Hello Book Bums families!
April is National Poetry Month. As we did last year, we'll be sharing a poem each week to celebrate and inspire you. We begin with a favorite from Mary Oliver.
Also this week in the newsletter, Dr. Christy shares some fun-filled activities for little ones learning their letters and gets excited about spring. Enjoy!
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Word of the Week
tidy (ty-dee) adjective/describing word - arranged neatly and in order
When I keep my desk tidy, I know where all my papers and files are.
Literary Calendar
• April 13 is National Scrabble Day.
• This board game was invented in 1938 and got a boost in popularity in 1952 when Macy's started selling the game after the store president played it on vacation.
• Scrabble is a great way to build vocabulary and practice spelling. Consider starting a game this week.
From our Bookshelves
Because it’s spring we’re featuring Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt. This classic, interactive book was published in 1940. For generations, children have enjoyed patting the bunny’s soft fur, smelling the flowers, and seeing themselves in the mirror.
Tips for Readers and Writers
At Book Bums, we used to host Little Letter Learner (LLL) workshops where we focused, each week, on teaching kids a few letters and their associated sounds. We then put the featured letters together, made the sounds aloud, and recognized that we were reading.
The LLL workshops were specifically designed for 4- or 5-year-olds (and their parents) to enjoy fun-focused lessons that would absolutely equip them with the foundational skills they’d need to read and spell well. We worked on hearing sounds in words (phonemic awareness), associating those sounds with letters (phonics), and using tidy, efficient letter formations while also promoting a love for books.
We’re sharing information, here, so you can do the same thing with your kids at home. If you’re the creative type, this is right up your alley. If not, we may just begin hosting these workshops this summer. We have just enough time to cover every letter in the alphabet. Just let us know if you’re interested by emailing Dr. Christy at [email protected].
Here are some pictures from one LLL Pat the Bunny workshop.
We featured a book to promote the letters of focus.
We shared the most common sound that each featured letter represents.
We used multisensory activities to promote the recall of the letter names, their formations, and the sounds they represent.
We taught kids to form each of the featured letters using tidy, efficient handwriting.
We even noted that a variety of fonts can be used in the texts we read. Kids, in this picture, used dab-a-dots to identify all the p’s with one color, all the a’s with another color, and all the t’s with a third color.
Finally, we recognized that the letters in pat can be switched around to make the word tap and we created some cool art by tap-tap-tapping dowels into foam and then adding wooden beads onto the dowels.
Here’s a video featuring another Little Letter Learners workshop:
If you are interested in attending this kind of parent/child workshop over the summer months, please write to [email protected] . If someone you know might be interested, please consider sharing this with them, too.
Tips for Families
Speaking of bunnies, is anyone else eager for some summer gardening? As you begin making purchases for the beautification of your yard or for growing your own produce, you may want to consider punching a hole in those plant identification/information tags and adding them to a word ring. This could be a fun way to engage your kids in reading and learning about plants and their care, while also keeping the information close at hand should you need it.
This year, consider engaging your kids in some gardening, too. Simply purchasing gardening gloves, a trowel, and a watering can is often enough to get them excited about helping outdoors. You can start small. Even a pot on the patio can be effective in growing a love for gardening, and it just might promote an appreciation for a wider variety of foods. Think about a plant or two that your kids will be excited about. Strawberries or cherry tomatoes could be fun. Then consider adding something else that’s easy to grow and interesting enough that your kids might like if they give it a try. (Eggplant? Spaghetti squash, maybe?) You might even enjoy simply focusing on flowers. Zinnias make gorgeous cutting flowers that can brighten up your dining table. They’d also be great for your kids to share with loved ones.
If you want kids to get excited about home-grown food, visit the farmers’ markets in your area. We took our granddaughter to the one in West Chester, Ohio last weekend. She tasted the BEST pickles ever (Pickled Paradise’s Bread n’ Butta made in Hamilton, Ohio), and even tried some sauerkraut. She devoured her homemade biscotti and felt proud to carry the all-natural insect repellant we purchased inside her backpack.
Highly recommend.
Pause for Poetry
The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Practical Grammar
What’s the difference between i.e. and e.g., and how can I be sure I’m using them correctly?
These two Latin abbreviations may be antiquated, but they’re still pretty handy in modern-day writing. To be sure we’re using them correctly, it helps to recall that the Latin phrase id est means “that is,” so i.e. is a way of saying “in other words” and is used to make something clearer with the provision of a definition or by saying the same thing in another way.
The Latin phrase exempli gratia means “for example”, so e.g. is used when providing examples.
Just for Fun
Is this wrong? (But we bet it makes you giggle.)
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