The Watsons Go to Birmingham

In the light of Black History month, I read The Watsons Go to Birmingham- 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. It is a Newbery Award Winner and a winner of the Coretta Scott King Award.

I remembered kind of liking this book when my teacher read it to the class when I was in third grade, but I couldn't remember anything about it so I thought I'd reread it for Black History Month.

The first thing that stuck out to me and surprised me was the language in this book. There was an awful lot of swearing that I did not enjoy. I'm pretty sure my teacher must've censored that out when she read this book to my class. I know I, for one, would've been horrified at that age to hear words like that in a book.

The narrative style of the book was a little choppy. The narrator is a ten-year-old boy named Kenny. This is not clear through much of the book. At first, I wasn't sure if the narrator was a boy or a girl or how old he was because those details weren't explicitly said at the beginning of the book. Kenny tells anecdotes about different members of his family, I guess as a way to introduce us to all the characters and get to know them and the family dynamics.

There's his older brother Byron, who is a teenage narcissistic bully. He picks on his brother and doesn't like to do things with the family. He hangs out all day with his best friend Buphead, where they go around terrorizing all the other kids at school who are all younger than them. He gets in trouble for various things throughout the book, some of which include lighting matches in the bathroom and getting a perm to straighten his hair.

Their little sister, Joetta (Joey), is portrayed to be somewhat of a goody-goody. She's the only child who regularly attends Sunday School, and she always cries when their mother threatens to punish Byron for all his misdeeds and begs her not to.

The father is somewhat of a joker. He's always cracking jokes and laughing, which is a nice contrast to their mother who just seems to be constantly talking about how much she misses home and worrying about what to do with Byron.

The mom worries a lot about how to keep her oldest boy from doing all the stupid things he does. She shakes her head at her husband's antics and obviously misses her family and her old home.

Kenny gets picked on at school quite a bit until a new student comes, who Kenny at first thinks will get picked on more than him, so he'll get a break. But they end up becoming best friends.

The family doesn't start heading to Birmingham until over halfway through the book. The go to visit their mom's mother and plan to leave Byron there over the summer and perhaps longer, so he can learn how to grow up and become more responsible for his actions and learn how to be respectful.

After they arrive at Birmingham, the book gets weirder. It already was a bit disjointed with the anecdote style, but in Birmingham, Byron is suddenly acting like the responsible one, and Kenny starts making poor decisions. He decides to go to this swimming area that he's told not to go to because of a whirlpool that has drowned a few people in the past. He mishears and has no idea what a whirlpool is. His brother tells him it's Winnie the Pooh's evil twin brother the Wool Pooh. When Kenny starts drowning, he sees this shadow, the Wool Pooh, who's pulling him down. While struggling to get free of its evil grasp, he sees his sister telling him to swim up. He does, just in time for his older brother to save him from drowning.

After this, Kenny acts differently. His brush with death has left him rattled, and he thinks he sees this Wool Pool a few more times. When a bomb is set off in the church during Joey's Sunday School class, Kenny thinks he sees the Wool Pool again trying to take his sister away. After this incident, the family quickly heads back to Birmingham. Byron and Kenny both act differently. For once, Byron acts like the responsible older brother. He's the only one who knows about Kenny almost drowning and is the one who finally figures out what's going on with Kenny.

I thought the ending between Kenny and Byron was really sweet. I even cried. But the whole book seemed really disjointed and the sudden change with Byron as soon as they get to Birmingham seems really unrealistic. The whole Wool Pooh thing is just weird as well as all the seeing people that weren't really there thing. Kenny sees Joetta at the swimming hole, and she sees him waving at him near the church when he was actually still at the house. That part's just strange.

I thought this book was going to be a really good historical fiction book, but there's only the one event that takes up such a minor part of the book that was even part of history. I wasn't too impressed with this book.

Libraries are Awesome!

My local library had an event on the schedule that I thought sounded really fun for my boys. They were going to be doing a STEAM Storytime this morning.

I'd been planning to take my boys to it ever since I found out about it and was glad that I got them all to bed a little bit earlier last night than I have been lately.

I woke up early this morning with my youngest and played with him for a bit, and then he wanted to just snuggle. The snuggling soon turned into sleeping, and the next thing I knew, it was half an hour before the event was supposed to start!

