Hello Book Bums families!
Time to turn that calendar page to a new month.
This week in the newsletter we're thinking about time, schedules, and life cycles. We share tips on making time for meaningful moments, a fun activity to enjoy with your kids before firefly time runs out, and some work knowledge too. Read on and enjoy!
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Word of the Week
pacific (pa-si-fik) adjective/describing word - soothing
His pacific voice was perfect for bedtime story podcast.
Literacy Calendar
- On August 6, 1996, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin was published.
- The series currently contains five novels, and fans eargerly await two more promised installments.
- Keep up with all his writing at his website.
From our Bookshelves
A friend recommended that I read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, and I loved it. The title makes clear the topic, but the best part of the book is revealed in the subtitle Why You Can’t Pay Attention—And How to Think Deeply Again.
Hari identifies several triggers responsible for our attention loss. They include continual task switching, lack of sleep, poor diets, pollution, dearth of movement (especially for our children), and more.
This book certainly helped me to consider my own ability to maintain focus as well as what I can do to improve my own focus and the focus of the children I serve.
Tips for Families
I recall, when I was a parent of younger kids, almost looking forward to getting back into a groove and having a routine. At the end of the school year, I couldn’t wait to have some flexibility in my schedule, but it was almost like I had nearly enough of that flexibility as the school year approached.
My youngest son called me today. He said he and his wife are getting their calendars together, and they asked if we would like to have the kids once a month so they could serve together in their church. (Count me in!) Then, he said they’d like to have consistent times on the calendar to go get coffee and relax together and maybe catch up on any work they need to do for the classes they’re taking this fall. (Sign me up!)
That got me thinking. We do need to set aside time for ourselves. Sure, you may be looking forward to having a routine, but while you’re building your schedule, try making some space for you or for you and your spouse to just have a bit of time together.
Our schedules will surely get crazy busy. But I bet you can find a bit of time, even if it’s only one or two times a month. Get some dates on the calendar now—before life gets crazy. You’ll be glad you did.
Tips for Raising Readers and Writers
A quick tip for engaging kids in reading and writing is to partner the book with a fun and interesting activity. Kids love to learn interesting things.
In SW Ohio, we have only a week or so until we see our last firefly of the season. I don’t know about you, but I adore those tiny nighttime glimmers of light; and I’ll miss them when they’re gone. To say farewell to our flashing friends, you can try the following activity with some kids you adore.
I hosted, for the Faith Alliance, a book club where I read Fireflies, by Mary R. Dunn. I also used Next Time You see a Firefly by Emily Morgan because that book has a really good image of a firefly in its larva stage—which is quite significant. Did you know that it takes a firefly egg 1-4 weeks to hatch? Then, it spends up to two years in the larvae (LAR-vee) stage.
It then has a couple of weeks in the pupa stage, and then only1-4 weeks as an adult. Most fireflies never eat a thing during their whole adult lives. They have only one job. They must let their lights shine and find a mate.
For our book club, I wanted to do something cool while also expanding my students’ vocabularies. So, I created the coolest fireflies EVER!
There are fireflies in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee that are synchronous fireflies. They don’t twinkle like ours in Ohio. They all flash together in unison! (I hope to see this in person one day!) When tutoring at Book Bums and teaching about the morpheme sync, I like to show students videos of synchronized swim teams in the Olympics. It’s mesmerizing.
For this book club, I wanted my kids to learn there were synchronous and asynchronous fireflies. We noted that adding an a to the beginnings of words can make words mean the opposite of the original base word. (like un- changes important to unimportant, and im- changes personal to impersonal, and in- changes frequent to infrequent). Some words with an a- as a prefix include atypical, asymmetrical, atheist, asynchronous.
To help the kids learn the words synchronous and asynchronous, I purchased two white pool noodles, two pieces of black poster board, two bags of yellow balloons, and wooden spoons like these.
I cut the pool noodles into 2” slices (with the hole in the middle). I then cut off the short part of the balloon that we usually blow into and stretched the bulbous part of the balloons around the pool noodle slices. (I’d wanted to buy yellow pool noodles, but they didn’t have any. So, I purchased white ones and the balloons were a perfect way to make them yellow and more rounded.)
Next, I cut lots of 3” tic-tac shaped ovals from the black poster board, and I cut the ends off the wooden spoons to make them a bit shorter so they wouldn’t be too long.
When I had the kids with me, I gave the kids the yellow, balloon-covered pool noodle pieces and a small flashlight.
We twisted and pushed the flashlight into the hole of the pool noodle. Next, we took trimmed wooden spoon, straight-side first with the spoon facing downward onto the flashlight. Then, I instructed the kids to glue two of the black ovals together to make a sort of v shape, and we affixed the V-shaped wings onto the spoon. Here’s what it looks like from the bottom.
The best part was flashing our lights in a synchronous fashion and an asynchronous fashion! The kids held their fireflies, so they were facing their own bellies. This way the kids could press the on and off button with ease, and everyone could see the flashing fireflies to determine whether they were in sync or not.
We shared a bit about another firefly activity last year, if you’d like to check that out too.
Did you know that you can go to bookbums.com and click on the Parent Resources link and then the Newsletter/Blog link to search for topics you remember from previous newsletters? Cool, huh?
Practical Grammar
To peek (verb) is to sneak a look at something.
To pique (verb) is to arouse curiosity.
You can say something like, “I heard something about fireflies that piqued my interest. Did you know that sometimes fireflies flash their lights all together like a light show?”
Here they are with all their lights on, together. When they’re not flashing, it’s completely dark. Cool, huh?
Wordology Workshop
- Remember that the Greek root chron means time.
- We find it in all sorts of time and clock words such as chronology, chronicle, chronometer, and anachronism.
- When we add the Greek root syn, meaning together or with, we get synchronize and synchronous.
News from Book Bums
I’ve set up our new podcast studio at our Monroe location, and that means new episodes are coming soon! This podcast is designed for educators or engaged parents to listen to as they make their way to work. They’re fifteen- to twenty-minute-long episodes that address most anything that’s literacy related.
Do you have questions you’d like for me to address? Send them to me, Dr. Christy, at christy@bookbums.com.
Tips for Teachers
If you’re a classroom teacher, I’m going to share something that you can do to help (in a major way) your students build their writing skills. I’ve shared about it on my podcast and on YouTube, but it’s just not taking off the way it should. When I say it’s a game changer, I am not overstating.
You need a Dynamic Dictionary. It looks like this. You can order the Learning Resources Alphabet Pocket Chart on Amazon. I fold the top part under and use only the bottom part with the pockets.
Then, I stash a lot of plain index cards in a basket nearby. During writing time, when kids need a word to be spelled accurately, they bring a card to you and ask for your help either 1) stretching out the sounds while they write the corresponding letters or 2) they stretch out the sounds while you write the corresponding letters. Either way, the kids are addressing the phonemes (sounds within the word) and the phonics rules (the way we spell those sounds).
This is the all-too-often missing step in science of reading classrooms.
Decoding is good. It’s essential. But so is encoding. It’s the perfect complement to your phonics instruction.
Here are two podcast episodes about the Dynamic Dictionary:
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/oyw-dynamic-dictionary--65614921
Here’s a video of my student actually using the Dynamic Dictionary.
Just for Fun
For those of us who still play the alphabet game when we travel, here’s your sign!
My son and his wife were playing the alphabet game on the way to our family gathering in Gatlinburg. Luckily, there was an Xtreme Racing spot just before they made their way into the mountains.
Whew! That was close!
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