New Child's Play Books!

I love seeing Child's Play's big brown box of books show up on my porch every few months. The kids and I get to test drive new titles and see what we think. Child's Play is an independent publisher, specializing in whole child development, learning through play, life skills, and values. Their stuff is so pretty and fun. The latest additions to their collections got a thumbs up from us! Check it out.


The What's That board book series encourages guessing, prediction, and memory skills. Four titles in the series include CHOO! CHOO!, SNAP! SNAP!, TAP! TAP!, and TOOT! TOOT!. What's that noise? Lift the flap and find out! Lift the flap books are my go-to's with little ones. Always a hit! Familiar themes and vibrant illustrations will mean many, repeated, and fun-filled readings.

The Seasons board book series has a separate charm all its own (Titles include Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter). Each season has something special about it, and in these books you get to explore each one. You will follow these whimsically illustrated  children as they spend time discovering the joys of indoor and outdoor play. And the durability of these board books means you can tote them around with you in each season and read them indoors or out!

We also read a couple new Child's Play picture books and they were adorable! Crunch! by Carolyn Rabei features the cutest little guinea pig named Crunch. He loves to eat and is shocked when a mouse named Cheddar asks to share his food. Trade for a hug? Nope. But Crunch ends up regretting his decision and sets out to find the hungry little mouse.

The last book was Ailsa Burrow's The Jar of Happiness. In this sweet book, Meg shares her "jar of happiness" with friends when they are down and need a little lift. Then one day the jar goes missing. Can she ever be happy again? But Meg's friends help her find new ways to be happy. We loved the super-cute cat in this story; he made us smile and giggle!

All books that are definitely worth your time and great additions to your library!

Ideas for Summer Book Fun!

Can I show you what we've been doing in class this past month? I can't believe I will be trading the preschool classroom for the homeschool classroom. It feels very weird, but exciting. And I'm thrilled that I will get to invest more time and energy into creating fun and meaningful literature experiences for my little guy AND my older kids!

I am also scheming to continue visiting my beloved schools for some special story times throughout the year so I don't suffer any terrible withdrawal effects!

So here's the fun we've been having this past month:

We had so much fun reading Chalk (Bill Thomson)! Huge hit with the kids. Oh, the fun they had imagining what it would be like to have their chalk drawings come to life! So much imagining and pretending. We drew with "magic" chalk of our own and pretended our drawings came to life. The students begged me to reread this one all month long!

Blackout (John Rocco) was another hit! I felt like this story was my son's own personal story: a boy wants to play a game with someone, but everybody in his family is too wrapped up in their technology to be bothered. Then the power goes out. Suddenly life slows down, the family comes together to have fun and pass the time during the blackout.  I think all modern kids can likely identify with this story! We turned out the lights after we read the story and made shadow puppets like they did in the story. My students were amazed by this. Then we took a picture of a city with the lights on, and turned the lights back on with our neon paints! Again, amazement from the students! And the pictures turned out so cool! Even my big kids had fun with this project when I came home with the extra supplies. We read the book around our kitchen table quite a few times!

Like Chalk, Walrus (Stephen Savage) is a wordless book. A Walrus escapes from the zoo and must hide form the zookeeper. He discovers his passion and finds a way to fulfill it while remaining at the zoo, so all ends well. The kids just crack up at the silly places the walrus hides and tries to disguise himself. So simple, but so entertaining! I brought little walruses, made out of craft foam, for us to hunt for in the classroom. Who would have thought the kids would love this so much? We also made pictures where the kids had to illustrate a way to disguise their foam walrus. Many of them took their inspiration from the book and made scenes similar to Savage. But some came up with some new ides of their own. When we finished crafting, they all wanted to take turns hiding the walruses around the room again. So if you're looking for a way to keep some preschoolers busy - hide some walruses! Ha!

Finding Space for Reading

Summer never feels like a time when things slow down and life is a little less crazy. Our summers are busy, for the kids and for me. When I see these book lists on Pinterest titled things like "10 Best Beach Reads," I laugh. What mom is able to actually read at the beach (If you are a mom that does get to read at the beach, please don't tell me, or I might cry)? I'm always busy making sure my kids don't get pulled out to sea by a rip current.

... Or I'm burying kids in the sand!

Not only does extra reading hardly ever seem to happen, but I struggle to maintain the little bits of regular reading time we normally observe. Travel and late bedtimes mean we sometimes miss our bedtime stories.

My Little Reader hasn't done much napping this summer and I only just realized today that no nap means we haven't been reading our normal pre-nap stories.

My kids love to stay up and read with their book lights at night, and even that has been falling by the wayside as they are so often zonking out as soon as they hit the pillow, as of late.

When there are lulls in their days and they get bored, I have seen my kiddos pick up books and read... from time to time.

They begged to do the summer reading program at the library, and have happily been picking out books that interest them on our regular trips.