I was bound and determined to make it on time for the event, so quickly jumped up and got my boys up and ready and out the door. I was impressed with how quickly we all got ready to go this morning. We were just a few minutes late.

They read two stories and sang songs with the kids, and then they had a couple of related math (counting) activities. I wasn't too impressed with the activities, but then I tried to remind myself that this was library after all and all the activities were free, and they would want them to be activities everyone there could do.

I guess I was hoping for a little more STEA instead of just M, but they have one of these activities every two weeks, I think. I plan to take my kids back for the next one, and we'll hopefully see some more from the other areas of STEAM in future activities.

After the activity was over, we went to look for some books. My boys love books, so we grabbed a bunch. Some of their favorites lately are the Elephant & Piggie books by Mo Willems, so we had to pick up one of those. And my oldest is getting really into superheroes, so we picked up one of those as well.

The library had some Take & Make Valentine's crafts, so we picked some of those up, and then the boys saw the coloring pages. So we grabbed some crayons and settled down at the table in the kids' area to color.

After my oldest was done with his picture, (I was so impressed with both of my boys' coloring today. They did such a good job!) he wandered over to the iPads. They have a few set up in the kids' area with a handful of educational games on them. The older two spent some time on there while my youngest brought me books off the shelves and explored the whole area of the library.

Then it was time to go home and have lunch. After lunch, we spent quite some time making Valentines. By this time, it was already pretty late into the afternoon, with not much time left until their dad was coming home from work. What I thought was going to be maybe a one-hour activity for the day ended up providing my boys hours of fun and entertainment.

Aren't libraries just great! What fun things have your libraries done for kids or families?

Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime

I'd heard a few things about the Junie B. Jones books and was curious about whether or not I agreed with some of the opinions I'd heard about them, so when I saw that there was a Valentine's Day book, I decided I might as well give it a try. Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime was written by Barbara Park and is actually the 14th book in the series. However, it doesn't seem to be a series that necessarily has to be read in order.

The book is narrated by Junie B. Jones, a little girl in a kindergarten class. Because of this, some of the words and grammar are incorrect, such as that in the title "Valentime" instead of "Valentine." Although this may make the narration more accurate as coming from a five or six year old, I feel like this makes the book not a great book for kids of this age to read. Kids this age are learning how to read and learning how to use words correctly. So, reading a book where some of the words and grammar are purposely written incorrectly could be confusing to them. I think if a parent or teacher read the book with a child and pointed out errors in the narration, this wouldn't be so much of a problem. It might even be helpful, because perhaps the child reading the book has some of the same misunderstandings as Junie.

I think the character would definitely be relatable to young children. She has normal, six-year-old problems, such as problems with school, friends, etc. In this book, Junie's teacher tells them they are going to have a class party for Valentine's Day. They decorate boxes for their Valentines, and they are told they have to bring a Valentine for everyone in the class. Junie picks out Valentines for everyone in her class, specifically choosing Valentines for each person in her class. This part was fun for me to read, because she talks about picking really nice ones for her friends and she picks the one with "smelly skunk" on it for the boy in her class that really annoys her. I used to do this same thing when I was little, choosing Valentines for the kids in my class. So that was a fun part to read.

When the Valentine's Day party is finally here, Junie B. Jones gets "a mushy, gushy Valentime." It doesn't have a name on it, and she spends the rest of the book trying to figure out who gave it to her.

Junie B. is not really a model student that I would want my children to strive to be like. She gets in trouble with her teacher several times in the book. The teacher is not really portrayed in the best light in this book. And maybe that's how young children who get in trouble at school really think of their teachers, but I feel like characters like teachers in books should be shown in a better light, so kids will have a better attitude towards them in real life. Junie gets into fights with her two best friends over who's going to get the most Valentines, and then confronts several boys in her class about the Valentine when she's trying to figure out who it's from.

I have kind of mixed feelings about this book. It has a cute ending, and the story's kind of fun and could be really relatable for a young child, but I think if a child was just reading it by themself, it could teach a child some wrong ideas aobut things. If the book is being read by an adult and chld together, I think it could be a good learning experience by looking at some of Junie's bad decisions or examples could be discussed and talked about what she could've done or said instead.

Spontaneous Learning

My husband and I have toyed with the possibility of homeschooling our kids in the future for various reasons. Right now, our kids aren't old enough to go to school yet, so we still have some time to think about it and make a decision. But sometimes I wonder if I would even be able to handle homeschooling.

