Summer Lessons -- One Idea

I sat down and talked with my two oldest to get some rough structure ideas for the summer. We settled on having a library day (Mondays look good for this and help start the week out with new reading material), some pool time, some cleaning time (my idea, of course), some sustained silent reading, and some art time.

Art time?

I had to do a little searching because while Bookivore loves Art, she hates Crafts. So I was looking for something that fell more under Art and less under Cut-Paste-and-Glitter. What I found was a gem of a site that offered me projects based on actual artists (you know -- people who get paid to make art)or on artistic principles.

Woot Woot!

It's called -- appropriately -- Art Projects for Kids, and I love that all the projects have been classroom tested. Some projects need a template, which may only be available for a small fee, but most are free. FREEEEEEE!

Another nice feature is that the projects mostly require stuff you're likely to have at home or can get easily at a local craft store -- paint, oil pastels, chalk. One or two require fancy art stuff like gesso, but there's enough there that you can just skip those and find something else to do. We're going to focus mainly on drawing and painting. As a bonus, some projects upcycle old CDs and CD cases or old magazines.

To make this relevant to the books we're reading, I may adapt some of the projects to include objects or places we're reading about. Or I might just have them write about their art -- the perfect double bonus.

Summer starts in T-minus 3 days and counting!

Summer Reading Programs -- Free Books!

Where did Bookivore go? Not far, but my life was so crazy-busy this winter/spring that I was forced to take a hiatus. Sorry, peeps. I just could.not.do.it.all.

But I'm back, though maybe not as frequently, and I want to remind everyone that summer is literally right around the corner. Take advantage of these free programs to score some new books for your kids and build their reading skills into the bargain.

Half Price Books Feed Your Brain .

THIS PROGRAM HAS CHANGED: It's for kids 14 and under. Kids need to read 15 minutes a day during June and July. Parents total weekly reading numbers and initial. When kids reach 600 minutes, they can go into the store and trade their logs for a $5 coupon. Not a rewarding as in previous years, but still a worthy goal. Starts June 1, ends July 31, 2011.

Barnes and Noble Summer Reading 2011 Imagination Destination:

This program has not changed. Kids download a reading log and read 8 books. They can bring their book logs into the store and choose a free book from their list of freebies. Runs from May 24 to Sept. 6, 2011. I looked very carefully and could not find either an upper or a lower age limit, but the book choices range from 1st through 5th grade, so that may be the assumption. In the past, the expectation has been that kids will read the books themselves, so kindergarten is probably the lower limit.

Borders/Waldenbooks Summer Reading Challenge:

THIS PROGRAM HAS CHANGED. If you still have a Borders or a Waldenbooks near you, this is another option. Our store is closing because of the company's recent bankruptcy announcement, so my kids can't do this one. Kids 12 and under read 8 books, then bring completed logs into a Borders or Waldenbooks and can save 50% or more on "selected items." These are listed on the worksheet, which you can download here. May 26 - Aug. 1, 2011.

I'll be back later this week with some ideas for summer activities with kids.

Off to Vietnam...

Passport to the World actually didn't have a book listed for Vietnam, but I thought it was worthwhile to add it since our own history was so bound up in some of the events there. I had a hard time finding books, not because there aren't any, but because my library didn't have them. Grrr!

As it turns out, they did have a few, but for some reason their cataloguing system does not allow users to search picture books by terms like "Vietnam" or "Asia." Kind of a critical failing, I'd say. How else are we supposed to find picture books about Vietnam? Or India? Or Korea? Or pretty-much-insert-any-country-name-here?


At any rate, I ended up with two very nice books about Vietnam, one about a family trying to bring back the cranes that disappeared during the war, and the other about a little girl travelling to Vietnam to visit her grandparents. Both invite extra exploration of the country through some supplemental activities.

We will make origami cranes (instructions here) and we'll Google some sarus crane images. These cranes are a symbol of long life and happiness, and they really were driven off during the Vietnam war, so we may talk a little about how people affect habitat and what that means to the animals. We'll also talk about what makes a home and whether you can feel at home when you're someplace far away (the subject of the second book shown above).

