It’s one of the “I’m Going to Read” series, from the first level (50 words); the series has 4 levels, with stories at the levels using 50, 100, 200, and 300 different words in their telling. You can see all the titles in the series here. Gareth is past this beginning reading stage now, but being under the weather I decided to simply run with it. I’m glad I did, as it turned into a fun little journey into the world of literary allusions. Once he finished reading me the story, I ran downstairs and got our copy of Robert McCloskey’s classic Make Way for Ducklings.

As I started reading, the boys grew more and more interested: “Hey! The duck is called Mrs. Mallard in this book too!…”Hey! They’re going to the Public Garden, just like in the other book!…”There’s the swan boat!”…(much giggling) “The ducklings are called Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack!” and so on. I mentioned briefly that doing what had been done in the first book Gareth read—referring back to a story from another author—is called “making an allusion”. I told the boys that the more they read, the more they’d start seeing allusions and connections all over the place. And not just in books. We recently watched a Bill Nye episode (The Heart, I think, but it might have been Respiration) in which Bill talks about how our heart keeps pumping and pumping and going and going with no thought from us, while a giant pink bunny banging a drum walks by in the background. The boys HOWLED with laughter—we’d spent some time one cold and dull winter’s night showing them old commercials on youtube, and the Energizer Bunny featured prominently. They got the comedic allusion.

Some more in depth side-by-side comparing followed:

Ten Times Better turned out to be a far better book and better fit for our family that was apparent from the cover. I’d gotten it out of the library ages ago, and it had laid around, unread—until I got notice this week that it was due back. When I finally got around to reading it aloud to the boys as part of our math lessons that day, we all loved it! It is a series of playful poems (and playful artwork!) featuring different animals, with the first animal saying what he/she thinks the best number is, and why. And the second animal saying, in effect, “Oh, yeah? This ten-times-bigger number is better!” So the book starts with an elephant singing the praises of ONE (as it has one trunk), and a giant squid saying TEN (as in tentacles) is clearly better than one! And on it goes with very logical choices for the animals: a 3-toed sloth, a 9-banded armadillo, a giraffe with 70 spots on its neck. And my children’s favourite animal and line of poetry: “I have 60 teeth” says crocodile, “I’m a great  masticator. (That means I chew first, and ask questions later.).” A delightful book for kids learning multiplication and into animals.

The History of Counting was a book that caught Daegan’s attention; Gareth half-listened as he played on the floor nearby. It does exactly as its title suggests, outlining some of the major steps in humankind’s “invention of counting”, from using pebbles / physical markers (counting without numbers), to body counting (“1 is left little finger…11 is left neck…16 is right ear” up to a very limited number: 28), to using different words to represent the same number of different things (like we use “twins” to mean two babies who share a womb, but “duo” to mean two people in other contexts, like music), and so on. We visit the Sumerians (whose ‘base 60’ lives on today in our number system: 60 seconds in a minutes, 60 minutes in an hour, 360 degrees in a circle),  Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Hindus, etc. up to modern day arabic numerals and the importance of zero and place value. Daegan was particularly engaged with the section on Roman Numerals, and the way the book showed their severe limitations when it came to computation. This is a very abstract concept for a 9-year-old, that’s for sure—understanding why place value was such a big leap over Roman Numerals—but attempting the addition problems in the book:

1084+1797

vs. the same numbers written in Roman Numerals:

MLXXXIV + MDCCXCVII

drove the point home. And even more so when I suggested he try multiplying those numbers instead of adding them! Happy reading!

Anyways, back to Roald Dahl. We’ve also recently enjoyed the audio book of The BFG in the car, and the boys were absolutely tickled pink to find Roald Dahl, who was born on September 13th, as the subject of today’s Brain Pop movie. (It’s a free app which I wrote about here).

The boys are now reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator with Jim as their bedtime book, and are curious about James and the Giant Peach as well. And I did some reading of my own when I found out that Roald Dahl was a staunch vaccine supporter, a view I can understand after reading about the death of his daughter Olivia at age 7 from measles encephalitis.

Any other Roald Dahl we should read? What’s your favourite, either from your own childhood or as a read-aloud with your kids?

