I know: I’ve been AWOL. Sorry about that.
We were nutty all afternoon and evening, and I had a couple of other little projects. Plus I left my camera at my sister-in-law’s house, so after I’d finally found a USB connector-thingy-ma-bob, I had no camera to connect it. Oy. So much for sharing pictures of our trip with you tonight.
Anyway, I wanted to check in and give you, at least, some random suggestions for fun.
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is on Hulu. Not one of my personal favorites, but if you’re dashing around trying to clean the house before folks arrive, or packing clothing madly, well. . . it will buy you 40 minutes or so.
The girls were playing a game with their cousins yesterday that I thought was pretty cool and literacy-promoting and all that. It was eeBoo’s Fairy Tale Spinning Game. The concept was simple: each player takes a turn spinning, and first they have to land on setting in order to choose one of four settings. Then they gradually acquire things like a Hero or Heroine, a Magical Object, or a mode of Transportation, and they collect the pieces. When a player acquires one of each item, he or she tells a story using the elements that they’ve collected. Our ages ranged from 3 to 8, and everyone enjoyed it. Okay, everyone mostly enjoyed it, although the 3-year-old did sob when another player got the horse, and M’s story was a little too scary for her 5-year-old cousin. But the game itself was simple and seemed to be a reading teacher’s best friend without getting all phonics-y on them.
Finally, for another project that I was working on, I was collecting ideas about books that encourage kiddos to try different ethnic foods. So I thought that I’d share what I came up with:
- Yoko by Rosemary Wells
- Bee-Bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park
- World Snacks series of board books by Amy Wilson Sanger
- My Mom Loves Me More Than Sushi by Filomenu Gomes
- The Sandwich Swap by Queen Rania of Jordan
And now I’d better get to sleep: it’s an hour later here in Kansas city, you know!
