Childrens' Book Council - How to Celebrate Childrens' Book Week

November 12-18 is National Children's Book Week in the USA... and this link is for ideas on how to celebrate it. I'm not sure what I'll have Cimeron and Aaron do. I think that having them make posters celebrating children's literature would work well in our small town. Local bulletin boards are the town's main information distribution system.

  ¶ 4:07 PM  

  It started when we returned from Yreka on Wednesday with two Beverly Cleary books that Cimeron was looking forward to reading. Keith claimed to have put them in her room, but they were lost. She wanted to read them, but her room was such an awful mess, it was impossible to find anything. So... thus inspired, she cleaned it. She threw away dozens of her much loved paper dogs... telling me later she could always make more. She performed a miracle. Her room is as clean as it has ever been. The transformation is truly amazing.

Sadly, she never did find the Cleary books she wanted to read, and neither did anyone else.

Homeschool today wasn't so good. Cimeron started by being angry about being asked to study and calling Keith a name I've never lowered myself to utter. He sent her to her room, and she had an emotional outburst. When she finally calmed down, she surprised me (again!) by walking out here and apologizing to Keith. She ended up doing her typing and math lessons... which is fine for now.

Meanwhile Aaron got in a good school day doing reading and math. I spent time with him one-on-one going over multiplication skills, then set him loose with his notebook which I have written problems in.

After school, Aaron helped me with the dirt piles in the front yard. We're trying to sift rocks out of dirt to make a good garden area in front of the house for planting next spring.

  ¶ 5:44 PM  

  Today Keith read more to the kids about California history. They started to study the history of San Jose, which was founded in 1777. San Jose is an industrial city about 50 miles south of San Francisco. Cimeron and Aaron remember going to the Discovery Children's Museum there a few times when we were living in the Bay Area. Keith is trying to join the study of the Street Law book with the study of California history with the hopes of encouraging good citizenship in the children.

Cimeron did a page in her spelling book and a grammar lesson. Aaron did a spelling workbook page and spent time reading out loud for Keith. No math today, but I took time to prepare interesting math lessons for tomorrow.

Cimeron is busy cleaning her room. She's doing a great job eliminating all the mess that was piled up behind her bed, so I'm encouraging that while the inspiration is with her!

Yesterday I went to the library and got some books for homeschooling. I got a book on attracting birds to the yard, and building bird houses and sanctuaries. Another book is a handbook of the Klamath River Valley (where we live). I got a book for Cimeron on different kinds of hairstyles - she's getting to the age where that will hold her interest... she actually wants to look better and has wonderful long, wavy hair to work with. I got a Christmas Caroling book, and we're going to start singing these every schoolday, to teach some new songs to the kids. Also I got a video about the Donner Party. We all watched that last night (sad one - from PBS)... I had seen it before. A few years ago the kids and I visited the Donner Lake State Park and actually saw where some of the cabins had been.

  ¶ 2:55 PM  

  Yesterday Cimeron and I had to go to Yreka... so no formal homeschool for us. I'm not sure what Keith and Aaron did at home.

Today Keith read to the kids: a story about the childhood of Paul Revere, and a traditional Christmas poem: "The Night Before Christmas". Yes, they are already looking forward to that. Next was reading from a book about the Middle East, and a discussion of what they were learning from that book.

After that was my math class, which I am usually wildly enthusiastic about. I set the kids up with some math to do -- Aaron is practicing multiplication in his notebook. Cimeron is working on a practical math website about trips. She did two pages this time - about the cost of using different types of cars, and about car rental costs. I'm having her read the website, then show her computations in her notebook. Later I'll make up some similar problems for her to show what she's learned.

  ¶ 12:33 PM