August Carnival of Children’s Literature

The August Carnival of Children’s Literature is up at Chicken Spaghetti.  I can’t wait to make my way through all the great offerings.  Click on over and check it out!

Our Week At The Beach

We just returned from a week at Sunset Beach, North Carolina.  Both girls thoroughly loved the sand and the ocean.  C had no fear at all of the waves resulting in many cries of “Baby in the ocean” as we ran to get her.

When she wasn’t running into the waves.  C sat at the water’s edge with her red bucket and a shovel or two slowly filling the bucket with sand.  She could sit there for most of the morning as long as no one touched the bucket thus setting off a classic toddler tantrum.  Our motto became “Don’t touch the red bucket.”

M grew braver about the water as the week went on, but from the very first day she was thrilled to run and jump and play in the tide pools looking for fish, hermit crabs, periwinkles, and any other creatures that might be skittering about or burrowing in the sand.

I was glad that I read Mary Ellen’s Barrett’s essay, Are We There Yet?, which I found via Karen Edmisten.  Mary Ellen’s explanation of the difference between a family trip and a vacation helped me go on this trip with the mentality that this wasn’t a vacation for me but rather an excursion to strengthen our family ties and allow our girls experiences they cannot have at home. The joy on their faces as we played on the beach each day made the struggles of life with a sixteen-month-old in a non-babyproofed beach house well worth it even when simultaneously restraining her from falling down the stairs while negotiating with a four-year-old who’d had too little sleep and too much junk food.

The 100 Species Challenge

Melissa Wiley posted this week about the 100 Species Challenge which was originally proposed in this post by scsours. Participants take as long as they need to identify 100 species of vegetation that grow within walking distance of their home. Through our gardening efforts over the last two years, our family has learned a lot about the native plants of our region and I’m excited about attempting to name 100 species that grow in our neighborhood in Asheville, NC. It will be a great project to work on during our homeschool days (M is going to kindergarten 3 days/week) this fall.

You can see a list of participants here.

Here are our first three species all of which we are growing in our yard:

1) These are nasturtiums. The flowers and the leaves are edible, and we’ve had them in many salads during the spring and summer.

2) These are Mountain Fresh tomatoes. This picture was taken several weeks ago. We are now brining in plenty of ripe ones.

3) This is kohlrabi. We first discovered this vegetable at our local farmer’s market. It grows easily in our region. The root and the leaves are edible. The root is tasty raw on salad or with a dip, and it can also be cooked and masked like a potato or turnip.

My Ever-Growing TBR List

I love lists. I make them constantly, on paper and on the computer. To do lists, shopping lists, packing lists (I have a folder of these for various occasions), wish lists, but my most favorite kind of lists are book lists. I have a long list of books to be read which is my own fault because one of my favorite things to do when I need to just veg after the girls are asleep in the evening, a time when others might turn on some reality TV, is to follow rabbit trails on book blogs and Amazon that lead me to books I want to read. Thus my list grows and grows. Here is a list of some of the books that I’ve recently added:

On matters of raising gifted children:

Life in the Fast Brain by Karen Issacson

Creative Homeschooling: A Resource Guide for Smart Families by Lisa Rivero

On matters of children’s literature:

Picture Perfect Childhood by Cay Gibson

For the Love of Literature by Maureen Whitmann

Simply For Entertainment:

Twilight by Stephenie Meyers

Heat by Bill Buford (recommended by a chef friend when I was gushing about wanting to go to Tuscany)

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall

Picture Books About the Beach

We’re heading to the beach this weekend so we’ve been doing lots of picture book reading about the beach, the ocean, and sea creatures.   I wanted to list some of the titles we’ve enjoyed.  I’ve divided them into fiction and non-fiction but many of them walk the boundary between the two.  In other words, they contain lots of great facts but are narrated like a story. Several of them are out of print, but our library had all of them.

Non-Fiction:

One Small Place By the Sea by Barbara Brenner - describes a tide pool and all the creatures who live there, wonderful, brightly -colored illustrations

An Island Scrapbook by Virginia Wright-Frierson - an artist and her daughter describe their last week at a house on a North Carolina barrier island

One Small Square: Seashore - We’ve enjoyed several titles in the One Small Square series.

Beachcombing: Exploring the Seashore by Jim Arnosky - We’ve put this one on hold at the library since we’ve enjoyed lots of Arnosky’s books.

Fiction:

How Will We Get to the Beach? by Brigitte Luciani- This has been a favorite of ours for years.  A mom and her baby try to get to the beach but none of the modes of transportation they try can hold all the things they need to take. You get to guess what’s missing on each page.  Great illustrations too!

