playdate

Community Helpers: Where Do We Get It?

Daily, we eat. We buy groceries - canned goods, produce, baking supplies, and more. We cook them, often keeping children busy in another room, though we occasionally involve them. the whole business is a little removed from them. We sometimes go to restaurants, where someone else cooks behind closed doors, food appearing even more mysteriously than at home. So how to lead them to understanding and appreciating all the hard work behind these meals they eat (or refuse)? How to explain the logisitics, the late-night shelf-stocking, the care and pride that goes into supplying food for us?

National Treasure: Barbara Reid

Barbara Reid is another one of Canada's great children's authors, and may be familiar to many of you,  whether you know of her full range of books or not. Many of her books are favourites, but only one small and lesser-known set have gone into a series, making her somewhat less well-known than she ought to be. She is an illustrator of other people's books as well as an author/illustrator, so you may even have seen her art without ever having read what she has written herself. Either way, you should just make sure you know she has a good handful of wonderful books to be discovered.

Pumpkinpie's Picks

I haven't mentioned for a while now what my Pumpkinpie has been enjoying, which I think is a good window into what she and I like, so I think it's about time I pull back the curtain on bedtime at our house once again, especially since I've been buying new books like a mad thing lately. (That's what happens when you have time to browse bookstores while on mat leave...) She's also taken very strongly to some good stuff, surprising even me a little, given that this child has had some dubious favourites in the past. New on the playlist are:

'Pie on Pie

As the weather grows warmer (well, okay, not today, but on the whole, we're getting there...), my thoughts turn to summer. yes, I love spring, but I dream of summer. The warm weather, the carefree feeling in the air - and the fruit. And, of course, because I have a sweet tooth, the fruit pies. Well who doesn't love pie? Since I'm not alone, there are some terrific picture books that pay tribute to the wonders of pie. You just might want to make sure you have some on hand if you are going to make these part of your reading, because you know they are going to want some...

From Weakness, Strength

We are not always appreciated for what we are - and neither are our kids. Sometimes we wish that slow kid would hurry up, the loud one would pipe down (oh god, please?), the shy one would hold his chin high, forgetting that those traits are part of what make that child who they are, and that there is a flip side to every negative, a silver lining to every cloud.

Cockeyed optimism? Perhaps. But these tales remind us to appreciate those things and remember that there really is a time and place for everything - sometimes you just have to find it. Much like some of us have felt like we've found "our people" in the blogosphere (or for me, library school), the characters in these tales just have to find their niche to be truly appreciated, or a moment when their foibles become just what is needed to make them a hero.

Community Helpers: Building the City and Keeping it Neat

Last post, I introduced the idea of community helpers as a topic. It is, as I mentioned, a kindergarten curriculum element, and a good way to familiarize children with the world around them, allowing them to make text-to-life connections, and giving them both understanding and vocabulary for people in their neighbourhood.

Two of the loudest and most visible, and therefore fascinating from early on workers that a child will notice are construction workers and trash collectors, both of whom come with big, noisy trucks and eye-catching orange vests or coveralls. What child doesn't love these? Here are a few books that give them a bit of a closer look at what's going on with those people and machines that build our communities and help clean them up.

Community Helpers: An Overview

One of the big curriculum elements in kindergarten is the theme of community workers. The idea is to introduce children to the neighbourhood and the city and the many people who help make it work. Who are they? Where do they work? What do they do to help us? It's a great idea, teaching them about these important cornerstones of the community, these everyday heroes, as it were. Not only so that they can appreciate them and their contributions, but also so that they gain a greater understanding of the world around them.

The Beast Within

A child's anger is unlike an adults. It's less of a quick snap or slow burn, and more of a wild rage. Anger can bring a child to a place where they can't hear or reason, can't stop themselves, can scarcely even catch a breath to howl anew. It's hard for adults to really understand the force of those emotions, but some authors get it and have portrayed it admirably in their work.

I'll bet your child can relate - which also makes these books a great way to talk to them about this powerful emotion at a calmer time. Your child might feel more understood, and you might even just be able to work out some strategies for communicating when your child feels this way and for how you can help him or her return to earth. And who doesn't want that?

Just The Way You Are

We want our children to be confident, to find their own niche, to feel good about something they love to do. That thing is not always the expected or conventional, though. These stories each celebrate doing things your own way, in your own time. They'll have you singing along with Frank (or Syd), "I did it myyyyyyyy way!"

Rediscovery: The Lovely Lio Lionni

Lio Lionni is one of those classic children's authors that is too often overlooked, having peaked in  popularity some time back. His illustrations have an older feel, which I think contributes to this underappreciated status, as newer books are often more vibrant, but his stories are wonderfully told and his characters are charming enough to overcome their subdued coluor palette.

I am certainly guilty of this myself, as I am always enjoying new books and falling back on those classic authors that I really love, and only really reading a couple of his stories on a regular basis. This year, though, I have discovered a few other books of his, and decided to introduce them to Pumpkinpie. One I read just last week surprised me by being really funny - not something I had associated with him! I just goes to show you - there are treasures right under your nose, if you only open them to find out.