Posts Tagged ‘Books’
At my local library ( where I get 90% of the books I review) I know where a handful of authors books are and Harriet Ziefert is one author I never forget to check when I am looking for new books. Her books are well written, sensitive to a child’s perspective and I feel good recommending her as an author not to miss to parents. Here are just a few of her many books for you to check out.
Beach Party!
Hanukkah Haiku 
Hats off for the Fourth of July 
One Red Apple
Snow Party
I get asked all the time if I throw my son’s creations away. Most do get recycled but one we have used over and over again is our mail box. The other day my son was playing with it when I decided to capitalize on his desire to sort everything and make a post office sorting activity for him. Our letters were sorted by the name on the envelope but you could use numbers and sort it with the zip code , or for even younger kids use different color letters and sort it by color. My son loved this and it even sparked writing a fan letter to his favorite baseball player.
- Gather your materials. You will need some boxes, paper, scissors, envelopes, pen, plain sticky labels and crayons.
- Start by writing addresses on the letters. If your child is able have them help or write the addresses themselves.
- Write 44 cents ( or whatever appropriate stamp amount) on your blank labels.
- Time to decorate. My son loved coloring these envelopes. He insisted on doing it all himself.
- While they do that depending on how many boxes you have write out the letters that will go in each box on paper.
- Attach them to the boxes.
- Next add on the stamps. My proudest moment of the day came next when my son said we should purposely leave off the stamp and make a do not deliver basket for those letters.
- So I made one quickly.
- Time to play- I made a simple sign for our post office and our mail box came to play too.
- Pop your mail in.
- Dump it out.
- Sort it.
- Deliver it – we delivered it to various rooms of our house.
Book
Delivering Your Mail: A Book About Mail Carriers
This was an impromptu activity, I didn’t plan it at all. I was finishing up a post for Parentella about school anxiety when my son decided that he had enough of Legos, and since it was pouring outside his beloved backyard was off limits too. I suggested we play library. By the time he was all set up my final proof read was done and we were playing.
- Gather your props. You will need LOTS of books, an old computer to be the check out , a cloth bag and” library” card . You could make a card as a craft before hand if you want or just use a old Starbucks card.
- Set up your library. Ours was set up on our family room couches. My son sorted the books by ones for big kids and ones for little kids. I couldn’t tell the difference but the fact that he initiated the sorting and classification was good enough for me. We popped my old laptop on the coffee table for check out.
- Next ask your librarian to help with book suggestions. This was eye opening for me he suggested some great books by title, this is a great way to get a sense of which books your child remembers and loves.
- Time to check out books. I had to pay a fine too. Isn’t it fun when you realize your kids is listening all.the.time.
- Next it’s story time!
Pretend play isn’t just fun, it’s an important component to early childhood education. It allows kids to practice social situations, learn by doing and develop storytelling skills as well. So grab some books and turn your living room into a library .
Draw Me a Star 
Comets 
by Michael Dahl was a great find, my son loved counting down from 12-1 with the bright illustrations , simple text and hidden numbers on each page. Something that seems simple but was really awesome was that each page had the number written as a word, shown as a digit and as dots to count. You can take the time to count each dot, read the word or simply recognize the digit!
How to Catch a Star 
The Way Back Home 
Hush, Little Alien
Our Stars