Out of the Ocean by Debra Frasier - a girl and her mom consider treasures they find in the sea

Flip-Flops by Nancy Cote - a girl and her mom visit the beach and the girl learns all the things she can do with one flip-flop

Pebble: A Story About Belonging by Susan Milord - a pebble longs to be something greater than a pebble on a beach

My Baby Has Become A Toddler

C had her own time table for learning to walk. In my ignorance, I assumed she’d start walking around her first birthday just like her sister, but no amount of encouraging or cajoling could get her the least bit excited about walking until she was 14 months. She began standing up on her own in the middle of a room during her 14th month and taking one or two steps (and on rarer occasion 5 or 6 steps), but she showed no further interest.

Crawling was fast. She was good at it. She could keep up with her sister. Why would she want to walk? Then one day last week (at 15.5 months), she got up and walked most of the way across a room. Ever since then she has been walking at least as much as she crawls. Today she wore hard-soled shoes for the first time.

I’m excited for her. What a milestone it is to become a biped! What fun it’s going to be to run after her older sister! But as much as I’ve longed to see her take off on two feet, I will miss crawling. More than anything, I will miss that distinctive sound that lets you know an excited baby is padding your way, the thump thump of her limbs and the little panting sound she makes when she’s going top speed.

Suddenly, my baby is walking into rooms and surprising me with her bigness. Suddenly she’s sitting up at the play table and demanding her own crayons. Suddenly she wants to get down and walk instead of snuggling in my arms. My baby has become a toddler, and I’m not sure I’m ready.

Five Sisters by Margaret Mahy

I’d not previously heard of The Five Sisters by Margaret Mahy, and I discovered it by accident. M and I were walking through the juvenile fiction stacks looking for the Magic Tree House books when this book caught my eye. It was on the end of a row and the cover art attracted my attention. I pulled it out and read the back to M, and she wanted to check it out. What a lucky find!

We started reading it during our afternoon reading time. It was hard for both of us to put it down, but M needed some quiet time and I needed to prep dinner and do some other chores. We picked it up later in the afternoon, and we finished it for bedtime reading. My voice was worn out, but we were so glad we got to the end. The next day, M wanted me to read it again. It’s short for a chapter book, 80 pages with most chapters only 3 pages long, so it’s perfect to read aloud to those who can’t just have to get to the end or those who need their chapter books in smaller doses.

The book describes the adventures of five paper doll sisters from their creation on a hot summer day through many travels. During their adventures, each of them get colored or painted and develop their own unique personality. Mahy’s use of language is extraordinary. The descriptions are unique and thrilling, and the way Mahy ties the sisters’ adventures together by linking the lives of various characters makes for a wonderful ending. The story is fantastical and it makes you want to jump right in. We’ve checked out another Mahy book, Tingleberries, Tuckertubs, and Telephones, and I can’t wait to get started with it.

Links to Share

I haven’t been posting for the last few weeks because I’ve been too immersed in summer activities and traveling to visit family. I’ve been reading other blogs though. I try to catch up with blogs I like while I have my first cup of coffee and the girls look at books in their beds or on rarer occasions are still asleep. Here are some great posts I’ve encountered in the last few weeks:

Coffee Table Science from I.N.K. - Gives suggestions of coffee table books with beautiful illustrations that kids can use to learn about science. M has loved looking through books like this for several months now. One of our favorites is Bird The Definitive Guide.

Chocolate Cake in 5 Minutes via Here in the Bonny Glen - I’m all for anyway to get chocolate cake into me faster!

Memoria Press and Instincts from Karen Edmisten - discussion of a Memoria Press catalog article about studying the history that is relevant to your small children rather than going chronologically. Definitely something for me to ponder as I think about activities we will do in the coming year.

Astronomy Picture of the Day - I’ve enjoyed sharing these pictures with M each morning. I particularly like today’s Moon Games.

Gossie and Friends

M was two when we discovered Olivier Dunrea’s wonderful gosling books. We rapidly read through the six titles, Gossie, Gossie and Gertie, Boo Boo, Ollie, Ollie the Stomper, and Peedie, buying our own complete set when we hit our library renewal limit. I am amazed by how well Dunrea shows emotion and expression with the simple lines of his drawings. And the goslings behavior is a perfect imitation of human toddler antics.

Now C has discovered the wonderful world of Dunrea’s goslings and I’m relishing the opportunity to share them with her. Right now, Boo Boo and Ollie are her favorites. She asks for them both by name, and I can never resist reading them to her no matter how busy I am. If you haven’t seen these books then I highly recommend that you take you a look whether or not you have a toddler.

Package Arrival

We always get excited when a big box of books thunks down at our door, and a few days ago we received a heavy box from Amazon loaded with goodies for all of us, a bird guide for M, a book of kitchen tips for me (though C wanted it for herself), The Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments (which we discovered via Farm School) for Brent to peruse and eventually share with M, several other treasures, and, of course, a big box for C.