One of the many things I love about my Aunt Jeanne is that she has fabulous taste in books. I credit her gifts to me during my formative years with at least part of my passion for reading. Aunt Jeanne is working hard to instill the same devotion for books in my daughter. Each trip so far, she has come bearing a lovely book of some sort to share with The Four-Year-Old.
Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland: A Math Adventure By Cindy Neuschwander Illustrated by Wayne Geehan Charlesbridge Publishing, 2001 Age Range: 6 and up…
Grumbly Bunnies By Willie Welch Illustrated by Tammie Lyon Charlesbridge Publishing, 2009 Age Range: 2 and up You probably haven’t read Grumbly Bunnies, by Willie Welch…
This week’s book is a classic Winnie-the-Pooh story and there is really very little I need to say about it. So instead of adding another five paragraphs of praise for A. A. Milne to the Webiverse, I will simply share what may be my favorite paragraph from any book The Four-Year-Old and I have read together thus far.
I come from a family of mathematicians. Although Vector Calculus pretty much ensured that I would never be a mathematician myself, my relationship with math is once more on a cordial footing. I’ve even caught myself accidentally looking forward to tinkering with math again as The Four-Year-Old goes through school. Naturally, when I found Joseph D’Agnese’s picture book on Fibonacci, I brought it home immediately.
With travel season hard upon us, I decided it was probably time I talked travel gear. In November 2009 we bought our daughter a Trunki, Terrance the Cow to be precise (it was the only one available through Amazon at the time that would make it to our house before that year’s Thanksgiving trek).
In which The Four-Year-Old gives Elvis some timely musical advice.
One of my better parenting ideas this fall was to sign my daughter up for nature classes at the Moose Hill Wildlife Sanctuary in Sharon, Massachusetts. The classes last an hour and half and include a craft, a story, and a nature hike.
I learned about Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge books through Snapdragons, a blog about the domestic adventures of a new mom. The author of the blog had grown up reading these stories and was very excited about the prospect of sharing them with her own child. I’d never heard of them, but as I’m always on the look out for new books to read with The Four-Year-Old, I spent a week or two hunting them down.
As Sara Swan Miller explains in her introduction to Three More Stories You Can Read to Your Cat, cats sleep a lot because they get bored a lot. Since you and I know that reading books is one of the best ways to counter an attack of boredom, she explains, one of the nicest things you can do for your feline friend when boredom has flattened him on the couch is to entice your cat onto your lap and with a soft voice and gentle petting read him a story. After all, “Cats always like to hear stories about themselves.”
CATERPICKLES 