Some days it seems like I get absolutely nothing done, and the kids spend all day watching T.V. (Hopefully, that's not actually true, but some days it seems like it.) 

Well, I have made a new resolve to be more organized and make some specific goals on what to get done during the day. One area that I wanted to start having a goal for each day is to do some kind of learning activity with my boys. 

This morning started off better than most. I got part of my new planned morning routine in before the boys woke up for breakfast and got a couple things on my to-do list done before lunch, but I didn't have any sort of plan for a learning activity for the boys. 

After lunch, I actually remembered to go out and get the mail. (Most times my husband just grabs it on his way in from work, but then sometimes it doesn't get looked at for a few days because it's dinnertime.) 

There was one of those big advertisement mailers. I glanced through it really quick to see if there was anything useful in there and went to throw it away. I was feeling proud of myself for taking care of the mail right away instead of letting it pile up on my counter.

But as my hand was about to drop the mail into the trash, I stopped. My two-year-old was hanging on my leg, and I knew I should go do something with him since he obviously wanted my attention. I glanced at the mailer in my hand and got an idea. 

"Hey!" I said to him. "Do you want to do a project with me?" 

He did, so I ran to grab some scissors and glue. 

Not too long after starting, my three-year-old stopped what he was doing and came over to see what we were doing. He excitedly joined in. 

We searched through the ads for pictures of food that they liked.

This is the only reason I keep our coffee table.
It's the perfect height for the boys to do projects.

 Then they cut them out.

"Take a picture of our scissors, Mommy!"

"I can do it by myself."

And glued them onto a paper.

"And here's the glue!"

To make a fun food collage.

The finished product

I was going to have my three-year-old label his food when he finished, but after he wrote "Food I Lic" at the top and his name, he said he was done. So, I let him off the hook. I don't want to make learning a chore at this age. But I was so proud of him for spelling "Food" right all by himself.

This was such an easy activity to do, and the kids loved it. It allowed them to talk about different kinds of food, including likes and dislikes as well as finding out the names of other foods they weren't familiar with. They also improved their cutting skills and learning how to use a glue stick. And it kept them busy and engaged for at least 30 minutes! 

And there was no planning!

What spontaneous learning activities have you done?

2018 Book #3 - Way to Be

I thought I'd start off the year with an inspirational book. I read Way to Be by Gordon B. Hinckley, a former president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. This book was written for the youth of the church (boys and girls ages 12 - 18), however, I think much of the advice can be applicable to others as well.

Pres. Hinckley gives nine "Be's" for things that people should be to have successful, happy lives. For each "Be" he uses quotes, tells anecdotes from his own life, as well as his opinions and ideas on how being these nine traits can help people in their lives.

There is an Introduction, a chapter for each of the Be's where he goes in depth on each one, and then a conclusion. The copy of the book I had also had a foreword by Steve Young, a former BYU football player.

I had a hard time getting through the Introduction, but once I got to the "Be" chapters, the read went quickly. It's a pretty quick read - just over a hundred pages, but it's a smaller book with lots of margin space.

Although it's written by a leader of a church, it didn't feel preachy to me in any way; it felt more like someone who was older and wiser giving someone younger his advice. The man was around 90 years old when he wrote the book so I would think he'd had plenty of experiences to know a little something about life.

All of his advice does go follow the teachings of the LDS Church, but it wasn't written in a way that was like, "Do these things to get to heaven." It was just more like, "Hey, if you want to have a good, full life, here are some things that I have learned that will probably work for you."

As I mentioned earlier, it was written for teenagers, but I felt like many of the things he wrote about were still applicable to me as an adult. If I was much older, more of the specific things he mentions in some of the sections or some of the examples he uses to expound on some of the "Be's" wouldn't really apply, but each of the "Be's" would still be things that I think would be beneficial for anyone to try to be, no matter their age.

I thought this was a great book to start out the year, seeing as it's the time for people to make resolutions on how they are going to be better people. I, for one, found a couple of things that I could work on.

What inspirational books have you read?

2018 Book #2 - Snow Babies

Snow Babies, by Laura Ellen Anderson, is a board book about animals in the snow. It has simple text like "Roly-poly polar bear cubs play," with each set of pages designated for a different animal.

The animals included are polar bears, reindeer, beavers, arctic foxes, arctic hares, huskies, penguins, snow leopards, snowy owls, wolves, harp seals, and pandas.

