1st February World Hijab Day

World Hijab Day is observed every year on February 1 to honour Muslim women who wear the hijab. It is also a day to urge women of various origins and beliefs to try on the hijab and see what it is like to wear it. Muslim women maintain their modesty by wearing the hijab.

I teach in a school where there are very few children who practise the Islamic faith, but where many of the students and/or their parents were not born here, and thus the students are global wanderers and are fascinated by difference. They travel overseas regularly and most of them have seen more of the world than I have.

I remember having a great discussion with a class about Kelly Cunnane's  book Deep in the Sahara  and talking at length about wanting to emulate customs, parents and or fashion, just as Lalla does in this story where she wants to wear a malafa just like her mother and older sister.

I remember also when I first read The Proudest Blue by Ibtihaj Muhammad, and the students were fascinated by the hijab and the fact that an Olympian wore one. It certainly gives a new perspective to the first day of school. Ibtihaj's sequel The Kindest Red  highlights the hijab too.

The Boldest White is coming in March.

Other books that would continue these discussions would be:

• Mommy's Khimar by Jamilah Tompkins-Bigelow and Ebony Glenn.

• Under My Hijab by Hena Khan and Aaliya Jaleel

• Layla's Head Scarf by Miriam Cohen and Ron Himler

Hana's Hundreds of Hijabs  is written by Razeena Omar Gutta, a South-Asian Muslim who was born in Zimbabwe but who is now living in Australia. Here's the blurb:

Hijab styling in the context of creative fashion brings a unique, positive and fun perspective to a sometimes misunderstood religious practice. Readers unfamiliar with hijabs will learn about how they are worn, while children familiar with hijabs will see their own experiences reflected . Children with large, overflowing collections of favourite items will relate to Hana's dilemma. Clever and humorous story about creative problem-solving.

31st January International Zebra Day

Zebras are herbivorous mammals native to Africa! There are three species, the Grevy's zebra, the mountain zebra, and the plains zebra. Related to horses and donkeys, they spend 60% of their time eating, and each one of them has distinctive patterns and stripes. This day is in place to raise awareness about conservation needs. The Grevy's zebra is considered endangered on the Red List of Threatened Species, as its population has decreased by 54% over the past three decades. Zebras face risks of poaching, hunted for their meat and skin.

We haven't celebrated Zebra day at school before because it is usually before school starts, but school starts for our students before  the 31st this year so we have put together a small display of zebra books.

The most borrowed zebra book in our library is Ziggy the Zebra by Jan Latta and no doubt it will be again this year as her books are popular with the students who do the Premier's Reading Challenge.

My favourite zebra story to read aloud is Greedy Zebra  by Mwenye Hadithi. The students love discovering why the zebra looks as it does.

The Zebra's Great Escape  by Katherine Rundell is a longer picture book, but it is such a wonderful adventure.

There are two endearing stories for very young children about a zebra called Zou by Michael Gay.

A Zeal of Zebras  is a quirky book with great illustrations about collective nouns.

Still want more?

   

    

28th January International Lego Day

January 28th is International LEGO Day, honouring the popular construction toy! The Lego Group began in the workshop of the Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen. In 1932, he started producing wooden toys during the Great Depression. The word Lego is a contraction from the Danish phrase "leg godt", "play well". After WWII, as plastic became more available, Lego started to produce Lego bricks. Playing Lego is great for kids to develop problem-solving, motor skills, agility, strength in the fingers, focus, and more! It is on 28th January because it marks the day the first patent for the Lego brick was submitted in Denmark.

There are so many books for Lego enthusiasts but this one tells you all about how Lego came to be. From an Idea to Lego  by Lowey Bundy School and C.S. Jennings

10 Super-Fun Facts about LEGO

• In 2016 Land Rover set the World Record for the largest piece of LEGO construction with their huge 43-foot-high replica of Tower Bridge. This monumental structure used 5,805,846 individual pieces of LEGO which would have stretched all the way to Paris in France if laid out end to end.

• If LEGO Minifigures were to be classed as a population, they’d be the largest population in the world! With more than 4 billion of them in total.

• There are so many LEGO bricks in the world, that it’s estimated that they outnumber people 80 to 1.

• Despite the first plastic LEGO brick having been made in 1949, you could still interlock one with a LEGO brick-built today – the design hasn’t changed a bit!

• In 2009, James May created a house entirely out of LEGO. It took more than 3.3 million bricks to make and even had a working toilet, a bed, and a shower!

