Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Baby is a great twist on the original classic fairy tale. What I like most about this story, besides the beautiful illustrations, is that in the end the Gingerbread Baby gets to live in a cozy gingerbread house, rather than being gobbled up by a fox!
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My oldest bug, M, really enjoys the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, so I knew he would find Jan Brett’s The Three Snow Bears entertaining as well. If you haven’t read Brett’s rendition of the classic fairy tale, it is a story, set in the arctic, of an Inuit girl named Aloo-ki who comes across a large igloo belonging to a family of three snow bears: Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby bear. Aloo-ki wanders inside the igloo and makes herself at home, tasting and trying out the bear’s belongings, and eventually falls fast asleep in Baby Bear’s bed. When the snow bears return home they soon discover that someone has been snooping around their home, and they eventually come across Aloo-ki sleeping in Baby bear’s bed. When Aloo-ki opens her eyes, she is face-to-face with the family of snow bears. She leaps from the bed, and dashes outside to escape on her dog-sled.
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I recently made a felt board for my bugs along with some fun felt monster pieces. During a trip to the public library, the boys and I picked up a copy of Ed Emberley’s, Go Away, Big Green Monster!
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Yesterday the boys and I went for a walk to the park. Autumn is such a lovely, fleeting season, which is why I try to fully embrace it while it’s here (in fact, while I’m writing this, I’m sitting on the steps in my backyard as the boys play in their toy house)! As we walked, I tried to get the boys to appreciate the rich coloured leaves that were littering the pathway and dancing around us on the crisp, fall breeze, but they were more interested in chasing one another and tromping through the leaves rather than admiring the scenery. I always end up collecting at least a few leaves on our walks; I find their vibrant colours and unique shapes to be too enticing to pass by, but I never really know what to do with them afterwards. Yesterday, when we returned home, my eyes were drawn to the book Leaf Man, by Lois Ehlert, which happened to be sitting on our coffee table from a recent library trip. If you are not familiar with Ehlert’s Leaf Man it is a beautifully illustrated book about the imagined journey of a ‘leaf man’ who encounters other leaf animals and objects along his way. I really enjoy this book because it not only encourages children and adults to look more closely at nature, but it also inspires its readers to be creative and to compose their own leaf art, which is exactly what we did!
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I’m always looking for fun and unique ways to engage my bugs in literacy. M is at the age where he can start working on memorizing sight words, while B is still at the beginning stages of identifying his letters. For M, I use the Dolch sight word list, which is a list of high frequency words children encounter in age specific texts. The goal is for children to memorize these high frequency sight words in order to improve their overall reading fluency.
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I am still trying to absorb the devastating affects this flood is having on our city of Calgary and in southern Alberta. Seeing the bleak pictures and aerial images of homes and familiar restaurants, shops and pubs submerged in murky water, roads and bridges being consumed and washed out, and our beloved zoo engulfed in a muddy, brown lake has been absolutely surreal. Luckily, our home is on high ground, away from the rivers, but the sadness I feel for my city and the surrounding areas is overwhelming. Albertans are kind, compassionate, resilient, and hardworking, so there is no question we will get through this together. As a Calgarian, I am so proud and grateful to all of the emergency response workers, and to our dedicated mayor, Naheed Nenshi, for their outstanding and tireless efforts to keep our fellow Calgarians safe and cared for. THANK YOU!
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