They are slowly learning to read for the pure pleasure of it. So all is not lost.

But as we creep toward the start of another school year, and I look toward days containing some kind of routine again, I realize that I need to really be intentional with our reading times. I need to guard our established reading routines, perhaps reinstate some that have been lost, and I hope to work more reading time into our routine wherever I can. We will be homeschooling in the fall, so I'm excited about getting creative with how we find time to read, and simply having the control over our routine to give reading the prioritization that I crave.

Finding space for reading turns our to be easier said than done, even for those of us that understand its value and enjoy books. So how to you find space to read in the craziness and busyness of summer?

Our bedroom floors are always covered in books, so we've at least got that going for us!

Read About Robots, Make Robots

... We've been doing just that all month long! There are too many fun robot books to not have a robot-themed unit! I'm so excited about this one, I'm creating a full literacy-pack that will be available on the Teachers Pay Teachers site... eventually. Just as soon as I find time to complete it... aaaaand figure out how the heck to post it into my store (I'm a serious newbie there).

I'll share some of the fun with you here, and I encourage you to grab some robot books to read with your kids or students. You don't even have to suggest a craft or activity to follow these books - the kids suggest and ask for it themselves! I mean, what kid doesn't want to make a robot?

Here are the stories we read:

We played some robot games after each story, and these games helped us practice some essential early literacy skills like rhyming, vocabulary, and alphabet knowledge.

Then we created! Each class project serves as catalysts for further story discussion, it gets the kids' creative juices flowing, those imaginations start dreaming things up, and then they end up with a fun little reminder of that week's story to take home with them!

Here are a couple of the projects we made:

Inspired by the art in Robot Zombie Frankenstein, we pieced together colorful geometric shapes, cut from foam, to make our own unique robots. The end pages in Robot Zombie Frankenstein beg for a project like this to be done after you read the book!

This week we are turning ourselves into robots with these fun robot templates I created that we simply added our photo to! So fun! Each student gets to share about what kind of robot they are - we have learned about various kinds of robots from our reads! We had some "Robot Zombie Frankensteins," and we had some "chef robots." 

Do you have a favorite robot picture book? Would you mind passing it along in the comments? I've got some little readers itching for more great book recommendations on this topic!

Summer Boredom Buster: Make Your Own Board Game!

For some parts of the country, school is just letting out for the summer. In other parts, like where I live, we're already almost four weeks into summer break! So that means the inevitable summer boredom is creeping in a little. Who am I kidding? My kids were complaining they were bored the very first day of summer! No joke!

On one of those first "I'm bored" days I whipped out a Lego board game idea I found on Pinterest. It was an extremely simple game of rolling dice and moving along a very simple board where you gathered or lost Lego blocks till you reached the end. As I played this with My Little Reader, we were brainstorming various ways we could improve on the game. One of my older kids came and joined us and the more we talked about it, the more she wanted to make her own board game. Then My Little Reader wanted to make one too!

So the next day we pulled out cardboard and our big roll of paper, crayons, markers, stickers, and got to work. I sat down to help My Little Reader, and was really excited to implement all our great ideas into our own board game. He had other ideas. He had come up with an entirely new concept (one that I barely understood), and he could not be swayed to use any of my ideas. My assistance ended up being utilized merely for coloring and writing.

But it was OK, because My Little Reader was having a ball and getting to be creative, use critical thinking skills, tinker and design, and imagine his own little story. Because that's what a board game ultimately is, right? It's a little story you (or your pawn) ventures through, and the adventure changes a little each time.

I wrote the words on the game spaces for my son, but he dictated it all and oversaw the process (he's kind of a bossy pants). It was great print awareness practice, as he used words to design the game the way he wanted. Then as we played the game, he got to see the words he came up with being read and used over and over by the game players. Games are great tools for demonstrating the power and purpose of words and print. "Steal another player's treasure" or "lose a turn" can carry great significance toward winning or losing. Especially to a competitive preschooler!

My Little Reader had a ball with his board game! We have all played it many times. He takes great pride in his creation, and loves to see us all having fun with it. This was a spontaneous activity that kept my kiddo busy for quite a while, and helped him practice some of those valuable literacy skills while he was having all that fun!

How are you keeping the summer boredom at bay in your family? 

Pen Pals! A Great Way to Keep Them Writing This Summer!

Enjoy this flashback tip I shared last summer!

My lovely cousin, Holly, asked me if my kids would like to be pen pals with her kids over the summer and I hastily replied, "Yes!" Holly is a teacher and knows what good writing practice this will be for our kids. I'm thankful for her initiative, as this was one of those things I was wanting to do this summer, but wasn't sure I was going to get around to starting.

Our kids have never met, and so this is a great way for them all to get to know each other. It's also fun for them all to get real mail in the mailbox. And coming up with interesting things to write about, or clever letter-writing ideas, will be cool too!