• LEGO sets are now so popular that 7 sets are sold every second.

• Although LEGO is played with by both girls and boys, women and men, they still have a bit of a way to go before they reach gender equality with roughly 86% of their LEGO Minifigures being male.

• If you were to collect all the LEGO bricks in the world and stack them together then they would be 2,386,065 miles tall.

• Although LEGO makes toys they are also classed as the world’s biggest tire manufacturer, making over 400 million tires each year to keep their fleet of various LEGO vehicles rolling.

• While LEGO was the first to patent the LEGO brick that we know today, they didn’t technically invent them. The story has it that the salesman who came to sell Godtfred his first plastic injection mold machine was carrying an example interlocking brick in his pocket which had been designed and patented by Hilary Fisher Page. Godtfred improved on the design by perforating the brick and adding tubes on the bottom to help tighten the connection.

  
  

  LEGO is now recognised as the World’s Most Powerful Brand, towering over Google, Nike, and Ferrari to claim the top spot.

27th January Family Literacy Day

Family Literacy Day 2025 Theme: Learn to be Green, Together

Family Literacy Day on January 27th is a time to reflect on the power of reading and writing, especially for young learners. Literacy is the foundation of all future learning, and it’s never too early to start fostering a love for books and words in children. From the moment a child is born, they begin absorbing the language and skills that will shape their future educational success.

Literacy isn’t just about learning to read and write; it’s about communication, problem-solving, and understanding the world around us. For young children, literacy is a crucial skill that helps them develop cognitive, social, and emotional abilities. Research has shown that early exposure to books and language development is one of the most significant predictors of academic achievement later in life. Children who are read to regularly develop stronger language skills, have better vocabulary, and are better equipped to tackle challenges in school.

“Family literacy refers to the way parents, children, and extended family member use literacy at home and in the community. Family literacy occurs naturally during the routines of daily living and helps children and adults get things done.” – Hayden, R. & Sanders, M. (2007).

It refers to the role of parents, grandparents, and any other family member in increasing the reading and writing competencies of the family. Especially as a child spends more time at home than at school, the family's support in enhancing their skills is crucial. It can refer to time spent outdoor, fun activities, and games. Research shows that one year of parental education has a more significant impact than a higher parental income. 

For quite some time now, I have been buying books at Lifeline Book Fairs for my sisters and friends who are grandmothers. In this way they have a box of books at their place for when their grandchildren visit and they have an activity that the grandchildren will ask to partake in. One of my friend's husbands told me at Christmas that he wasn't convinced that reading to the children made any difference and he took the books from me to keep me happy, until he spent holiday time with another family member where the grandchildren were not interested in being read to or looking at books. He also commented on the differences in vocabulary, sentence structure and questioning, just all oracy skills and engagement with adults.

This made me smile. He is such a convert now. He tells all his friends at the golf club about reading to their children and grandchildren.

My daughter is home for the Australian Day Long Weekend and yesterday she went to visit a  friend who had just had a second baby. 'Mum I need a new book for the baby and some 'recycled' books for the big sister.' Luckily I could oblige!

So my contribution to this year's theme about being green together is to keep ensuring that any books that children have outgrown are recycled to a new reading home until they too can hand them on. You cannot have 'too many books'...recycle their use. Children love revisiting old favourites and so do their parents.

This article Bonding over books: The benefits of reading with grandparents by Tricia Kings is well worth reading for further ideas and suggested books.

24th January Peanut Butter Day

It is  Peanut Butter Day. Have you ever wondered where does peanut butter comes from? Well - it dates back to the Aztecs and Incas around 1000 BC. When it's homemade, peanut butter is a great source of vitamin E, B6, niacin, calcium, potassium and iron! It also contains protein and healthy monounsaturated fat. It is healthiest with no added sugar or salt.

There are so many children's books which have peanut butter in the title, but often it is a name for a character and not the spread. Also it often appears with Jelly as this is a favourite american combination.

If your students are curious about how peanut butter is made there are books to help 

 

Want to make a peanut butter sandwich?

Want to have fun with the silly peanut butter rhyme?

Peanut Butter and Jelly  by Nadine Bernard Westcott

Terry Border has fun with Peanut Butter toast as a character in his food series

Now looking at the connection between peanut butter and jelly...

21st January International Playdate Day

International Playdate Day began as an idea created by Ilona Viluma, a mother who was concerned about the use of technology kids have been using over the past decade. 

