Good Night, Good Knight

My son turned six last weekend, and in the fall, he will enter into first grade. As a good mother and reading teacher, I encourage my son to read daily. We've made several trips to the library and my son even got his very own library card. Many pictures books are written on a 3rd grade level, so we've been checking out easy readers. Sometimes easy readers don't always have the best plots, given the use of restricted language to keep the text easy enough for beginning readers. However, recently my son and I came across a cute easy reader that helped him make connections and predictions about the story as he read.

Good Night, Good Knight written by Shelley Moore Thomas and illustrated by Jennifer Plecas, tells the story of the Good Knight who stands guard keeping the castle safe from the dragon. Good Knight hears a loud roar and discovers three baby dragons who can't sleep. One dragon needs a story, another a story, and of course they all need a good night kiss. After several trips to the cave, Good Knight follows many of their requests and finally gets the baby dragons to sleep.

This story lends itself well to making connections because children can relate to calling their mothers into their rooms at night for one more drink of water, one more story, and an extra goodnight kiss. My son had a great time predicting what the dragons were going to ask for next.


Summer Bucket List

Being a teacher, summer is one of my favorite times of the year. For eight or nine, straight weeks I can relax, catch up on my reading, drink coffee at a leisurely pace, and spend lots of time with my children. Today, as we drove home from a busy weekend of wedding festivities for my baby brother and my beautiful new sister-in-law; I started doing something I often do on Sunday afternoons, I started thinking about the week ahead. It was then that I realized that sometime in the middle of last week, my summer vacation had reached the half-way point. You know the point when there are fewer days left of summer vacation left and more days in your rear-view mirror.

In four short weeks, I will be heading back to work. So far this summer has been one of the best. It has been jam packed and full of fun. We've spent a week in Nags Head at a beach house with friends. My husband and I spent a long weekend in New York City to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. I've been tutoring and trying to prepare for my new position as the Reading Specialist of my school in the fall. Oh, and this weekend my son turned 6 (I still can't believe it) and my brother became a married man. We've also been squeezing in trips to the library, the pool, and to get ice cream, play dates, laundry, cleaning out and listing our rental property, dinners with friends and a little bit of couch snuggling.

At the beginning of every summer I make a giant mental list of all of the things I want to accomplish this summer. Tomorrow, I'm going to sit down with my 6 year old son and 3 year old daughter and we're going to come up with a list of things they want to do over the next few weeks. Two things they aren't allowed to put on the list...video games and television. We're going to make the most of the next four weeks before it's back to work!

Click, Clack, Peep!

Finally, Spring is Here! The weather is warm, the flowers are blooming, my eyes are itchy, T-ball is in full swing, and there are two dozen chick eggs incubating my classroom. What would be more appropriate than another farm animal story complete with it's own baby duckling? Doreen Cronin is back with a brand new Farmer Brown book, Click, Clack, Peep! This time, it isn't Duck who's starting the trouble, it's a fluffy, new duckling who wants to play instead of sleep. Will the farm animals ever get the duckling to sleep? This is an excellent book for young children learning about farm animals or Spring.

I Know A Wee Piggy

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As a teacher, I love getting new books for my classroom. I especially love getting new, free books for my classroom. There are so many great books out there (and I am very partial to my favorites) so it's sometimes hard to branch out and spend money on new books that might not be as "good". Upon receiving some free books (ordered with bonus points) from my classroom's latest Scholastic book order, I came across a book that is sure to be added to "my favorites" list; I Know A Wee Piggy written by Kim Norman and illustrated by Henry Cole.

First let me start by saying, I was drawn to purchasing this book solely on the fact that it was illustrated by Henry Cole. I am drawn to Cole's childlike illustrations and bright colors like a moth to my front porch light. I know they say you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but I just can't help myself when it comes to Henry Cole. Perhaps it's because I've seen him in the flesh on two occasions and he used to be a regular teacher like me. Or maybe that's just why his name sticks in my head when I see it on the front cover of a book. Either way I think his illustrations are fabulous and chances are if he's illustrated a book, then I'll definitely read it. And usually I'll like it too.

If you've read any of my other book reviews, you might know that I'm a little bit partial to the story, "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" because it reminds me of my Granny. I Know A Wee Piggy has the same cadence but tells the story of a little piggy at a county fair. This little piggy is somewhat of a mischief maker as he "wallows" in different colors all over the fair. I Know A Wee Piggy would make an excellent addition to any farm, color or rhyming unit in the younger grades. It would also be a fun vocabulary read aloud for upper grades. I love the use of the word wallowed.  Perfect for all ages, you'll definitely want to add this book to your children's book collection!