I really liked how they used the full names of the animals, such as harp seals instead of just seals. The baby animal names are also used for each animal. I think this is a great book for teaching kids about some different baby animal names in addition to some of the more common ones out there.

The verbs paired with each type of animal is something that animal would typically do in the wild and could lend themselves to more conversation with a child on each page.

The illustrations are cute but somewhat realistic looking.

Arctic fox cubs

I did think the final animal, the panda, didn't seem to fit in with others since they are mainly arctic or tundra animals and pandas are not. It seemed really random.

Overall, though, I thought the book was really cute and simple enough to hold really young children's attention, but I also really appreciated that they didn't completely dumb down the vocabulary in the book.

2018 Book #1 - I Broke My Trunk!

Mo Willems has to be one of my favorite children's author. The Elephant & Piggie book I Broke My Trunk didn't disappoint. I read this book to my son today and had him laughing out loud.

Gerald comes to see Piggie, who asks him about his nose as it's all wrapped up. He says he broke it. When Piggie asks how he broke it, he goes into a "long crazy story."

Even after he tells about holding two hippos, a rhino, and a piano on his trunk, Gerald explains to Piggie that still isn't how he broke his trunk. The ending is funny and surprising.

One of the best parts of this Elephant and Piggie book is the illustrations and seeing the facial expressions of Elephant as he tells his story and Piggie as she listens and asks questions.

Elephant & Piggie stories are told completely through dialogue and the illustrations. The illustrations are usually just the characters and whatever props they may be using. There are typically not any backgrounds for the pictures, so things like facial expressions are very important. This was one of my favorite pages:

These books are very fun to read aloud, especially doing different voices for the different characters. My boys also love when I make sound effects for the characters when they aren't actually saying dialogue. I usually make a face to go along with it. For example, the face Piggie's making in the picture above was one that I made with a face. My son got a kick out of that.

These books are great for kids of all ages. My two youngest, ages 15 months and 2, loved this book today when I read it to them. I've had first graders read them over and over again, and even one of my third-graders a couple years back loved to check these books out from the library. I think they're hilarious and are great books even for adults. And they tell great stories about two friends who really care about each other.

Family Fun - 4 Benefits for Using Advent Calendars with Kids

There are many different types of advent calendars to aid in counting the days until Christmas. Most of these calendars start on the first day of December and continue all the way until either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, with a window to open or a pocket to check for each day.

I have seen many different kinds of advent calendars, many with other added learning benefits. Lego advent calendars teach kids how to follow a diagram to put together a small item that adds to a larger Christmas scene.

An advent calendar my family had growing up helped us learn about the Christmas story, as the calendar had an item for each day to add to a nativity scene.

I've seen other interactive advent calendars that have other kinds of different activities for each day. These calendars all have their own uses too.

But even the chocolate advent calendars, where there is just a chocolate to eat each day, have their benefits too.

As I've been doing an advent calendar with my boys this Christmas season, I've noticed a few things that have made me think I should keep doing these every year with my kids.

1. Advent Calendars teach children calendar skills. As my oldest son who is three years old has been doing the advent calendar this year, he has picked up on some different calendar skills. Since the numbers on the advent calendar match up with the date, he now talks about what the date is. When I went to pick him up from his nursery class last week, his teachers said, "He was teaching us all about the calendar today." They had a calendar up on the wall that my son had apparently noticed and scooted a chair over to. He climbed up on the chair and was pointing out what day it was and which day was Christmas, which he knew because of which number was the last number on the advent calendar.


2. Advent Calendars teach children about taking turns. Most advent calendars have one thing in each box you open. If you have more than one child, they will have to take turns or learn how to share what's inside. This year, we have a Lego advent calendar, so the boys have been taking turns each day with who gets to put together the little model. Yes, there have been days where there has been fighting over it, but they're still learning. They are only two and three, so a little fighting is kind of expected. But my three year old keeps track really well of whose turn it is and explains to his brother, "Today is my turn to build, but tomorrow will be yours."


3. Advent Calendars are a great way to get the family together at least once per day. In my house, the boys have to wait until Daddy gets home to open the box for the day. Although advent calendar activities are really short, it is still something that brings the family all together for at least a few minutes each day while we open the box and see what's inside. Then we usually end up staying together a little longer to talk about it or other things and spend a little time together.