Feeling that kids spend too much time on their tablets and phones instead of with each other, she developed this event in 2018 as a way to get kids to play with one another again and to get parents to start scheduling playdates for their kids so their kids can learn the social skills they need to succeed and interact with people.

When I was a child no-one used the word playdate. We just went to the park or to someone else's place to play, but I do hear the parents in the library planning playdates for their child with another parent, so the children I teach definitely use the word playdate. This is reflected in the titles of books in our library, but on a closer look I did see that the majority of them are American which is where the word originated.

If your child is struggling with the concept, perhaps read a story and discuss how the characters in the book cope with it.

• Playdate  by Maryann Macdonald and Rahele Jomepour Bell 

• The Playdate  by Uje Brandelius and Clara Dackenberg

• Playdates Rule! by Rob McClurkan

• We Have a Playdate  by Frank W.Dormer

• Ladybug Girl and the Best Ever Playdate  by David Soman and Judy Davis

20th January Penguin Appreciation Day

Today is Penguin Awareness Day—a time to celebrate these remarkable birds and highlight the need to protect them.  Penguins are more than just adorable animals; they're key indicators of ocean health and vital players in marine ecosystems.

Penguins fascinate me, and I am not a bird lover. Perhaps it is because they do not fly that I can separate them from birds. I have written about this day and World Penguin Day which is 25th April, several times before, so here I am just going to highlight some books that have been published in the last couple of years and which I probably haven't mentioned before.

Some nonfiction:

• Do Penguins' Feet Freeze?  by The National Museum

• Do Penguins Like the Cold? by Huw Lewis-Jones

• Passionate About Penguins by Owen Davey

• The Penguin Who Lost His Way by John Hay

Some fiction:

• Ethel the Penguin  by Ursula Dubosarsky

• Jonty Gentoo by Julia Donaldson

• Penguin's Egg by Anna Kemp

• A Penguin Like Me by Marcus Pfister

• Clive Penguin by Huw Lewis Jones

For even more penguin books see my Pinterest page

18th January Winnie the Pooh Day

 
It is Winnie the Pooh Day! It is held on this day because it is the creator of the stories, A.A.Milne's birthday. Milne created these stories for his son Christopher Robin who had a teddy bear, bought from Harrods that he named Winnie-the-Pooh after the bear, Winnie that he visited at the London Zoo.

Winnie-the-Pooh (or Pooh) and Christopher Robin had adventures in Hundred Acre Wood, which was inspired by Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashwood Forest in East Sussex—situated 48kms  south of London—where the Londoner Milne's country home was located. Joining them on these adventures were other animal characters that were also based on toys of Christopher Milne – Piglet, Eyesore, Kanga, Roo and Tigger. 

The stories first appeared in1924. In 1961,The Walt Disney Company bought a license to use Pooh as a cartoon/movie character and they removed the hyphens in his name and dressed him in the clothes seen on the Disney Pooh. The original toys are in a glass case at the New York Library and they look like the E.H Shepherd illustrations.

I love reading Finding Winnie by Lindsay Mattick to my Year 2 classes. They are amazed to learn that a bear went from Winnipeg in Canada to England with a vet during World War Iand that the bear was gifted to the London Zoo. I also read the picture book biography of A.A Milne  by Charlotte Guillain to the students so that they can compare Milne's World War I endeavours with that of the army vet, Harry Colebourn.

When it comes to the actual Pooh stories, I much prefer the original E.H.Shepherd illustrations. but I know that the young children I teach prefer coloured illustrations and are so exposed to Disney that they want Pooh to look like the one they see.

Several well known English authors have written prequels and sequels to the stories, most notably Jane Riordan and Jeanne Willis. Jeanne Willis' picture book story episodes work well for my young audience. So far she has done four. They are illustrated by Mark Burgess. (Notice she has reinstated the hyphens).

• Winnie-the-Pooh and Me 

• Winnie-the-Pooh at the Palace

• Winnie-the-Pooh and the Party

• What Shall We Do Winnie-the-Pooh?

Jane Riordan is the author of  the picture books for Disney but you will notice that she too has used the hyphens in Pooh's name.

• Winnie-the-Pooh Meets the Queen 

• Winnie-the-Pooh: The Long Winter's Sleep

• Winnie-the-Pooh Happy Birthday to You

• Winnie-the-Pooh: A Tree for Christmas

• Winnie-the-Pooh : A Song for Christmas

• Winnie-the-Pooh; Easter Hunt