14th January Shoe Buying Day

The PBS Calendar lists activities for parents to share with their children each day and today they are buying shoes. In Australia it is an activity that is on many parent-to-do lists as the new school year starts in two weeks. Remember that scene when Alexander is made to buy 'plain old white ones' when shopping for sneakers with his mother and brothers in Alexander's Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day.

I went searching for a Shoe Day as after all there does seem to be a day for everything else even 'socks', but besides Two Different Coloured Shoes Day on 3rd May and Sneakers Day on 9th October there wasn't a specific Shoe Day. So I'm instigating one, by saying there is a multitude of books, rhymes and songs which to explore when celebrating 'shoes'. And I have decided to start the term with my preschool classes doing that. I will have four or five lessons with each group so I think we will probably look at some aspect of shoes for each session. Usually we have a book, a rhyme or song and some activity.

They will all have new shoes and we will have plenty to look at, compare and discuss. We will see who has shoelaces, who has buckles and who has velcro. We will start with the book Whose Shoes? and find out how many different shoes there are and how many words we have for types of shoes. This video and song will help add to the list of shoes too.

We will have fun with Pete the Cat. He has two books which feature shoes... Pete the Cat: Rocking in my School Shoes and Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes . The children love to sing along with these which we can do courtesy of YouTube.

In each lesson with preschoolers I also like to introduce or revisit a nursery rhyme as they enjoy reciting them and don't know them like they used to. There are four that I can think of that feature shoes.
• 1 2 Buckle My Shoe
• There Was an Old Lady
• Cobbler Cobbler
• Diddle Diddle Dumpling My Son John

There are also a large number of songs complete with actions here.

While 'rhyme' is centre-most with preschoolers it will be fun to share books that are written in rhyme like
• What Can You Do With a Shoe?  by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers and Maurice Sendak. What a great question to discuss before even reading the book. Then look at the rhyme...
What can you do with a shoe? You can put it on your ear or wear it on your head or butter it like bread or use apple jam instead!
• Grandpa's Slippers by Joy Watson. This is part of a series of books about Grandpa and his clothing. They are written in rhyme and children and grandparents both laugh when these are read aloud.
• Shoes From Grandpa by Mem Fox and Patricia Mullins. This is a cumulative rhyme where family members describe the clothes they plan to give Jessie to go with the shoes from Grandpa.

Next dogs and shoes. Discuss what dogs do with shoes and then introduce these three books:
• One Two That's My Shoe! by Alison Murray
• Shoe Dog by Megan McDonald and Katherine Tillotson
• A Dog Wearing Shoes  by Sangmi Ko.
Each of these is humorous and likely to enthuse the children to talk.

And of course there's always fairytales. Here are five which feature shoes:
• Cinderella
• The Elves and the Shoemaker
• Puss in Boots
• The Twelve Dancing Princesses , and
• Red Shoes  by Hans Christian Andersen.

See the shoe possibilities really are endless!

16th August Beatrice Schenk de Regniers (1914 - 2000) Marchette Chute (1909 - 1994) Eileen Spinelli (1942)

This is the birthday of poets! Each of these three women has written poetry that school children should remember, recite and revisit. I wrote about Beatrice Schenk de Regniers last year here.

Marchette Chute is an American author who is well known as the author of biographies about other writers such as Shakespeare, Chaucer and Ben Jonson. While these are for older audiences, she is also a children's poet. Her verses are usually short ideal for handwriting practice, vocabulary discussion and teaching rhyme with very young children.

See examples such as these:

My Family

Part of my family is grown up tall.

Part of my family is little and small.

I'm in the middle and pleased with them all.

Showers

Squelch and squirt and squiggle,

Drizzle and drip and drain-

Such a lot of water

Comes down with the rain!

The third poet, also American, is Eileen Spinelli. She is responsible for many collections of poems published in picture book format. Her website has a section entitled 'Poem of the Month' so that each time you visit you will find something new. I love her collection of poems, Tea Party Today: Poems to Sip and Savour as I have a collection of teapots and love to make a cup of tea and read. The children at school love Sophie's Masterpiece, a story about a spider who is devoted to her webmaking craft and The Best Story, a book to help when discussing writing and what to put in a story, but she is probably best known for her story, Somebody Loves You, Mr Hatch about a community working together to make someone feel valued.

16th August Beatrice Schenk de Regniers (1914 - 2000)

As teachers we have a lot to thank Beatrice Schenk de Regniers for as she was the first editor of Scholastic's Lucky Book Club. She was committed to ensuring children had books to read at prices they could afford. She negotiated with Scholastic to work four days and have a day off to do her own writing. Her picture book May I Bring a Friend won the Caldecott Medal in 1965.

Beatrice Schenk de Regniers was also committed to poetry. When I started teaching I had this small book of poetry called Poems Children Will Sit Still For and it was failproof. It did not matter what I shared with a class from this book it always worked. Well Beatrice and her fellow colleagues on the Lucky Book Club staff had collected those poems and published it as a book. Years later the collection was re-imaged, renamed Sing a Song of Popcorn, illustrated by nine Caldecott Medal winning illustrators and reissued. Beatrice has written the introduction in this anthology and here she has this wise message..."To my mind, a poem is not completed until it is read aloud...it seems to me that the full power of a poem - the jazzy rhythms, the lyrical cadence, the dance of the language, the sheer pleasure of fooling around with sound and meaning - can be fully appreciated only if the poem is read aloud."

One of her poems, If We Walked on Our Hands is on page 105 of this book. This is the first verse:

If we walked on our hands

instead of our feet

And we all ate paper

instead of meat

What a mixed-up place this world would be.

What a mixed-up

fixed-up

topsy-turvy

sit-u-a-tion.