Hello Book Bums families!
You know that at Book Bums we love words. This week in the newsletter we are thinking about growing our vocabularies in lots of fun ways.
As we enjoy these beautiful spring days, we also share two poems for the season and celebrate the beauty around us.
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Word of the Week
copious (koh-pee-uhss) adjective/describing word - producing or existing in large quantities
Sometimes I miss the copious free time of summer vacations.
Literary Calendar
• April 17 is International Haiku Poetry Day.
• A haiku is an ancient Japanese poetic form consisting of three lines.
• Those lines have a 5,7,5 pattern of syllables.
• Traditionally, haiku are about nature, seasons, and passing beauty. They often focus on a central image.
“The Old Pond” by Matsuo Bashō
An old silent pond
A frog jumps into the pond—
Splash! Silence again.
From our Bookshelves
We just ordered the Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day (Merriam-Webster Kids) 366 Elevating Utterances to Stretch Your Cranium and Tickle Your Humerus, and lots of Book Bums love it already! If you’re looking for a way to expand your kids’ vocabularies over the summer months, this book just might be a great help.
Dr. Kevin Flanigan, author of Building a Better Vocabulary suggests that teaching word meanings within categories can be helpful, and many words in Word of the Day are taught in relevant groupings that can help kids to better recall the words they’re learning.
Practical Grammar
I saw the word kibosh in the Word of the Day book (above). This word is often mispronounced. How would YOU pronounce it?
Here’s the actual pronunciation: KYE-bahsh
Were you correct? Most folks say /kib-BOSH/.
Just in case you’re not familiar, to kibosh /KYE-bahsh/ something means to check or stop a thing from happening. Here’s the usage from the Word of the Day book:
In 2016, the Alaska Department of Transportation put the kibosh /KYE-bahsh/ on pictures of mermaids and fish that had been painted on crosswalks in the village of Haines. While some residents thought the paintings were beautiful, officials said the artwork could cause people to be distracted and lead to accidents.
Tips for Readers and Writers
In the newsletter, we’re always promoting a word of the week. When we were a café, we diligently displayed our Words of the Week (W.O.W.) by adhering them to a tiny dowel and adding them to the fresh flowers on the tables.
You can do this, too, but there are lots of other ways to keep a rotation of vocabulary words on display in your home. The goal is that you remember to teach, practice using, and review words to deliberately build the vocabularies of your family members. In my family, we did this with high-schoolers who’d soon be taking ACT and/or SAT tests. I looked up lots of words that were likely to be tested and we learned them as a family. We encouraged our kids to use the words as often as they could. Today, I still giggle when someone says words like cogitate or juxtaposition for it takes me back to those days when my kids were creating some crazy sentences.
At Book Bums, we used to host an Expand Your Vocabulary or BUST workshop. I’m including some photos so you can see some artists at work as well as the materials we used to make the busts. (Pro Tip: You have to remember to push the paperclips in the clay before it dries!) We provided some word cards (along with some blank ones) so our students could “stick words in their heads” to remind themselves of the words they wanted to learn. See? We really can make this kind of at-home instruction fun!
There are lots of other ways to display words around your home, too. You could use a dry erase marker on any ol’ plate in your home. It’s even better if that plate is displayed on a plate stand. (Any thrifters out there?) You can add a skewer to flowers the way we did at Book Bums, or you can create a refrigerator magnet. You can use dry erase markers on the bathroom mirror or even place a simple folded index card on a bedside table for a just-right display. If you have any antique frogs—not the amphibians, but the floral arrangement frogs—you can use them to display printed information, too. We use these at Book Bums!
We also suggest that you create a way to review the words you’ve featured. After a word has been on display all week, toss it into a basket or bowl so you can review it (and all the other words you’ve been learning) at dinnertime. Or you can add words to one of those inexpensive 4 x 6 photo albums and leave them in the bathroom or in the car where you have a captive audience.
Tips for Families
If you have some teenagers that you’re particularly fond of, we recommend checking out Rich Roll’s recent podcast episode with Lisa Damour, PhD., who wrote the book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers.
You can even watch/listen to the podcast with this link.
One key takeaway is that the key components for good parenting include warmth and structure (We love that!), but there’s so much more excellent information that you might find helpful as you’re navigating life with teens.
Pause for Poetry
Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Book Bums Tutoring
If you’re thinking about summer tutoring for a student you love, now is the time to schedule an assessment with Dr. Christy. We’re going to begin advertising our tutoring services soon, and we expect to welcome LOTS of new families. We equip children to decode most every word on the pages they read and to use excellent spelling when they write. If you’d like for your child to gain some academic ground over the summer months, just email Dr. Christy at [email protected] to request an assessment. Remember, we serve (mostly) beginning and struggling readers between the ages of five and ten.
If you know someone who would benefit from our newsletter or tutoring at Book Bums, please share this email with them! Thank you.
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