Letters From the Homefront

Night House, Bright House written by: Monica Wellington This is another one that is very well loved, and has seen better days, yet still lives on in our list of favorites! This is a fun, rhyming tale that takes reading over and over again to see everything within it's covers. What you have to look closely for is to see what the book is ACTUALLY talking about, with all of it's rhyming innuendos put in about different things that are happening in this colorful little house :) I really didn't want to reveal too much about this book, because there is just so much. What I love is, of course, all the rhyming matches you can find in it. This would be a GREAT book to buy/borrow when working on teaching rhyming. Not only are they hearing the rhyming words, and picking them out by hearing the ending sounds that sound the same, but they also get to find the things in the pages. For example, in the above picture, when it

All the wonderful  summer plans I blogged about  in the beginning of the summer - forget them! They were wonderful, well-laid, well-thought out plans that DID NOT happen. As I said before , the time has flown this summer so far. June went by like the blink of an eye, and now here we are in the middle of July, the middle of the year, and nothing seems to be slowing down. Except, that is, us. Well, at least a little bit. I didn't realize until we were taking our loooong break that I really needed it. Needed the time to think less about school for a little while and just have fun for a little while. In fact, I haven't even (insert *gasp*) been reading my regular blogs as often. For the last few weeks, I have really been wanting to get back in to the swing of thing 100%, but every time I started to work on something, I could just tell I wasn't ready and the kids weren't either. But last weekend I was getting the itch back to prepare some fun things, and two or three of my

LLama Llama, Red Pajama written and illustrated by  Anna Dewdney         You have GOT to love the Llama Llama books by Anna Dewdney! Using a llama as a subject, these books give you a different point of view - one of not the adult, but the child. In this particular Llama Llama book, it is a dreaded time of day - bed time! I don't know about you, but I can completely relate with some of my children. Llama Llama goes to bed, but there is a problem - little llama just can't settle down.     Full of bed time woes, the next couple of pictures show the climax of the distress this little llama is going through. What I find interesting here, in looking at this book a little deeper than just as a funny read for a child, is the emotion behind just such a feeling. A touch of seriousness - what if the thoughts our children are having at bed time are far more serious than we think? What may sound absurd to us - being afraid that we ar