but here's the reality (hopefully you'll still want to follow my blog by the end of this post):

- As much as I love to read, I hardly ever have time to do it lately. I'm lucky to squeeze in a chapter a night. It's depressing. I haven't read much of anything in a while, with the exception of picture books. What kind of reading role model am I?

- There are dozens of kidlit blogs I wish I could keep up with. I used to be pretty good at this, but it's a sacrifice I've had to make lately. It sucks. I feel totally out of the loop. Thank goodness for Twitter. I get little chirps of interesting things from time to time.

- I'm not all-knowing when it comes to children's books. Not even close. I'm sorry if I've ever let you down, or disappointed you by not having that perfect book recommendation, or by having never heard of that picture book you asked if I knew anything about. There's too many! No. I haven't read them all!

- Similar to the point made above, I do not own every picture book (family and friends: it's O.K. to gift me or Isaac a picture book from time to time). Even if I had the desire to buy every picture book, and a place to store them all, I certainly don't have the means. That's why we love our library! So don't be disappointed when you want to borrow some random picture book from me and I don't own it.

I could go on telling you how far from kidlit superhero I am. But I'll stop there for today. That's a just a little glimpse for ya.

None of us are perfect, right? Right? But I do believe we all possess some kind of super power in one area or another. Whether it be in your career, your family, a hobby, whatever.

When it comes to kidlit, my "super power" is that I can take a picture book and make it come alive with fun. Of course, that's what Literacy Launchpad is all about! I also think I'm a pretty darn good read-alouder (made that word up). I'll claim those strengths in the wake of admitting my mediocrity in pretty much every other area.

We can't all do it all. But when we pool our strengths, we can do BIG things together! And when we're talking about pooling strengths in the area of kidlit, that makes me really excited. Teachers, parents, bloggers, writers, librarians, caregivers... We can change the world. We will change the world!

Jump in here! Admit some imperfections, and then put on your cape and claim your super power! I know you've got one (or two)!

Literacy Launchpad Interview @ Kids Book Review!

Go visit the fabulous Kids Book Review and see the interview they did with me! It's fascinating! Ha! Ha!

Seriously though, I would love to hear your thoughts on some of the great questions they asked me. Come on over! Let's talk about kids books!

Book Chook and Literacy Lava to the Rescue!

Susan at The Book Chook heads up a AWESOME, FREE, online newsletter that's all about literacy! There are several other brilliant bloggers that contribute to Literacy Lava as well. I had the wonderful privilege of contributing to the first edition of Literacy Lava, and would have loved to be a part of this next edition as well, but adoption fundraising and paperwork has taken over my life, and unfortunately doesn't leave much time for fun stuff like Literacy Lava.

But Susan is so savvy to everything and everyone in the kidlitosphere that she knew the craziness in my life without me needing to explain it all to her. Love that lady! And she sent me the info about the latest Literacy Lava edition right in the knick of time: my son is sick with the flu, and I had nothing prepared to post today. No fear! Literacy Lava to the rescue!

So here's the official scoop!

Literacy Lava 2, Coming Soon!

Making literacy part of our everyday family life is often just a matter of remembering. We need to make sure our kids see that reading, writing, and communicating are important to us, and give them lots of opportunities to participate too.

Literacy Lava 2 is a free magazine that will bring you ideas: for motivating reluctant readers, for literacy on the go, for developing the imagination muscle, for linking math and literacy, for having a pirate party and a book picnic, for rhymes, games, activities and more!

Brought to you by bloggers and writers who are passionate about children's literature and literacy, Literacy Lava 2 is erupting with no- or low-cost activities parents can do with kids to promote literacy.

Coming September 1 to The Book Chook blog!

After Burning the Midnight Oil...

... I always end up with happy students! Yeah, so I don't always have my lessons ready weeks in advance. What teacher does? My students don't know that though. Nor do they care. They just care that I come to class with super cool books, and super fun stuff to do with those cool books!

This week's story was The Apple Pie That Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson. We discussed the format, how the book starts at the end of the story (or process of making apple pie) and works back to the beginning. Then we used story cards to put the steps of making an apple pie in order.

Each student got to take a turn clipping their story card onto our story line (jump rope), and at the end we ended up with the complete story line pictured above.

Then we told our own story. Our story began, "On the last day of summer vacation I..." Each student took a turn adding something to the story, after each addition we recapped all the previous additions to the story. There were lots of giggles when someone tried to sneak something in about going "potty" on their turn. Ah, to be a preschooler again.

Preparing A Lesson.

I always have high hopes of getting my lesson plans done way ahead of time, but that hardly ever happens. I'm always burning the midnight oil the night before class. That's especially true lately with us beginning our adoption from Ethiopia. Oi! So fun, but SO tiring!

So if you're looking for something to do next Tuesday night, head on over to my house and I'll put you to work. Come on now, it will be fun! Take a look and see...

O.K. So we're reading The Apple Pie That Papa Baked (Lauren Thompson). I want to make some story pieces... Do I have some felt? Let's look in one of my craft drawers here. Yikes! Messy!

What am I thinking? Felt is going to be way hard to make these out of this late. Let's see if I have any card stock. Yes! I do. And it's cream colored too. It'll coordinate nicely with Jonathan Bean's illustrations in the book. Note to self though: You're running dangerously low on card stock and construction paper. Buy more!!

I feel like I've been using lots of homemade story cards lately. I sometimes get stuck on something like that when it comes to my lessons. Ah well. It always works great and the kids have fun with it. That's all that matters. Let's slice up this card stock!

Bucket o' crayons? There you are! I'll keep with the color scheme used in the book and use black, brown, and red. Sorry carnation pink and cerulean. Maybe next time!

Mmmm! Pie! My drawing looks good enough to eat!

Whew! That took way less time than fussing with felt, and accomplishes the same thing... perhaps even better than the left would have. I'm more than satisfied with how these story cards turned out.

I'll snip the end off this broken jump rope, and grab some clothespins...


Throw everything in my bag and I'm all ready to go for tomorrow!

Be sure to come back and see what we did with all this!