6th December Mitten Tree Day

 

Mitten Tree Day celebrates the gift of warmth. It's a day to collect mittens, hang them on a Christmas tree, and then hand them out to those in need. Those who live in cold climates understand the necessity of mittens. This winter clothing item is essential for keeping the hands warm while outdoors. It may be cold in the Northern Hemisphere but it is getting quite hot here and everyone is looking forward to the end of school and the summer holidays.

This post would be more relevant in July here, so I have filed away a note to self, celebrate mittens in winter next year because we have quite a few books which feature mittens.

Two favourite mitten stories  spring to mind immediately, Three Little Kittens  who have lost their mittens and the Ukranian folktale, The Mitten where a number of animals seek shelter in a mitten they find in the snow.

Other books to look for in the library:

1st May Mother Goose Day

Old Mother Goose,
When she wanted to wander,
Would ride through the air
On a very fine gander.

Jack's mother came in,
And caught the goose soon,
And mounting its back,
Flew up to the moon.

At school we have celebrated Mother Goose Day before. I have a talking Mother Goose plush toy which recites nursery rhymes and as a prep school library that caters for 3 to 8 year olds we have quite a few anthologies of nursery rhymes. These are not borrowed by parents or children. The parents all think their children are past that and that nursery rhymes are for babies. I find this sad, because the students I teach do not know their nursery rhymes, beyond Twinkle Twinkle Little Star; Humpty Dumpty; Incy Wincy Spider; Little Miss Muffet; and Baa Baa Black Sheep. If I say the opening lines of many others, they can't always finish them.

This year I decided to put together a display for Mother Goose Day of nursery rhyme mashup stories, that is stories that have characters from nursery rhymes but not the usual words. Then when parents borrow these to read with their child, perhaps through discussion they will realise their child does not know the original rhymes and will then come back to the library looking for books that give the original rhymes and further verses beyond what they know.  I would love it if they knew The Grand Old Duke of York; Cobbler Cobbler; Hickety Pickety; Hickory Dickory Dock; Sing a Song of Sixpence and many more.Of course there are preschool children who do know them and they are very good at completing rhymes, predicting rhyming words and are well on their way to reading.

When I started to collect books together for the display I found the library had 94 books with 'nursery rhyme - fiction' as a subject heading so it wasn't hard to find suitable reading material for my audience. Here is a pinterest page of what I found.

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!

1st May Mother Goose Day!

Another month down! I've now done 3 months. Today is Mother Goose Day, a day to re-appreciate nursery rhymes. They may have once been seen as inconsequential rhymes, but now we see them as an important part of oral history and literature.

Nursery rhymes are often the first exposure children have to the rhythm and rhyme of language. They are fun. For generations children have laughed at Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall, Jack and Jill falling down and pies full of blackbirds. Babies laugh when someone play This Little Piggie on their toes!

Nursery rhymes

• introduce children to story structure in its simplest form. There is an orientation - Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater has a wife. There is a problem - He's having trouble keeping her. And, there is a resolution - He puts her in a pumpkin shell and there he keeps her very well.

• introduce children to a cast of characters who are going to keep reappearing throughout their reading life. You cannot enjoy and fully comprehend books such as Ahlberg's Each Peach Pear Plum, Anholt's Seriously Silly Rhymes and Libby Hathorn's Over the Moon if you don't get the allusions to nursery rhymes.

• enrich children's vocabulary. They use words that may no longer be in everyday use, but are still useful to know. It is your chance to explain words such as 'pail' (Jack and Jill); 'lean' (Jack Sprat); 'curds', 'whey', 'tuffet' (Little Miss Muffet).

• encourage thinking skills. Many of them are riddles e.g.As I was going to St Ives.

Many of the parents I interact with, feel that their children are past nursery rhymes, but it is not until they are able to read them for themselves that they can have maximum fun with them. They can now play with them, innovate on them, corrupt them etc. They can change Baa Baa Black Sheep to Moo Moo brown cow, Have you any milk? Yes Ma'am, Yes Ma'am, Three buckets filled. They can corrupt them as has happened in playground rhymes such as those in June Factor's books such as Far Out Brussell Sprout where Hickory Dickory Dock becomes

Hickory, dickory, dock,

Two mice ran up the clock.

The clock struck one,

And the other got away.

Dig out all the Nursery Rhyme collections and encourage activities such as:

* compare how different illustrators depict the same character. Make sure you include older anthologies such as a Kate Greenaway one with a newer one such as a Rosemary Wells one. Which illustrator's picture most closely matches the one you have in your head?

* play games with the rhymes such as charades, who am I, and what is the next line?

* do some cooking or eating. Introduce children to curds and whey (an old term for cottage cheese) or peas porridge (a thick pea soup).

* research the origin of specific rhymes. Who was Mother Goose? Who was Old King Cole?

But, the best thing to do is to read aloud from an extensive collection of rhymes and find some that are new to you and the children.