Holly's kids sent fun little pen pal boxes to mine to get it all going. My kids were psyched to open their package and start using their stuff. My older son did great with reading his letter he received, and my daughter got to writing back immediately (my littlest one was most excited about coloring in his new coloring book)!

My kids of course wanted to pick some fun things out too, and we sent those off to their pen pals last week. I found I fun little "All About Me" worksheet (thank you Pinterest) for my kids to fill out and include in their package they sent. It was a good prompt for them, as they were suffering from a bad case of What-should-I-wriiiiite-itis the day we sat down to write our first pen pal letters.

We're already planning to find some fun postcards to send while we're on vacation later this month. Photos from summer activities will be fun to send as well. I'm hoping we can get creative and keep it fun. Any writing practice is great, and pen pals are a great way for kids (especially little ones) to understand some of the purposes of print.

Share your creative pen pal writing ideas in the comments. How/what are your kids writing this summer?

6 Beach Books + Literacy Skill-Building Activities!

Anybody else planning a trip to the beach this summer? Ocean? Lake? Pond? A DIY beach in you backyard? Or how about a make-believe trip to the beach?

Some beach reading can bring extra fun to your trip while also giving your children practice with those essential emergent reading skills!

• Phonological Awareness
• Alphabet Knowledge
• Vocabulary
• Print Awareness
• Narrative Skills
• Motivation

All You Need For A Beach (Alice Schertle)- We love Schertle's All You Need for A Snowman and this is a perfect summer counterpart! I love that the kids can participate by jumping in and insisting on each page that there's more you need for a beach than what the text tells so far. You could do great print awareness practice with this one by making a list as you read of all the things you need for a beach. Then let the kids do an art/craft project where they create a beach by working off the list you made together. You could check each item off as you add it to you beach art/craft project.

Flotsam (David Wiesner) - A wordless picture book in which a boy discovers a magical underwater camera that has washed up at the beach - Flotsam! What a discovery it turns out to be! This is a great book for introducing new vocabulary to your kids or students! Talk about what "flotsam" is (floating debris or treasures that wash up on the beach from the ocean). Then bring your own magnifying glass and camera to the beach and see what flotsam you can find. Who can find the most unusual flotsam? The largest? Smallest? Most colorful? Give your kids some book handling practice by putting your photos in a book and adding text. Let them read their book to family and friends. 

To the Beach (Linda Ashman) - Can't we all relate to this story? A family tries to leave for the beach, but has to keep turning back for all the things they keep forgetting to bring along. By the time they have everything they need, it begins to rain. They turn around and go back home. Then , of course, the sun comes back out, so they make a pretend beach in their own backyard. This is a great story to inspire your own backyard beach fun or pretend beach play! We read this one in class and practiced our narrative skills by retelling to story by acting it out with fun props. Then we pretended our classroom was our own backyard beach and we played like we were at the beach! It was a lot of silly fun!

The Boy on the Beach (Niki Daly) - I love this book! First, because it features children that actually look like some of my own children. Also because it's just a beautifully, perfect beach story. We see a "boy" on the beach playing and exploring in various ways. It opens up a great conversation of do's and don'ts at the beach. Do: splash, build castles, play in the surf, enjoy cool treats, bury each other in the sand... Don't: forget the sunscreen, run around so fast that your spray sand on other people, wander off and get lost... At the end of the story we learn the boy's name as he writes it in the sand. This book could inspire some alphabet knowledge practice and fun sand writing of your own! Write your own name in that sand and take a photo! How many different ways can you write each letter of the alphabet (big, little, fancy, with shells, with your body...)? Bring some glue and paper to the beach and write letters with glue on the paper; then sprinkle sand on the glue to make cool, sensory alphabet cards. Send the kids on scavenger hunts by writing a letter in the sand and having them find something on the beach that begins with that letter. There are many fun possibilities!

Commotion in the Ocean  (Giles Andreae) - Fun and catchy rhymes about animals that live in that ocean you might be swimming in. Rhyming = Phonological Awareness practice. Yay! Isn't it great when learning is so fun? Talk about which of these animals you think you may or may not see while you're visiting the beach. 

A Beach Tail (Karen Lynn Williams) - A young boy draws a lion in the sand and then promises his dad to stay by his lion drawing. He keeps his promise while also satisfying his desire to further explore the beach by giving his lion a very long tail! "Swish-swoosh" the lion's tale keeps getting longer and he keeps getting further and further away from his father. He finally has to use the tail he drew to find his way back to his dad. This story gave us an idea of something to play on our beach trip - we're going to draw trails for each other to follow with something fun to discover at the end! This book was such a delight. Definitely a new favorite!

This short list of beach books will have you practicing all those needed emergent reading skills! These are good skills even for my older, already-reading kids to practice. And all these games and activities are so fun that your children will be practicing motivation too as they see how much fun their reading is creating!