We'll track how far Vietnam is from our town on our graph and we'll talk about how rice is grown, since it's so prevalent in Southeast Asia. There are good sites for this here and here. This last site is a video showing how the paddies are planted by hand. We'll probably make some rice for dinner. We'll do other supplementary stuff -- math and handwriting and practicing time-telling. I have a lovely book called Somewhere in the World Right Now that introduces kids to the idea of time zones, which I think we'll also take a look at to see what time it is in these countries we're talking about. The books are a great way to put some context and content around the other activities so we're not just doing math in a vacuum, or practicing meaningless handwriting sentences.

Next up: Cambodia and Thailand!

Hello Korea!

Stop number 3 on our Library World Tour is South Korea. I have to say that I couldn't find any of the recommended books for Korea in our library, and the ones I found on Amazon were suspiciously absent as well. In fact, my local library was woefully understocked in children's books about Korea in general. I did manage to find this one (above) at the larger Metro library. I like the story of the little girl moving from Korea to the U.S. and thought it did a nice job conveying the differences and similarities between the two. There were other books on Amazon that looked better, but this one did the job and was free -- so I am trying not to pout about it. It's a lovely book, but I'm annoyed by the scarcity of choice.

We also picked up Bee-bim Bop from our library, which is geared for much younger children, but which I thought could work in the context of seeing how the food was cooked and the people ate. I love that the family says grace before their meal -- it really highlights the fact that one of the largest faith groups in Korea is actually Presbyterianism.

To enrich this lesson, we are going to use the recipe for Bee-bim Bop at the back of the book. We'll track how far away Korea is from our town on our graph and find Korea on our world map. I have to say, there aren't a ton of kid-friendly resources that I could locate on the web; most of the stuff was aimed at older children writing reports for school. My baby will do a Letter K coloring sheet and my son will copy some sentences about Korea for handwriting.

Next Stop: Vietnam

On to China

Our next stop on our round the world tour is China. I couldn't find the book listed in the original library curriculum, so I started surfing Amazon to see what was out there, then hit the Library to see what they had.

There were quite a few picture books on China, possibly because there are so many Chinese adoptees in the States now. I narrowed it down to three books, chosen for three separate reasons. The Pet Dragon I chose because it shows Chinese characters. I wanted my kids to see how different our systems of writing are and maybe adapt this activity of making old Chinese scrolls to one involving Chinese characters.

I chose Beyond the Great Mountains for its artwork, which is reminiscent of Chinese painting. It also incorporates Chinese characters and it's a poem, which is a nice way to expose my kids to a different literary form. I found some nice poetry prompts here so they could try writing a poem about China, and also some word searches and other activities. I particularly like the Venn diagram and I think we'll use that to compare China to Japan, or China to the U.S.

Jin Jin the Dragon I chose because in China, dragons are helpful. They bring rain and control rivers. I thought it would be nice to look at dragons from a Chinese perspective. I found two great dragon crafts here and here. Not sure which I'll be using. This would be a good place to say that I LOVE THE INTERNET.

I mean really, how awesome is it that all these resources are at your fingertips?

For food we're going to make Green Onion Pancakes, which I think my kids might actually eat. I may also try a stir fry recipe and let them help cut veggies.

My baby will be working on the letter C with some activities from this site. She'll also do some coloring -- here's a link to my search result of China coloring pages.

Next Stop: South Korea

Next Stop: Asia

This summer, I'm tackling a new study program to keep my kids thinking and reading while they're not in school. It's called Passport to the World.

I spent a good long while on my local library's online catalogue trying to find the books on the list and discovered that my library is shamefully lacking in multicultural picture books. I was forced to substitute other books (this is okay, just more work for me) and trek across town to get a library card at the much bigger metro library (ours is a suburban library) in order to get books to fit the program. They were also rather thin on Asian picture books, something I find rather frustrating, but I was able to find enough to make for a workable set of lessons. We're starting with Japan and this book (left). This was not a book on the list.

