Hello Book Bums families!
I once taught a book called Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess which includes a main character named Iris. Iris believes that if you love something, you should love it extravagantly. We are bringing that feeling to this week's newsletter with our Word of the Week, ideas for beginning the new year with purpose and excitement, inspiration for teachers, and even a birthday celebration from a fandom.
Happy 2026!
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Word of the Week
fervor (fer-ver) noun/person, place, or thing - intense or passionate feeling
I enjoy my students' fervor for their favorite books and try to read whatever they recommend.
Literary Calendar
- January 6, 1854 is the birthday of fictional character, Sherlock Holmes.
- Author Arthur Conan Doyle never stated his sleuth's birthday; but the year is determined by the age given for Holmes in one of the stories, and the date was chosen by devoted fans known as Sherlockians.
- The date January 6 was chosen because it is the 12th day of Christmas, also referencing an event from a Holmes mystery.
From our Bookshelves
“This novel explores how love, community, and collective action help marginalized people survive against prejudice and hardship.”
I thoroughly enjoyed The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. It’s a New York Times bestseller and a winner of the 2024 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. I was captivated by the story and thoroughly enjoyed befriending most every character.
Moshe’s wife, Chona, was truly the heart of their community because she demonstrated love and care to everyone—even to the point of making her husband feel uncomfortable (What will people think?). It’s amazing how people can come together with a united purpose.
This story inspired within me a renewed longing for a united community of diverse people who daily demonstrate the magnificent power of connection across all demographics.
Watch this video to get a little more information regarding the history of chocolate, and you’ll learn that the word chocolate originally meant hot water.
Mayan word xocol (hot) + Aztec word atl (water) = chocolate
Though chocolate has been consumed for thousands of years, it wasn’t until 1850 that it changed from a luxury item to a treat most everyone could enjoy.
Tips for Families
It’s a new year—the perfect time for fresh starts. As we begin a brand-new year, there are a few things we should consider as families with kids. Even extended family members can try to prioritize some of the following:
First, are you doing all you can to cultivate a love for learning?
- Do you read together often?
- Do you provide a wide variety of books for your kids to explore?
- Do you promote the asking of questions and follow up with explorations and experiments?
Next, are you providing a home life that helps kids to do their best?
- Do you have routines in place to promote good nutrition, sleep, and physical activity?
- Do you prioritize good effort over good grades?
- Do you support your kids’ emotional growth by acknowledging their feelings, promoting social skills, and helping them to build resilience?
Finally, are you teaching your kids to be balanced and independent?
- Do you have some consistent extracurricular activities planned for the new year?
- Are you good at allowing your kids to succeed and fail on their own so they build independence and self-discipline?
- Are you helping your kids to set some short-term goals for themselves and track their own progress?
Though this is far from an exhaustive list regarding how to parent great kids, it’s a list that can offer guidance should we find one area where we might need to be more deliberate.
Wordology Workshop
- The Latin root prior means first or former.
- It is it's own word in English, meaning coming before.
- It also appears in the common words priority and prioritize, where it relates to making something first or most important.
Tips for Raising Readers and Writers
When I was a classroom teacher, one of the activities I often did with my first and second grade students was to have them make their own calendars. I’d print 12 blank monthly calendar pages for each student and have them fill in the months—ensuring they spelled each word correctly and used uppercase letters as needed. I taught them the months of the year song, a trick for determining how many days there are in each month, and to write the dates for each month beginning on the correct day.
This is a great opportunity for ensuring your kids understand how the calendar works and how to spell the months of the year and the days of the week. When your children are finished with the essentials, sit alongside them and help them to denote family members’ birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Finally, they can add decorations to complement each monthly page.
It can be quite advantageous to use this self-made calendar to help your kids recognize the passage of time. When are we going to Grandma’s? Let’s mark it on your calendar. How many days until . . .
Practical Grammar
I hear a lot of folks grapple with this one. Is the past tense of sing sang or sung?
Both.
Though sang has a little bit of a hillbilly twang, it is a word. It’s often mistakenly replaced by the, perhaps, more sophisticated sounding sung.
Here’s the deal:
Present Tense: sing
With each new year, we sing “Auld Lang Syne” as the clock strikes midnight.
Past Tense: sang
Mariah Carey sang “Auld Lang Syne” with a modern twist, though I hadn’t heard it until today.
Past Participle (used with helping verbs such as have, has, and had): sung
Though many have sung “Auld Lang Syne,” the version I know best is Dan Fogelberg’s “Another Auld Lang Syne.”
News from Book Bums
We’ve been sharing, for quite some time, that our pricing would be increasing in the new year. We all know that everything is more expensive today, and we at Book Bums have delayed the increase in our pricing much longer than we should have. Beginning on January 19th, pricing for one-on-one tutoring will be as follows:
Foundations for Literacy trained tutor: $83 per hour
If you have any questions or you find this price increase to be too great of a financial burden, please email Dr. Christy at christy@bookbums.com.
Tips for Teachers
I love teaching because there are lots of opportunities for fresh starts! I know that many of us are putting away all the jolly holiday décor’, and many of us are eschewing the hot cocoa for a healthier option but let’s decide, right here and now, to enter our classrooms with renewed fervor next week. See your students the way you hope/hoped your kids’ teachers see/saw your children.
Remember that you could be teaching your future cardiologist, your granddaughter’s first grade teacher, the server at your favorite restaurant, or our next president. What you do counts so much more than we can imagine.
When I think of my teachers who gave me every opportunity to be a person I’d never imagined myself capable of becoming, I’m so grateful.
Let’s be that for our students. Yes, we need to get the instruction right, but the most important piece of our jobs is to help our students to see themselves as capable of learning whatever they’d like to learn so they can become whoever they’d like to become.
Let’s decide that we are the kinds of teachers who never give up on kids—especially the tough ones.
Just for Fun
New Year. New Me.
Click to see a funny video regarding someone’s New Year’s resolution!
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