Hello Book Bums families!
As we get into fall here are a few jokes and riddles you can share in your family during a car ride or around the dinner table.
- If money really did grow on trees, what would be everyone's favorite season? Fall
- What asks but never answers? An owl
- Who helps the little pumpkins cross the road? The crossing gourd
- I'm tall when I'm young and I'm short when I'm old. What am I? A candle
This week in the newsletter we have handwriting tips, a fun leaf activity, a great book recommendation and more. Enjoy!
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Word of the Week
tedious (tee-dee-us) adjective/describing word - tiresome, monotonous, boring
At Book Bums our mission is making learning fun rather than tedious.
Literary Calendar
- The first volume of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott was published on September 30, 1868.
- It was originally published in two volumes, with the second appearing the following year.
- The story of the four March sisters is beloved and has been retold and adapted many times.
Pause for Poetry
from "The Goblin Market"
by Christina Rossetti
For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
From our Bookshelves
Lake House, by Kate Morton, is a mystery novel that moves between 1933, when an eleven-month toddler goes missing, and in 2003 when Detective Sadie Sparrow discovers an abandoned estate and begins an investigation to learn what really happened all those years ago.
This is one of those books where you think you’ve figured something out, and then you realize you’re sorely mistaken—again and again and again.
Lake House has been described as “enthralling” and “thoroughly satisfying.” This pager turner was recommended to me by one of my favorite friends, because she wanted to talk with someone else who’s read it. I’m so glad she picked me!
And now I’m picking you! Read it, and let’s talk!
Tips for Families
As the leaves begin to change colors and fall from the trees in your yard or nearby park, consider heading outdoors to gather a sample of different kinds of leaves. Then, create a grid (see image above) to teach your children the names of the trees from which those leaves fell. Next, invite your children to head outside to search for another leaf, matching yours, from the same kind of tree. It’s an educational hide & seek kind of game that your kids will adore.
If you have lots of trees to choose from, rather than focusing on lots of leaves at one time, do the same activity a few different times across the coming weeks.
Tips for Raising Readers and Writers
Before kids are invited into explicit handwriting instruction, our hope is that every child we serve has been drawing, painting, crumpling paper, playing with Play-Doh, digging in sand and soil, picking through rocks, making tall stacks of coins . . . and engaging in a great variety of play that strengthens kids’ muscles in their arms, wrists, hands, and fingers.
This will certainly help kids as they learn to grasp a pencil with sufficient strength, stability, and control.
~images from Rocks in My Dryer on Facebook
One tip or “trick” is to place a small wad of tissue or a large cotton ball into your children’s hands directing them to hold onto it using only their pinkie and ring fingers. The other three fingers will be used to hold the pencil in a tripod grip as shown in the image above.
Pro Tip: Share with your children that their fingers should be placed just above where the wood meets the yellow paint of the pencil.
Practical Grammar
5. A common writing error adults make is the overuse of commas—or not using them at all.
Tip: Use commas to separate items in a list, after introductory elements, or to avoid confusion.
List: I need to buy carrots, strawberries, lettuce, and salad dressing.
Introductory element: After this week’s lesson, we’ll learn about using I and me correctly.
To avoid confusion: Change, "Let's eat Grandma!" to, "Let's eat, Grandma!”
News from Book Bums
Everyone who’s striving to do something great must begin by trying to do the thing and not be very good at it. Eventually we may turn out to be pretty good, but if we stick with it and really work to improve, eventually we can become great.
At Book Bums, we’ve been helping really smart kids learn to read and spell well by explicitly teaching them the code upon which our language is based. Our Foundations for Literacy curriculum is fast and fun phonics lessons that absolutely move kids from struggling to soaring!
Believe it or not, we started out not even wanting to be tutors. Our aim was to prevent reading difficulties. But so many parents were lying awake at night worrying about their kids and their struggles in school that they began asking us to please tutor students one on one.
Today, that’s all we do at Book Bums. We gave tutoring a try. We got pretty good at it, and over the past 20 years, we’ve gotten really great at moving kids forward in their reading skills.
If you know someone who’s really worried about their child’s reading success, we’d love for you to refer them to us. Here’s a link you can share that they can use to schedule a free assessment with Dr. Christy. https://bookbums.com/assessment/
Tips for Teachers
We all have things that “get our goats” when it comes to grammar, don’t we? One thing that gets me is when businesses do not use standard conventions in their written messages.
Brands are always trying to increase involvement with their communities, and they often strive to grab their potential customers’ attention by using moderate amounts of incongruity. The unexpected can be an asset. That means some brands are ditching capital letters and punctuation.
But kids need consistent, standard models for text around them because it teaches them what good writing looks like.
What can we do?
I get that in the Chick-Fil-A ad the cows are doing the writing, so maybe they’re excused; but for my young, beginning readers, I’m going to address that cows just don’t know what we know about how words work in English. I would invite my young scholars to keep an eye out for errors and to share anything at all that they’re wondering about with the class.
I’ve mentioned this one before, but I’d love to have my young students edit this ad for McDonalds.
Can you guess which of these two Nike ads I like most? The one with punctuation, of course.
And how about this one:
It’s more like—Got capital letters? I mean, I love creativity, but it might serve you well to use ads like these to address writing conventions with your students.
Just for Fun
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