The Learning Umbrella

My books: 

I still believed it was my job to fill the time quickly with a minimum of distractions, and the appearance of a correct answer gave me the surest feeling that I was teaching.  It did not occur to me that the distractions might be the sounds of the children thinking. (page 7)

Bad Guys Don’t Have Birthdays: Fantasy Play at Four by Vivian Gussin Paley

Paley is an early childhood educator who started tape recording her classroom interactions, and the result is an interesting glimpse into the world of preschoolers.  But most of the book is just the kids being kids, with little analysis or theory from Paley, and I got bored with it about half-way through.

Another book from my 8×8 in 2008 challenge: Madame Bovary.  I’ve heard so many opinions about the book: that it’s mysogynistic, that it’s immoral, that it’s classist, etc.  I enjoyed it a great deal, and the end actually made me very sad.  What I got out of the book was that some people get so obsessed with what they think must be better than “normal” life that they can’t be happy with what they have and they set themselves up for tragedy.  It reminded me of my own loss of illusions about ever-lasting happiness and the gradual acceptance of reality and adult responsibilities that I think is “growing up”.  But Madame Bovary never does grow up.

Children’s Books:

Because we have new pet hermit crabs, we read: A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle and Is This a House for Hermit Crab? by Megan McDonald.  The Carle book is cute but a bit strange (like so much of his work!) and the McDonald book was also cute and made more sense.

Block City  by Robert Louis Stevenson is a nice poem about imagining the city you have built out of blocks.

Francis the Earthquake Dog is about a young boy going through a large earthquake.  He finds a little dog that was buried in a building, and his family becomes stronger as they pull together.  It was a great jumping off point for having a few earthquake drills here and showing the kids what to do.

Henry and Mudge and the Snowman Plan by Cynthia Rylant.  There’s a snowman building contest in the park, and Henry and his Dad have a plan …  Who doesn’t love these books?

I Am an Ankylosaurus has really terse language, but the kids loved it.  Maybe it was exactly because of the firm and short sentences and the lumbering quality of the book that matched its subject matter.

The Snowflake: A Water Cycle Story takes a bit of a new spin on the water cycle format by showing the cycle through a year and including snow.  The snowflake falls, melts, freezes, melts, becomes spring runoff, etc.  It’s well illustrated and a nice science tie-in for all the seasonal books and activities we’ve been doing.

Flower Fairies of the Winter.  I remember these books from when I was little, and they are still just as lovely as an adult reading them to my kids.  Each illustration of a plant and fairy is paired with a short poem.

Brambly Hedge: Winter Story This is the first of the Brambly Hedge books that we’ve read, and we quite enjoyed it.  The cross-cut illustrations remind me of the view into a dollhouse, and the story of winter life for the little mice and the Snow Ball they throw is charming.

How Ganesh Got His Elephant Head.  Very richly illustrated, this is the story of the Hindu god, Ganesh, and how he came to have the head of an elephant and his place in the organization of Hindu gods.  It’s also a touching story of the devotion between a mother and child, if you look past the war, destruction, and cutting off of heads.