I’ve written before about some of the things we used early on in helping Gareth learn to read, like the We Read Phonics series, the Mouse Makes Words book, and Evan-Moor’s Word Family series workbooks. Though Gareth enjoyed these things, he was still needing a lot of help and firmly at the “struggling emergent reader” stage, rather than the “confident fluent reader” he is now. Somewhere in the following series of materials, things “clicked” and Gareth became a reader:

All About Spelling “more words and phrases” section at the end of each lesson, has taken Gareth from slowly reading (sounding out) simple CVC words, like these, in April:

to this by late June, when we finished Level 1:

to fluently reading this, today:

All other materials we borrowed from the library. We used two ‘Sound of the Letter A / B / C etc’ phonics reader series, both from Child’s World. The Wonder Books Phonics Readers with titles like:

and the Phonics Friends series, with titles like:

We read much of a second series Treasure Bay, the folks who do the We Read Phonics books which Gareth loved. This series is called We Both Read, and has you and your child reading the story together, your parent page with more complex text, and the child’s page simpler. These books have a very good progression from pre-reading (child’s page has only one word, and it completes a rhyme from the parent’s page), to quite complex. We stopped at Level 1-2, with Gareth reading about one paragraph of material on his page. I thought the titles that were retellings of classic stories / fairy tales were particularly good, and the series has a good balance of fiction and non-fiction, boy-friendly and girl-friendly titles:

The I Can Read! series, specifically the “My First I Can Read!" titles, like the adventures of Biscuit the pup, Mittens the cat, and more:

Now, we are out of series books and on to a HUGE fantastic levelled reading list (which you can find here) which I learned about at the Well-Trained Mind K-8 Curriculum board. (If you haven’t checked the boards / forums out yet, I’d encourage you to do so, as discussion is not all about the Well-Trained Mind or even conventional curriculum. And folks there range from conservative Christian school-at-home to athiest / agnostic unschoolers, and everything in between.) Though my local library only has about 1/4 of the titles (I’m finding it has more of them as we get further along to higher levels), the list is so huge that even with that low ‘hit ratio’, my family room floor still looks like this:

Gareth reads me 2 or 3 books each day, sometimes more. We always read snuggled together on the couch, making it one of my favourite times each day. Hope this gave you some new ideas for creating a low-cost learning-to-read program for your own kids. Happy reading!

The story is told by a Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, an 82-year-old eccentric woman who the children visit at the end of the story in a quest to solve a mystery involving a statue and Michelangelo—a mystery that caught their imagination while living at the museum. Mrs. Frankweiler’s unusual filing system (the ‘mixed-up files’) holds the answer to the mystery, and the children are given one hour to find the solution—if they can! Featuring strong female characters (both Claudia and Mrs. Frankweiler are as capable as any male in the book), my 9-year-old son thoroughly enjoyed this story, enhanced no doubt by his own love of museums, mysteries and learning—and the fact that Jamie was the exact same age. Oh, and just a “wee editorial” from me: unlike modern award-winning children’s books, which seem to me to often have dark themes, there is none of that in this book. Yes, Claudia feels bored and as though she is treated unfairly at home (and as the oldest of 4 kids, and the only girl, she’s probably right!). And Claudia and Jamie tease each other occasionally, and argue, as do all siblings—but that’s about it. It’s an unusual and intriguing story, and one you will not be embarrassed to read aloud with a 4-year-old toddler—or 74-year-old grandmother—in the room. Happy reading!

All three are superb retellings of Native American folktales that teach a moral lesson. Here’s a description of How Chipmunk Got His Stripes (from amazon—I’ll leave you to read the other reviews and comments yourself):

K-Gr 3-Bear struts through the forest, bragging as he goes: "I am Bear. I am the biggest of all the animals. Yes, I am!-I can do anything. Yes, I can!" Little Brown Squirrel elects to challenge him: "Can you tell the sun not to rise tomorrow morning?" Bear accepts the challenge. As the sun sets, he issues his command and the two settle down to see what morning will bring. As the night progresses, the braggart continues to boast, and Squirrel cannot resist teasing. When the sun predictably rises in the morning, Bear is disgruntled and angry, and his taunter foolishly continues to tease. When Bear threatens to eat the little creature, Squirrel makes a desperate dash for his burrow. He is able to escape, but not before Bear has raked his back with his sharp claws. Although the scratches heal, they leave Squirrel with long, pale stripes on his back. He is now Chipmunk, the Striped One. In their introductory authors’ notes, the Bruchacs indicate that the story is an amalgam of tales they have heard from Cherokee, Abenaki, and Mohawk sources, and has further been fleshed out through their own telling over the years. The result is polished, cohesive, and energetic. While the story begs to be told, Aruego and Dewey’s vibrantly hued trademark watercolors add significantly to the humor. A priority purchase for most collections.-Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Happy reading!

