Preparing children to Read

I found this link from MontessoriMom's website about how to prepare children how to read. The speaker also discourages teaching children to read too young. I've got to learn more and see if whatever I'm doing is right.

It's rather long and slow. So I myself have not finished watching it. I'll keep it for another day when I've got time to watch the whole 50 minute lecture. =P

Book reviews : 'D' books

This week I couldn't find that many interesting books on D. Maybe many were already borrowed out. A lot books start with 'Don't' and many were about dogs and dinosaurs.

A Dark Dark Tale I had reservations about borrowing this because Sean doesn't usually like scary stories. But the story had such a cute end, I had to borrow it. And the illustrations are really good. This is one book I'll borrow again.

I've just found this video. I didn't think that the story telling was great, but I learn a bit more about how to tell the story, i.e. more descriptions about things in the pictures.








The Dog that Dug

A funny story about a dog who was a bit of a clot who dug and dug and dug and found an old brown shoe, a coal mining miner, a tubular train and dinosaur bones. The illustrations are very detailed. It's by the same illustrator as Captain Teachum. It's a book that even older kids will love to read again and again.








Dogs Don't Wear Sneakers

Funny, but there's no story line. It's just about all the things that animals don't usually do, told in a rhyming text. It's meant to get your imagination started. The illustrations are very cute though.









Don't make me laugh

Funny, but Sean didn't get it the first time. I don't like the illustrations though.










Don't rock the Ark

A rather long story for Sean at this time. Quite a cute story about not making the elephants in the Ark move about too much. The illustrations were cute and detailed and really gets you into how the inside of Noah's ark look like.









Dooby Dooby Moo

Another cute story from the author of 'Click Clack Moo. Cows that type', but I found there were too many 'Dooby Dooby Moo....' sound effects. Maybe after reading it several times, I got rather tired of dooby dooby mooing. =P











I wish that I had duck feet

A very cute story about a boy who wants to have duck feet, deer horns, a whale spout, a long long tail, and an elephant's nose. The text is easy and rhyming. It's meant to be a book for early readers. So I would say this is a good book to encouraeg early readers to read because of the silly story.











These are not 'D' books:

The Very hungry Caterpillar

Always a favorite. We've borrowed this many many times. Love it.

I was very happy to find this video. I didn't even know they existed until I accidentally found a link while YouTubing.




Nature's Pattern

A great book to introduce nature's patterns: stripes, spots, spirals, and symmetry. Short but it has great photographs showing the animals with these patterns.










All from an Oak Tree

A good book to show about a tree life cycle. It has lots of good photos.











Starfish
Cute story about star fish. I even learn about how starfish open up clams to eat.

The first video is rather long, but it has many pictures of beautiful starfish. So I'm keeping this for later when Sean is interested in starfish.

Book reviews : 'C' books

In the excitement of Sean's birthday, I forgot totally to do book reviews of the2nd batch of 'B' books. We are reading 'C' books this week.

Captain Teachum's Buried Treasure

My personal favorite this week. The story is funny and the illustrations are so detailed that the illustrations tells the story even without words. This book is something I'd buy if I see it in the book shop.









A Cache of Jewels

Another one of my favorite. The illustrations are just right to get us interested in Collective nouns. I learn many new collective nouns. Ruth Heller is a great author. Her books are so informative and so beautifully done. I feel like buying up all her books. =D






Coulicoco's Sleepy Afternoon

I love the story of a young boy's afternoon nap, when no one would disturb him. The setting is so idyllic that I want to sleep in a hammock too. It's a beautiful story that I would like to read again and again.







Click Clack Moo Cows That Type

This is the 2nd or maybe 3rd time I've borrowed the book. A really cute story about cows and chickens demanding electric blanket. There's a funny twist in the end when the neutral party, Duck, took over the typewriter to type a note asking for a diving board for their pond.









Charlie needs a Cloak

A great story about how a shepherd whose clock is old and torn up, shears his sheep and spins them into wool, and then made them into cloth, dye it and finally made it into a new cloak for himself. The last picture showed him in his brand new cloak while one of his sheep was chewing it from behind and making new holes in it. Informative and funny. I like it.






The Cloud book

An interesting way to tell us about all the types of clouds, very informative, but I prefer to see real pictures of clouds for something like this. Maybe I just like funny books. So this is something I'll borrow again for Sean in the future when he wants to know about clouds, but I won't buy it.

These are not 'C' books, but I thought we should look at a few non-fictional books too. Sean was quite adamant about not reading these at first because they are not 'C' books. LOL. But when I read them, he liked them too.



Minibeasts

Simple clear pictures of small insects : Snail, spider, butterfly, bumblebee, grasshopper, Ant, Ladybird and Damselfly.

