Hello Book Bums families!
Have you ever heard the song "Dem Bones" that sings about the foot bone being connected to the leg bone and onward up your skeleton? Today in the newsletter we share fun books and activities to learn the scientific names of those bones and to have some crafty fun. We keep up the spooky spirit with a Halloween legend and some pirate vocabulary too.
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Word of the Week
cranium (kray-nee-um) noun/person, place, or thing - the bones that protect the brain; the skull
It doesn't sound as intimidating to say that a pirate flag is a cranium and crossbones, but it does have alliteration!
Literary Calendar
- October 16 is Dictionary Day because it is the birthday of lexicographer Noah Webster.
- Webster's dictionaries helped to standardize spelling, and his textbooks helped generations of American children to learn to read and spell.
- Alexander Hamilton even recruited Webster to write for his newspaper!
From our Bookshelves
This week, we’re sharing another (not-so-) scary book to share with your kids, perhaps around the firepit: The Headless Horseman adapted by Natalie Standford. This one is sure to be a hit! Educators are always striving to provide engaging examples of writing across a great variety of genres, and this book offers a great way to discuss legends. Legends are historical stories often featuring real people, but the stories are exaggerated and are fictional.
The original Headless Horseman is a short story by Washington Irving. It was written in 1820 and takes place in Sleepy Hollow, NY during the American Revolutionary War. This children’s version of that story focuses on a gullible schoolteacher, Ichabod Crane, who believed in ghost stories like “The Headless Horseman.” Ichabod is a self-absorbed, numbskull who believes everything he hears about all things ghosts and witches. Your kids will be appalled by his despicable behavior! Ichabod’s adversary, Brom Bones, is mighty clever, however; and the author provides lots of clues to help your kids determine just how Brom got rid of that awful Ichabod Crane.
Tips for Families
We like to pair a fictional book with a non-fiction book to promote fun-focused learning whenever we can, and we choose Bones, a Step Into Reading book by Stephen Krensky and Skeleton Hiccups by Margery Cuyler to promote some academic fun! Your kids will LOVE these activities, and you’ll be expanding their knowledge which is always important when it comes to promoting kids’ comprehension. Together, these books cost about $15 on Amazon. That’s a fairly cheap playdate!
First, read Bones to learn lots of facts about the skeletal system. It’s fascinating!
Did you know that newborn babies have more bones than adults? I didn’t either until I read this book.
For the .pdf that has all the labels, write to [email protected]. Cut the words apart, and challenge your kids to accurately label a plastic skeleton from the Halloween aisle and/or one another! Encourage them to use the provided labeled skeleton we’ve included, so your kids can begin familiarizing themselves with the scientific names of the bones in our bodies. Please help them to decode the words as needed. Note that the bones in both our fingers and toes are called phalanges. That’s why it’s on our list twice.
Continue using the scientific names of bones by playing Simon Says. Provide directions by saying . . .
Simon says to touch your patella.
Simon says to touch your humerus. (not to be confused with humorous)
Simon says to touch your cranium.
Touch your phalanges. (Oh! Gotcha! I didn’t say Simon Says.)
Simon says to touch your femur.
Of course, you’ll be doing a lot of teaching as you model where they should be touching. Kids love learning and they love using sophisticated words. Before you know it, these words can make appearances in everyday conversations.
Next, have some fun creating realistic miniature bones with Dr. Christy’s very favorite Bone Dough.
You’ll need:
1 cup baking soda
½ cup corn starch
¾ cups water
Directions:
Combine baking soda, corn starch, and water in a medium saucepan. Stir on medium heat until the mixture begins to thicken. It only takes a couple of minutes or so. Remove from heat. The mixture should resemble mashed potatoes. When the dough is cool to the touch, you can begin molding the dough to make some bones. It helps to have some images, so have a computer or tablet handy.
Finally, read Skeleton Hiccups. Provide your kids with some black and white construction paper, a handful of cotton swabs, scissors, and glue to create some wacky skeletons. We love this one that Liam created at Book Bums! See if your kids can name the bones they include in their artwork.
Tips for Readers and Writers
Using Commas Correctly, Week 4 of 8
Week 4- Use commas in dates and addresses.
• When writing a date, a comma is used to separate the day from the month, and the date from the year.
• When writing an address, place a comma after the street and between the city and state.
Example:
Book Bums, a tutoring center in West Chester, Ohio, will be closed on Monday, October 31, 2022, because most kids will be trick-or-treating that evening.
Use some elbow macaroni noodles to teach your kids when to use commas in their writing! Scoop another handful of those curved noodles, print the attached PDF, and grab some glue. That’s all you’ll need for some more fun-focused practice using commas. Share with your kids this week’s featured rules for using commas. Then, have them insert the macaroni commas where they belong on the provided PDF. For beginning readers, you read the text for them. More advanced readers can do this work independently. After you’ve checked for accuracy, have your kids attach their macaroni commas to the paper with some glue. When the glue dries, display your fourth set of Use Your Noodle activity sheets to review the lessons they’ve learned so far.
A sycamore tree has these cool seed balls.
Wordolgy Workshop
• Sometimes the English language borrows a root from Greek or Latin and uses it in a narrow, specific way.
• The Greek root crani means skull.
• We see it in cranium and other forms of that same word like cranial, but that's really it.
Practical Grammar
When using the preposition that means “in the direction of”, do you say toward or towards?
For example, would you say, “Turn right here, and head toward the high school,” or would you say, “Turn right here, and head towards the high school”?
While reading the book, The Dictionary of Lost words, I kept reading the word towards, and it just didn’t sound right in my mind, so I did some searching. Some sources say that, when speaking, the words are interchangeable. However, in writing, the word toward is used five times more often than towards. That helps to explain why its sounded odd to my reader’s ear. With more digging, I also learned that, in England and Australia, towards is the preferred spelling, while in America and Canada the preferred spelling is toward.
As an educator, I often say that if we want our kids to write well, we must speak well. For academic writing, the preferred spelling in the US is toward so can we all agree to say toward and drop that s?
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