4. Advent Calendars help you keep your sanity. As Christmas gets closer, children get more excited, and more impatient, about Christmas. Instead of my kids asking me every five minutes, "How many more days until Christmas?" they already know. Because we look at the advent calendar every day, they can see how many boxes we've opened and how many we have left. Instead, my kid wakes up every day and says, "Mommy, there's only 7 more days until Christmas!" which is a much more pleasant thing to hear than constant whining about, "Is it Christmas yet?"

So, those are just a few benefits that I've noticed from doing advent calendars with my kids. 

The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids Special: Mrs. Claus Doesn't Climb Telephone Poles

Mrs. Claus Doesn't Climb Telephone Poles by Debbie Dadey and Marci Thornton Jones is part of The Bailey School Kids series. It is not included in the numbering of the regular series, and since I have not read any of the other books in the series, I can't really say how it compares to the rest of the books in the series. The story does mention two characters from a previous book, so it may help to read that one first, but it wasn't vital in understanding what was going on in the book.

The book centers on the before Christmas adventures of four friends who are out of school for the rest of the year due to a terrible blizzard that caused their school to be shut down. The story is told in third person but is told from the point of view of Liza, one of the four friends.

It's a week before Christmas Eve, and the friends are trying to decide what to do with their new freedom. Liza notices a lady all dressed in red at the top of a telephone pole doing repairs. Right from the start, she thinks there's something different and special about her. Her friends just brush her off and decide to go sledding instead.

Throughout the book, the kids continue to cross paths with the lady, whose name is Joy. Liza hears her laugh, "Ho, ho, ho." They overhear her talking to a man named Eli, who they saw in that other story, about S.C. and how he doesn't appreciate anything that she does. Eli begs her to come back, and talks about how they're behind schedule.

Pretty soon, Liza is convinced that the lady is Mrs. Claus, but her friends are going to take some convincing, especially Eddie who only wants to race at everything, especially down the big hill that terrifies Liza.

The children get to know Joy better and find out that she and her husband aren't really on speaking terms. Liza is convinced that if they don't help her get back with her husband, that Christmas will be ruined.

This was a fun, quick read, geared toward young readers, with its obvious clues as to who this mysterious woman up the telephone pole might be. I think it would be fun to read to my kids when they get a little older and see if they pick up on all the clues.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

The first book of December was The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. I have read this one before, but it's been awhile, so in the spirit of Christmas, and seeing lots of people talking about reading it on facebook, I decided to give it a reread.

This story focuses on the Herdmans, a family of five children whose mother works all the time and are left to do whatever they want, which is usually getting up to no good. The book starts out by introducing us to these children and some of the terrible things they have done including burning down a toolshed, stealing, hitting, lying, and making fun of anyone they please.

Told in first person by a girl who is the same age as Imogene Herdman, the reader gets an outside view of the Herdmans. After introducing the Herdmans, the Christmas Pageant is introduced. The lady who normally runs the pageant has an accident and winds up in the hospital. No one else volunteers to do the pageant, and the narrator's mother ends up in charge.

The usual director tries to direct it from her bed by calling the new director and explaining every little thing. The mother gets fed up with her calling and declares that the Christmas pageant is going to be "the best Christmas pageant ever" just to show her how capable she is.

The Sunday before the first rehearsal for the pageant, all five of the Herdmans show up to church, because the narrator's brother, Charlie, told one of them that they had refreshments at Sunday School. When they hear about the pageant, Imogene Herdman seems interested, and they all show up to the first rehearsal.

The Herdmans have threatened anyone who tries to volunteer for one of the main parts at the first rehearsal. No one dares to go against the Herdmans, so they end up with all of them, with Imogene herself as Mary.

The narrator tells us about the antics of the Herdmans as the rehearsals for the pageant go on, and her friend is bound and determined to get her role of Mary back for herself. Everyone wonders if five children who have never set foot in the church in their lives before this can actually pull of the Christmas pageant or if they'll completely ruin it.

It's not a super exciting story. The narrator isn't clever or witty, but there are a few moments where she starts to think a little more about the Christmas story and what actually might have happened when Christ was born because of things that the Herdmans do or say throughout the story. There's a sweet, although somewhat anticlimactic ending with the pageant itself and a few closing thoughts from the narrator.

It's worth the read as it did offer some points to ponder and showed that sometimes it might be better to do things a little differently from what people may be used to.