Books We Love

We’re sorting through our shelves today and after some recent talks with friends I wanted to post a photo of some of the books I especially love to talk with kids about a variety of topics – cultural and religious differences, race & ethnicity, gender, strong women role models, etc. I’m not linking to all of them because there are lots. 🙂 But these are some I enjoyed enough to own (and collected a lot through the library used book store and Paperback Swap.)

Some of these were birthday gifts for the kids from us, friends and family as well. Oh, and Scholastic book sales!

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Obviously there’s some overlap, there are religious books about strong women (Miriam’s Cup) and a book with a female heroine but it’s about segregation in the south so I’m just lumping them all together into wonderful books for your family library. I left out some books like our biographies book that has a really good split of female and male figures, but these were just the ones that jumped out at me as coming from lists we liked for cultural and gender teaching to kids.

What books would you suggest?

(Oh, Olivia & The Fairy Princesses is included because she goes through strong female role models she could be and different careers she could pursue and ends with deciding even better than a princess is the queen – because she rules. 🙂 )

Spelling Assessment Fall 2012

B: 25 words, starting level P (he’s been at level L, might need to speed things up!) Approximately grade level 4.7 for spelling. (M)

M: 12 words, starting level J, approximate grade level 2.6. (L)

E: 7 words, starting level H, grade level 2.1 (but I’m going to start her closer to the beginning again just because she’s still so little.)

C: He’s on level X, which is 9th grade level – close to finishing the spelling book!

Once Upon a Time

For C’s birthday today Kit picked up Once Upon A Time, a storytelling card game. The kids LOVE it, and while it certainly plays differently with the little ones involved, it’s also a ton of fun when it’s just the big kids/adults. I’m excited to see how it blends nicely with our writing program and reiterates for the kids what an introduction, climax, conclusion, plot, setting, and characters all are. Super fun AND bonus, educational. 🙂