Did you know that bumblebees' nest is in the ground? I didn't know. I learned something new too.








Penguins

Lots of pictures of different type of penguins and about how they live. Informative. I'm glad the library carries these books.













Maria Montessori : The Secret of Childhood

This is the book I'm currently reading (not finished yet) but I would like to recommend this to all mothers and teachers. Maria Montessori is inspiring.

There are a few sentences I'd like to quote and remind myself for the future:

' We should remember that a child loves us and wants to obey. A child loves and adult beyond anything else............... It is the child who really loves, who wants to feel an adult near him, and who delights in attracting attention to himself: "Look at me! Stay with me!".................

Adults fail to appreciate this deep love of the child. But we should remember that the little child who loves us now so much will grow up and disappear. Who will then loves us as this child loves us now? Who will call us when he goes to bed, saying affectionately "Stay with me!" instead of bidding us an indifferent "Good Night."'

The book really shows how special childhood is and how much we parents should savor it.

I feel so blessed to have Sean tells me over and over again how much he loves me and kiss and hug me many many times every day. I don't want to think too hard about what he'll be like when he grows up, I just want to savor the moment.

Animal Mechannicals

Sean is currently crazy about Animal Mechanicals. Unfortunately we've only found 4 episodes of the show.

More Dr. Seuss Videos

I haven't seen these with Sean yet. I think Sean has seen some of these with Daddy though. But I thought I'll compile them here for easy viewing later on.

Dr. Seuss videos

I found YouTube videos of Dr. Seuss books.
Sean has suddenly become a Dr. Seuss fan and I hope whoever reads this post will like them too.
I'm really grateful to the people who have uploaded these videos. They are a treasure. =D

These are some of the books I've read to Sean. Enjoy!

















There are more but they are much longer and come in several parts. I'll post them in another post since you'll probably will not be able to load this up if I put so many links.

The letter B

These are videos about the letter B and a review of the books we borrow this week.







The Berenstains' B Book
A cute and silly book which started really easy enough for Sean to read on his own. Halfway the words became more challenging though, so I have to read it out to him. He's managed to read up to " Big brown bear, blue bull, beautiful baboon blowing bubbles biking backwards, bump black bug's banana boxes...." He still has difficulty with 'biking' and 'black', but he loves it. It's usually his first choice from this week's library borrowings.




Bear's Adventure
A lovely story about what happened to a teddy bear who was washed out by the wave, floated in the sea, caught in a fishing net, picked up by a seagull, dropped off into the sea again, and then washed off ashore, and finally found by familiar hands.





Busy Beavers
A great poem about what beavers do. I love the illustrations, they are so accurate that when I show Sean a YouTube video about beavers he can immediately associate it with the beavers in the book. In fact, he was wondering why there was no wolf in the YouTube videos.... he he he.. He really thought the book and the video was the same.








Bartholomew and the Bug
A wonderful story about Bartholomew the Grizzly bear and bugs. It's about how Bartholomew help a bug visit the bright lights of the city so that he can party for the only day which he lived. We learn that Daddy-Long-Legs only live one or two days at most.



The video is about bears catching salmon. This is one of my favorite.








Big Bully Hippo
A story about good manners. Hippo was a big bully who finally learn to say 'please', 'thank you' and 'I'm sorry' and became a perfectly polite hippo.










Billy's Beetle
A really cute story about a boy asking others to help him find his beetle, when all along the beetle was on them. The beetle is so small that Sean had a lot of fun looking for the beetle which moves from one character to another in each page.








Bread Bread Bread
Lots of great pictures about what type of bread people from all over the world eat. It's a great reference book. I love it.


The video is about a tour of a famous bakery, to see how breads are made.










Inch by Inch
A little inch worm outsmart birds by inching his way out of danger. A great way to introduce the measurement of inch. I showed Sean the ruler and got him to count. I think I'm going to get him to measure things when he wakes up from his nap.







Not a story about B, but it's lovely story about a small house by the sea and the animals who live in it.

Why another blog?

I've decided to keep a more organized list of things we read and learn about. I'm trying to follow the lessons from "Letter of the Week" however, I haven't been able to find all the books that are recommended. So we'll make do with whatever we find in our local library.

Since Sean is currently into the letter B, the color Yellow and the number 2. This is where we'll start. We went through the letter A, the color Red and the number 1, but I didn't blog about them in any organized manner. Hopefully, I'll be a bit more disciplined this time round.

I'm not even sure whether we can follow the lessons from Letter of the Week on a weekly basis. This is because from my experience with the letter A, Sean can be rather obsessive about it for a very long time... I can't quite remember how many months it was. Oh well, this is what a blog is all about, isn't it? So that we can record it down and look back at what we've done later on.