Mainly the lessons call for observation of life in a particular country, then pick up on some custom or food and use that to extend the lesson. Since I haven't seen this book yet, I am winging it a bit as I plan. I did, however, find some nice complimentary crafts.

We can either make windsock fish (like those on the cover) or origami windsock fish. Or we can make Japanese paper dolls. Since I have a son to consider, we'll probably do the fish. For food, we could do fishless sushi, which interests me but is very complicated to make and requires special ingredients that might be hard to find. Or we could just go to Target and pick up some Udon noodles and make those, maybe chilled with a sesame dressing.


I am going to have my older child (9) look up some simple Japanese vocabulary. There is a good site for this here. I also found some other good upper elementary activities here. My littlest one (4) will do a coloring sheet or two -- I found some nice ones of people in native dress for lots of different countries (these are the kind you color online) and a site that has lots of cultural coloring pages. We'll talk about the letter J, too, and the sound it makes. We may do a coloring sheet of J words also.

I'm going to have my son (7) build something from the book out of Legos -- a carp, perhaps, or a building of some sort. He will be practicing his handwriting with some sentences about Japan. Also, there are some word searches here that he likes to do.

I'm looking for a recipe of some sort that we can make, particularly one my son can read and follow. Or, we may make our own recipe and write it out so we can remember it for another time. We may have a Japanese meal (everyone eating on the floor) although my kids are not what you'd call adventurous eaters. At any rate, we're planning to spend a week on Japan before moving on to China.

Hot Town, Summer in the City

Bookivore doesn't like to have kids wandering around aimlessly all summer. It's bad for their brains. More importantly, it's bad for my sanity. So for the last few summers I have done something that if it were really structured and thought-out would be called Home School, but since I am just sort of winging it, we call it "Lessons."

Generally, I pick a theme of some sort and go wherever that takes me. One year we did the Ocean, one year it was the Rainforest, another year we did the Desert. However, aside from the ocean unit, which I devoted a ton of energy and thought to, the last few summers have suffered from a lack of cohesion. We'd start out like gangbusters, then gradually the challenge of engaging children with widely separated ages and abilities would get to be too much and we'd just decide to skip lessons and go to the pool.

Not so this year. I found a wonderful study program that lends itself to all three kids. I can plug in as many additional activities as I want, or just roll with it as written.

It's called Passport to the World and you can find it here. Not only does it have an impressive and comprehensive book list, it also provides sample lessons for most of the books and printable "passports" for kids to record the places they visit through literature.

What I like about it is that it's literature based. Each lesson revolves around a book, which we will find at one of our public libraries (I already checked and only 5 books on the list aren't available. I will make a decision later about whether I want to buy them or find an acceptable substitute that we can check out).

By virtue of the books selected, it's geared toward 4-8 year olds, which just barely covers the span of my kids' ages. It will be a little tough for the almost-4-year-old and a little easy for the almost-9-year-old, but I think with the right activities it can work and be fun.

The point is to "visit" other countries and cultures through the medium of books and I thought it would be fun to do both the activities in the lesson plans and also add a few of my own -- like maybe earning enough money to buy a goat for an African family, planting squash, cooking soba noodles or cornmeal porridge. Whatever pops into my head. One of the books is about releasing birds to make wishes, so maybe we could make origami birds -- there are lots of good tutorials for that sort of thing online. Our big, downtown farmers' market has lots of multicultural food booths, so we may take a little field trip down there some Saturday, or we could visit a specific ethnic restaurant. I can also add on things I want my kids to work on over the summer like handwriting and math and of course, we'll be reading.

I figure we can do one book a week with several activities or two books a week with one or two activities. That should last us easily through the summer. The goal is to spend about an hour each time, including reading and activities, about 2-3 times per week.

It's low pressure, it has the potential for lots of interesting exploration and fun, it's multicultural, and it's mostly laid out for me already so the really hard work is done.

I'll let you know how it goes.