My 5th grader is doing a Sharon Creech author study in class and she’s been reading and loving Ruby Holler, Heartbeat, and trying to get the group that gets to read Chasing Redbird. We tend to agree on books that we like but it’s strange that we haven’t when it comes to Sharon Creech. Don’t get me wrong; we both LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Sharon Creech, but we LOVE, LOVE, LOVE different books.
Category: Literacy
Getting kids to love reading including reluctant readers as well as competent readers who just don’t like to read.
Top 10: Best Audio Books for Kids (Some are FREE!)
Ambling Books is a great site for FREE audio books. If your child reads along with the audio playing, it’s a great way to improve his or her reading skills. Try this with a reluctant reader. This is their Top 10: Audio Books for Kids list.
The Navajo Code Talkers of WWII
In eerily similar circumstances, young Navajo Americans were forced to relocate to attend boarding school where great attempts were made by the school to purge them of their ethnic identity, particularly their language. Both children’s books that are featured talk about harsh punishments for speaking in their native tongue. This forced relocation is not unlike the Japanese Americans during WWII. Is this really America, the home of the free?! This is the ugly underbelly that doesn’t get much press coverage. Am I the only one who didn’t learn about the Navajo Code Breakers at school in U.S. History? I am glad for these books to teach a new generation, and our nation, that the differences that make us unique make our country more powerful. Imagine if that boarding school were successful in wiping out the Navajo language? It’s really not inconceivable if the timing of the war were different!
SAT Vocabulary for Kindergarten from Picture Book Cuddly Dudley
This is the list for Week 5:
adorable: The baby was so adorable that everyone wanted to hug him.
enormous: An elephant is an enormous animal.
resist: I could not resist eating the cookies because they smelled so good.
lonely: The little girl sitting by herself on the swings seemed very lonely.
annoyed: I was annoyed when my brother talked to me while I was in the middle of playing a memory game.
gregarious: Tonya was very gregarious and was always inviting friends over to play.
Kids Caught in the Act … of READING
Thank you again for contributing photos to this weekly Monday feature, Caught in the Act … of Reading. Thank you also to multiple photo contributors, Mama C and the Boys, and parents of Issie and Lucie. It’s really fun to see your children loving to read as well as making steady progress! And please take a minute to view the video of older sister Riley reading to her little brother. Blue Hat, Green Hat has never been more fun and how exciting that Riley can read to her brother and does it so nicely! I have to bribe my daughters to read to their little brother; they view it as a chore!
Caught in the Act … of READING
Thank you to everyone who sent in photos of kids Caught in the Act … of READING. If you would like go send me a photo, please email me at pragmaticmom.com (at) gmail (dot) com. I definitely need more photos. This week, it’s been fun to see some of these kids caught in the act of reading again and again! In other photos, older siblings are reading with their younger siblings which is so nice and rarely happens in my house but when it does, it’s a moment in time that I want to freeze and keep forever. What are your kids reading and can you catch them in the act of reading?!
Kids Caught in the Act … of READING
So when @IanChia on Twitter sent this article to me, Children distracted from reading by TV and computers, I fully agreed with its premise. Yes, that is exactly what happened to us on our trip. I would have had more pictures of kids caught in the act of reading since my husband and I had our camera and iPhone on the ready, but … they just didn’t read much so there was not much to catch. These kids did do some reading though! Kudos to their parents for pulling that off! I wish I could say the same!