Hello Book Bums families!
We hope you enjoy your winter break and have lots of time for family, friends, and good books!
This week we're thinking about a favorite holiday beverage - hot chocolate. To get you in the mood, enjoy this musical clip from The Polar Express. We also have a creative last minute gift idea and some holiday poetry. Enjoy!
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Word of the Week
searing (seer-ing) adjective/describing word - extremely hot, almost burning
I burned my tongue on the searing cup of cocoa.
Literary Calendar
- December 19 is a significant day in the novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
- Inspired by a real-life castaway, it tells the story of a shipwreck.
- After 28 years, this is the day Crusoe leaves his island.
From our Bookshelves
Kids love to learn cool things, and The Sweet Story of Hot Chocolate! Ready-to-Read Level 3 (History of Fun Stuff) by Stephen Krensky is chock-full of sweet facts the whole family will find interesting!
Here are just a few things I learned from reading The Sweet Story of Hot Chocolate.
- Chocolate was first enjoyed as a liquid—though it was not quite what we now know as hot chocolate.
- Cadbury and Hershey were among the first businesses to create chocolate treats for sale—and they’re still going strong.
Marshmallows are made from marshmallow plants (that grow in marshy areas).
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
Last year I saw this image and decided to make a cocoa bar for the holidays. Mine wasn’t nearly this cute, but it had my primitive style. Here’s an “after the holidays” picture when most items had been put away.
We had a carafe filled with hot chocolate—made the way Mr. Mike made it at Book Bums back when we had a café (the good ol’ days).
He uses the GFS hot chocolate mix in Kroger’s chocolate milk and an added pump of vanilla syrup. No wonder it was so delicious! He mixes it all in a pot on the stove until it’s hot and frothy. It’s ready to enjoy in just a few minutes, but you must keep stirring with a whisk the whole time. (It’s worth it!)
This year, I may try the following recipe, because we’re hosting at least one family gathering at our tutoring center and won’t have access to a stove.
What do you think? Too much?
Here are some general cocoa bar tips I’ve gathered:
- Use the best unsweetened cocoa powder you can find.
- Whole milk yields the creamiest texture, but any other milk (or non-dairy milk substitute) can be used.
- Never let the milk come to a boil.
- You can stir in a pinch of ground cinnamon, nutmeg, or cayenne for a sophisticated twist reminiscent of how hot chocolate was enjoyed long ago. I also like to crush some candy canes for sprinkling on top of the whipped cream. Mini M&Ms, fancy sprinkles, and marshmallows are also fun. Christmastime Peeps work too but you need big mugs!
- In our cocoa bar, I also included teas and coffee. I love adding soft peppermint sticks, rock candy sugar sticks, and honey sticks.
Tips for Raising Readers and Writers
If you’re having difficulty finding a gift and are short on time, go to the bank, get lots of one- or five-dollar bills, and make some darling Christmas tree cards like the one pictured above. You can purchase blank cards to put the money trees on (using double-sided tape), but you can also simply fold any heavier paper to make your own cards.
Invite some kids you love to help you fold the money. The folds on the bills are graduated, so it’s a bit trickier than it looks. If you make a sample, the kids will catch on, and then they can help to write the messages inside each card as well. You can even use a dollar sign in lieu of each letter s in your me$$age.
I $ure hope you find $omething $weet on which to $pend your money!
Note: I was trying to cite this creator (with no luck), but I found LOTS more money trees! If you see one you like, do a Google search and you will see that the ideas are not mine, and all those creative CA$H gift giving creatives will receive their due credit.
The one with the yellow background is quick and it is the easiest to make. Click here for the directions. It’s too cold for shopping, and this might just be a great way to get your loved ones what they want. Not thoughtful? Sure it is! The thoughtful piece is all the effort you put into making the presentation special.
If you have a lot of ones to give someone, you might even try a Christmas tree sales lot like this one.
Pause for Poetry
Practical Grammar
Whoops! Sometimes we incorrectly correct others. Sight is what your eyes have.
Here’s the scoop for the homophones (homo-same, phon-sound) cite, sight, and site.
cite- to quote or to reference another author
sight- vision, something you observe
site- a location
Oh, and the answer to the questions about citing movie quotes . . .
To cite movie quotes, place the quote in quotation marks and include the movie title—which should be written in italics. If your submission must follow academic writing guidelines, you should also include the director, year, and time stamp (of the quote) within the movie like this:
One family favorite Christmastime movie quote is when Santa said, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid” in A Christmas Story (Clark, 1983, 0:07:20).
Now, when you are on your favorite site, you’ll know how to cite it properly.
News from Book Bums
Book Bums will be open on Monday and Tuesday and Friday and Saturday for the next two weeks. If you’re unable to keep your appointment, please let your tutors know just as soon as possible. We’re here to keep your kids moving forward!
Tips for Teachers
siting
At Book Bums, in the Foundations for Literacy lesson where kids learn to add -ing to words to make present participles and/or gerunds, we include the word siting in our word cards. It’s there to watch kids try to navigate rules we’ve taught them about how these words work.
In truth, the word siting is very rarely used. It’s the action of locating a particular place (a site).
I included siting in our word cards to ensure our students with the deeply engrained habit of guessing words with only a cursory glance are actually looking closely enough to decode the words with accuracy.
Because siting looks so much like sitting, it’s a good guess detector.
When using the Foundations for Literacy curriculum, we remind our students to “Make the sounds you see. It’s a No Guess Zone!”
Just for Fun
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