16th November World Button Day

Today is World Button Day. Imagine what our life would be like without buttons. How different our clothes would be. It seems to me that they have a higher profile than ever. Now they are used for decorative purposes as much as for utilitarian purposes. So many greeting cards, artworks, book illustrations incorporate them as part of the collage, and yet now I am at home sitting at my computer I am having trouble thinking of some. I know I covered a book this week with a big button on the cover! What was it?

After cooking dinner and scanning back through the week, I've remembered. Thumbelina by Lucy M George. The story has nothing to do with buttons, but right there on the cover are buttons, enough to send you looking for buttons to do collage with children or sewing buttons onto things.

Since writing about buttons last year, I have also added these two 'button' books to the collection.
Pete the Cat and his Groovy Buttons like all the other Pete the Cat titles has become a favourite with my preschoolers and who wouldn't like to have a pocket full of magic buttons like the witch in Witchety Sticks and the Magic Buttons?

7th November Lawrence Hargrave Memorial Kite Day

The Lawrence Hargrave Memorial Kite Day is a NSW Department of Education and Training event that brings 1000 Illawarra primary school students together at Stanwell Park to celebrate the achievements of Australian aviation pioneer Lawrence Hargrave.  On the 12th of November , 1894, Lawrence Hargrave became the first man in the world to achieve vertical lift off while tethered to four box-kites on Stanwell Park beach. Hargrave's achievement was one of the most significant milestones in the development of manned flight.

Lawrence Hargrave, an aeronautical pioneer and inventor was born in England in 1850, but came to Australia in 1865 where he lived until he died in 1915. In 1893 he moved to Stanwell Park and began working on his second great invention, the box kite. He wanted to lift himself into the air. After a number of attempts on 12th November 1894 he lifted himself from the beach at Stanwell Park in a four kite construction attached to the ground by piano wire. This invention then inspired inventors and flight enthusiasts in Europe and America, in particular the Wright Brothers. Australia commemorates his achievements with his appearance on our $20 note.

While there aren't any children's books specifically about Lawrence Hargraves, there are many nonfiction books about flight, the history of flight, the Wright brothers and kites.

3rd November National Non-fiction Day

It is National Non-Fiction Day in Britain. This is not a day we celebrate in Australia, but perhaps we should. As more and more information is being sought via the internet and online sources, teachers and librarians are spending less time using non-fiction books for research purposes.

I still use books to teach my under eights the parts of a good-for- research non-fiction book. The Usborne Beginners series of books is perfect for teaching  Year 1 about headings, contents, glossaries and indexes. I have enough of these for each child to have their own book to look at. The photographs are good, the contents page well set out, there are fact boxes, labels, large font and just the right amount of information for them to read. Pebble Plus is another series of non-fiction books that you could also use to do the same sort of activities with young students.

In the library we always have Non-fiction Monday. This means that if you come to the library for your take-home readers, that on Monday you must take a non-fiction text. Some of the most popular 'readers' are the National Geographic titles and any of those  authored by Seymour Simon.

The other thing that has happened to non-fiction books is that many of them have become 'works of art' and just like fiction picture books they are hard to resist. Illustrators like Steve Jenkins and Ed Young have shown readers that illustrations can certainly enhance the factual text.

2nd November Halloween aftermath

Just wanted to share two classroom success stories that started with a children's picture book.

Firstly a library activity with a preschool class of four and five year olds.  We read a very short picture book called Say Boo! by Lynda Graham-Barber and Barbara Lehman. It is about a little ghost called Ben who is having trouble saying 'boo' and therefore isn't able to frighten anyone on Halloween. He practises and learns to say other words, all of which rhyme with 'boo'. He learns 'moo', 'coo' and 'whoo' from animals he meets until finally when crying, he realises that he is really saying 'boo hoo' which contains the word 'boo'. The children loved that Ben was struggling with something that they found easy, which I found a bit off putting, but they were equally pleased when he succeeded. We made a list of the rhyming words and then made a white paperbag puppet of a ghost. The children had to name their ghost a name that rhymed with 'boo'. They came up with really good names such as Lou, Sue, Spew, Stu, Choo, Woo, Floo and Prue. When we had made the puppets we 'floated' and 'rustled' round the library and then came back to re-enact the story and the rhyme I borrowed from here. Good fun was had by all.

Secondly, I lent the book, How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara and G. Brian Karas to a Year 1 teacher at school and suggested she read it and do as Mr Tiffin, the teacher in the book does with his class. She was very excited about it as it fitted in with her unit of work on celebrations and involved a lot of maths. In the book the teacher buys three pumpkins, a big one, a middle-sized one and a smaller one. The children in the class have to predict which will have the most seeds and then in three groups they clean out the insides of the pumpkin and estimate how many seeds they have. They also need to come up with a plan as to how to count them. The next day after the seeds have dried each group gets their seeds back to count. The Year 1 teacher did this with her class and the children are still talking about putting their hands in the pumpkin and what it felt like. They were involved in estimation, skip counting, hypothesising and testing and they had a lot of fun doing it.  If only I could put photos of children on my blog you would see this fun!