This novel is highly praised and widely regarded as a “Canadian classic”, and it clearly left an impression on my boys. Here’s some artwork I found on the kitchen table where they were eating lunch and listening to me read the last couple chapters of the book today; first Gareth’s (age 6) drawing, then Daegan’s (age 8 ):

While overall I enjoyed the book, there were a number of elements that disturbed me from my 2011, avid birder point of view.  For example, the owls come to BIlly via being orphaned (Wol) and  mistreated (Weeps), but early on in the book BIlly and his friend are keen on finding owls as pets by disturbing nests and taking young at “just the right age” (old enough to survive, but young enough to “imprint” to some degree on humans). And they in fact go with their science teacher to find nests and do disturb them. Yes, I know that times and morals change, and that was what the boys and I talked about using this book as a spark for discussion. Egg-collecting from bird nests was once a popular hobby as well but is now frowned upon, as is any nest-disturbing activity. The email birding list I am on does not allow members to post locations of nests if they find them, as they know the birds will be hounded by nature-gazers and photographers. In another part of the book, Billy’s dad shoots and kills crows for much of an afternoon—and while crows are hardly my favourite birds, it did seem a tad harsh to shoot them for acting like, well….crows! (They hounded Wol on a camping trip). And another section talks about disturbing a prairie chicken nest, something I find doubly sad as that bird is now extirpated from Saskatchewan, and all of Canada, in fact.

The chapter about the pet fair in which Wol and Weeps and the rattlesnake Billy’s friend snuck in to their display was absolutely hilarious, though. 

The boys and I read Sir Cumference and the Isle of Immeter  (Canada) (US), which is about area and perimeter, and briefly mentions pi. I had put The Dragon of Pi from the same series on hold, but it hasn’t come in yet.

And for dinner tonight we made our own pizza pies (using premade crusts—I’m not that much of a domestic goddess! ). Which reminds me of an amusing math cartoon Jim shared with me a while back, from this site:

The boys loaded their pizzas up with what we call “wheatballs” (faux meatballs), with Daegan adding sauteed mushrooms as well, over a simple olive oil sauce. Jim and I opted for more traditional pizzas with tomato sauce, and toppings like caramelized onions, sundried tomato, mushrooms, red pepper, olives (Jim), feta (me), and Jim tried Daiya brand mozza which melted really well.

And chilling in the fridge right now we have our homemade (again, save the premade graham cracker crust) chocolate coconut pie. Mmmm…. It’s no doubt a good thing for all our waistlines that 3/14 comes only once a year. Unless we choose to celebrate Approximate Pi Day (July 22, or 22/7).

The book serves as a playful and friendly introduction to topics like exponents, scientific notation, what exactly infinity is—it is not “the largest number”, there is no such thing—and the difference between real mathematical terms (billion, trillion…octillion…googol) and those that are common words people use—zillion, bajillion, etc.—but are not actual numbers. They all are just expressive ways of saying “A LOT!”

The book also gives real world examples of many numbers, big and small, so kids start to get a sense of the advantages of using exponents and scientific notion, from the number of written characters there are in Chinese (about 40,000 vs. our 26 letters), to the number of tootsie rolls made each day in a factory, to measurements in outer space. While I think Daegan at age 8 got somewhat more out of the book and its concepts than Gareth at age 6, they both enjoyed the read, they both came away understanding the different between real math words and made up ones, and they both understood a little about using exponents and scientific notation for very large numbers as it is much shorter to say and write. And they were both tickled pink to learn that a boy near their age had coined the term ‘googol’. Happy reading!

We’ve now read three level 1 books:

Pat, Cat and Rat and Matt and Sid are fiction; Big Cats non-fiction. All three were very comfortable for Gareth to read aloud. He’s also read my three level 2 books, which seem to be just the right level for him at present:

And two from level 3, which has proven a stretch for Gareth, but one he is managing with just a bit of help from Mom or Dad:

A few things I particularly like about these books. They start simple—very simple, much like the Bob books, just a few words per page making up a simple sentence: “I am Pat” or “I am mad at Dan!” The text is quite large and easy on the eyes of a beginning reader (why oh why do SO MANY beginning reader books have small type???), and the pictures colourful and engaging. The books keep to fairly simple words, but not in a stifling “See Dick. See Jane. See Dick and Jane” kind of way, as each book features some common ‘sight words’, like “there” “is” or “when”. I particularly like that a list of these sight words—again in large text—is included at the beginning of each title, allowing you to go over them with your child. And unlike other series which list EVERY word in the given book—my 6-year-old PANICS when he sees these lists, 3 or 4 columns long with 15-20 words per column—these titles focus on a very limited (8 – 10 or so) number of key or sight words, like so:

The beginning and end pages of the book contain suggestions for games and activities to support your developing reader, like playing sight word memory / concentration, or playing rhyming games, or incorporating movement into sounding out words for kinesthetic learners. And I love that they stress, right at the beginning, the importance of keeping reading an enjoyable activity, stating explicitly that if your child is becoming frustrated or bored, take a break! As a former elementary school teacher, I can tell you that I saw many parents win the battle, but lose the war when it came to reading. Yup, the kid CAN read, but he WON’T, unless forced to. Sigh.

Anyhow, if you are looking for a series of books to start with for very beginning (emergent) readers other than the ever-popular Bob books, give this series a try.  Watching Gareth’s confidence grow as he reads one book per night—even seeking out other members of the family to read to now—has been heart-warming.