I will confess that I’ve never read a gender specific parenting book. My older two are girls and my husband and I are dreading the pre-teen (now!) and teenage years. The warnings abound of what is to come from parents of older girls and this might drive me to pick up a book on parenting pre-teen or teenager girls. My little boy, on the other hand, is at the stage where he loves his mommy the most and is as sweet as can be. I wish this phase could last forever. Parenting a boy compared to girls seems relatively straightforward — a straight line of screen time limits and outdoor play versus the wiggly line for girls of pissy attitudes and struggles over what to wear. Or could this just be that my son is still little?!
Favorite Books for Reluctant Readers Grades 3-8
This was such a great list of books that I asked LiteratureForLunch for permission to repost and she graciously said yes. Enjoy!
Fun Picture Book Teaches Math: Math Curse
My five-year-old can’t even do half of the math in this picture book but he’s enjoyed this book so much that we’ve read it every night for a week and he insisted that I blog on it.
SAT Vocabulary for Kindergarten from Picture Book Edward the Emu
I know that some moms thought this was a terrible idea, but I am finding that my kindergartener loves big words and his teacher sends a list home each week. We just read the word and the sentence at the dinner table (for the benefit of the two older kids), and let our youngest tell us what he thinks the word means. It’s actually a cute and fun exercise and he’s surprisingly correct most of the time. Try it. Your older kids will be DYING to give the answer. And that doesn’t suck!
How to Encourage Kids to Write
My Kindergarten Teacher sent this home to help us encourage our children to write at home. Learning to write goes lock step with learning to read she says.
5th Grade Book Club with Karen Day, author of No Cream Puffs
A Big THANK YOU to Karen Day for her visit! And just a shout out that SHE’S AN AMAZING SPEAKER. SHE IS OPEN TO VISITING SCHOOLS. Our elementary school brings authors into the classroom as part of our literacy program that is funded by the PTO. Here’s her contact info.
Top 10: Challenged or Banned Books
The American Library Association (ALA) has issued their annual list of the 10 most frequently challenged books from US libraries. There’s a number of the usual suspects on the list, and while I’m still flabbergasted that there are people out there who are so concerned about the content in these books that they are requesting that they be removed from libraries (To Kill a Mockingbird? Really?)