1st November All Saints Day

Year 1 is doing a unit of study on Celebrations and I've had to do a bit of reading this week. Why do teachers think that the librarian knows everything?   T: Why is it called Halloween?  L: Well it comes from the the Eve of All Hallow's.
T: But what is All Hallows? L: Isn't it another name for All Saints Day. 
T: Well what is All Saints Day? L: I think it is the day before All Soul's Day.
So went one conversation I had before I thought I had better do some reading. I found it easy to find books and information about Halloween and its history. The others were harder.

I found this website about All Saints Day helpful and here I read that  it is a day when many Christians remember and honour the saints. Now although I teach at a Christian school it is not a Catholic school and therefore not a lot of emphasis is placed on saints in a religious context. However in a historical context there are many picture books depicting the life of saints. Many of these tell amazing stories and have brilliant illustrations.
Look for these by Demi:
• The Legend of St Nicholas describes the pivotal events in the history and life of the saint who inspired the legend of Santa Claus.
• Mother Teresa  of is a biography of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, known as Mother Teresa for all her time spent helping the poor in Calcutta, India.
• Joan of Arc
These two by Joyce Denham
• Patrick: Saint of Ireland
• Saint Francis of Assisi
And two by Tomie dePaola
• The Holy Twins: Benedict and Scholastica 
• Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland

Then I looked up All Soul's Day and learned that this is a day for  Christian communities to remember deceased family members and friends. This is more like the idea behind the Mexican/ Latin American Day of the Dead. There are also picture books about this day. Among them are:
• Felipa and the Day of the Dead by Birte Muller
• Maria Molina and the Days of the Dead by Kathleen Krull
• Day of the Dead by Tony Johnston & Jeanette Winter
• Calavera Abecedario: A Day of the Dead Alphabet  Book by Jeanette Winter
• Ghost Wings by Barbara Joose & Giselle Potter

So this week I have learned quite a bit about Christian celebrations and some of the pagan connections with them.

31st October Halloween

Well Halloween is here, finally.

 Bong goes the bell in the rickety tower,
 Twelve times...that means it's Spooky Hour.

 Listen! Hush! Oooh, what's that sound?
 The midnight spooks are coming round.

 Hubble bubble, what's that smell?
 Eleven witches stir their spell.

 It starts to fizz. They shriek, "Tee-hee!"
 Then off they zoom on broomsticks, wheeeeee!

 Out of the darkness, what's this here?
 Ten funny, floaty ghosts appear,

 Swirling, whirling, singing, "Whoo-ooooo!
 Watch out, witches. We're after you-ooooooo!"

This is the first three double spreads of a fabulous book called Spooky Countdown to Halloween by Tony Mitton and Guy Parker-Rees. It is a rollicking, rhyming story with plenty of  things to talk about, not least of which is the language. It would make a great mentor text for creative writing. There is onomatopoeia, great verbs, exclamations, questions, appeals to the senses, direct speech and exaggeration. I bought it today and can't wait to try it out.

PS I got to school the next day and thought I would just have a look at Spookyrumpus another book by this talented duo. Something in my consciousness must have been niggling. Guess what it is the same book, just rebranded for Australian audiences. I've been jipped! Oh well they'll both get used.

30th October Monsterfeast

With the run up to Halloween, I have been having fun with my preschool classes. We have been sharing monster stories and talking about what makes a monster, a monster, what makes them scary and how can you tell if they are scary? Of course the monster picture books in my library are not ones that are likely to give the children nightmares and most of the time the children thought they looked friendly 'because they are smiling'. It was good to see them interpret body language as well as their behaviour and spoken words.

First, we read with The Snagglegrollop by Daniel Postgate and Nick Price. The children loved identifying the parts he had - a nose like an elephant, horns like a goat, warts like a frog! Then in the story he meets a Quibblesnuff and they fall in love. The children were rolling on the floor. Then they decided they weren't at all interested in scaring children.

Secondly, we read The Scariest Monster in the World by Lee Weatherly and Algy Craig Hall. This monster smiled on the cover and rubbed his head like he was thinking. 'Not scary' the children predicted. He gets the hiccups and the children had great fun making the hiccup noises. He needs to be scared and the animals show him a mirror which fixes him. The children really liked this solution.

Next I thought we might turn the tables and read about monsters who were scared of children. We read Pog by Lynn Lee and Kim Gamble where the monster is scared of children. This Australian book is out of print, so if you can't find it in a library you could substitute Billy Monster's Daymare by Alan Durant and Ross Collins which is based on the same idea.

All in all the monster books have been very popular, frequently borrowed and a big success. Today in browsing time I caught a group of Kindergarten children poring over The Monster Shop by Julie Beech and trying to decide which monster they liked best and would buy given the choice.

Other popular monster books in the library are:
• Bedtime for Monsters by Ed Vere
• No Monsters Allowed! by Tracey Hammet and Jan McCafferty
• A Rumpus in the Night! and Another Rumpus by Nick Ward
• Stomp! by Jeanne Willis and Paul Howard
• If You're a Monster and You Know It by Rebecca Emberley
• There Was an Old Monster by Rebecca Emberley