Phases

I haven't updated this blog in ages, but it's not dead. The reason is that Charlie has been going through a phase where he is so focused on other things that he has very little time for books. This has not slowed down my children's book addiction at all, unfortunately. I keep buying more and more books, and Charlie just ignores them.

What is he doing? He's very interested in two things: coloring with markers and riding his balance bike. We've been taking bike rides around the block almost every afternoon after school, and he is really getting the hang of pushing off with his feet and gliding. It's amazing to watch, and I'm starting to teach him how to ride safely around cars, too.

Coloring is largely a before-bedtime activity, but he also brings it out at other times of day. He will sometimes color quietly, by himself, for up to an hour. He has dry erase markers and a couple of laminated activity books which he loves, but also a bunch of regular coloring books. He doesn't do the activities in the books. He just colors in all the pictures. His ability to control the markers has dramatically improved.

So, with all this important focused activity going on, he has been too busy to read much. I stressed about it a little bit at first, but when I saw how much attention he was giving to these other two activities, I decided to just relax and let the phase play itself out. It's not that he dislikes books, it's that he's busy learning other Very Important Things. But I think we're starting to see the light at the end of the bookless tunnel. I hope to have some more reviews up soon.

Alphabet Books

I've been thinking a lot about alphabet books lately as Charlie has learned the name and sound of each letter. There are so many alphabet books on the market, and they range from fantastic to terrible, like all other books. I did a sweep of our bookshelves just now and found 18 different alphabet books, believe it or not. And that's not counting the Russian ones.

Alphabet books have their own factors to consider in addition to the things that I think about when selecting other types of books. In this post, I'm going to discuss the major factors to look for in alphabet books. Then, over the next several days, I'll review some of my favorite (and least-favorite) alphabet books and talk about how they stack up on these factors.

Legible Capital and Lowercase: Ideally, an alphabet book should have a large-print, clearly legible sample of the capital and lowercase letters by themselves. I do think it's okay for any particular book to feature just capitals or just lowercase, but it's better to show both. Overall, make sure your child is exposed to both capitals and lowercase letters. Montessori introduces lowercase letters first, because most of the letters you encounter in everyday reading are lowercase. Good theory, but too limiting in practice with all the awesome books out there that use capitals. I think kids are smart enough to catch on to seeing both at once.

Filler Words: Some alphabet books just showcase one or more individual words for each letter. Others are written in sentences. Both ways are great, but with sentences, you should watch to make sure there aren't too many filler words that start with different letters to complete the sentence. Even more important, you should check that the filler words are not made especially confusing by starting with words that look or sound similar (M on the N page, D on the B page, F on the V page).

Cheat Words: There are three types of words that I consider cheating in an alphabet book. The first type are simply made-up words -- things that have the right sounds but are not real words (e.g. Zeep). The second type are words that have the featured letter in them but don't start with that letter (e.g. fox to illustrate X). The third type are words that do start with the letter, but the letter is pronounced in an unusual way (e.g. chicken to illustrate C). These are most commonly found on the unusual letters, so check those pages carefully: Q, X, Y, Z. Some of these can be used effectively, but usually they're not.

Understandable Words: No child is going to be thrilled with an alphabet book full of words he doesn't know and has no need for. A is for Apple and Ambulance and Angry, not for Amphitheater and Algae.

Sounding Out: You're reading an alphabet book because your kid is starting to learn how to read. Once he catches on to the initial letters, you're going to want to extend the book by pointing out the other letters in each word. It gets really frustrating really fast if the words are long and complicated and have unusual pronunciations in them. On the other hand, a book full of three-letter phonetic words is really boring. This is a delicate balance.

Hidden Pictures: Many alphabet books have detailed illustrations that have many objects starting with the featured letter hiding on each page. They aren't mentioned in the text, but you can look and look and keep finding more things that start with A on the A pages, and so on through the book. I love these! They grow with the child.

Illustrations: Just like any book, the illustrations matter. They're what draw the child in, and they help alleviate the adult's boredom at going through the book a million times. Additionally, in an alphabet book, the illustrations should clearly show the words in the text. It helps the child figure out what they're reading, as they begin to do it themselves.

Theme: Alphabet books usually don't have any story to them, but some have a theme. Some themes are obvious (e.g. Texas ABC's!) and others are more subtle. Having a theme is not at all necessary, but it can be fun.

Those are the basics. Starting tomorrow, I'll review some of those 18 alphabet books that are now sitting in a stack on my desk.

A Good Day

Ever since Charlie moved from the toddler classroom to the primary classroom at his Montessori school, he's been telling me every day that he did not have a good day. I know that this is not true. His teachers tell me that he loves the classroom. I've observed through the windows and seen him absorbed in his activities, wandering around the room, and talking with the other kids. When I pick him up from the playground in the afternoon, he is almost always having a great time. And yet he keeps telling me, for a month now, that he's had a bad day.

I've been dealing with this situation on several fronts, but the aspect I want to talk about today is the concept that even though some bad things happen, or you have some sad feelings, you can still have a good day after all. I think that Charlie misses his old teachers and friends from the toddler classroom, and even though he has a great time in primary, that sad feeling (or a couple of bad incidents like falling on the playground) is turning the entire day bad in his memory.

A Good Day has been an excellent book to help with this problem. This is a very, very simple book. The first page states, without illustration, "It was a bad day. . . ." The next four pages introduce us to four different animals. Each animal has had something bad happen that day. The bird lost a tail feather. The dog got his leash tangled in the fence. The fox couldn't find his mom. The squirrel dropped her nut into a creek. "But then . . ." four more pages, each with a good thing happening that gets the animal out of its bad situation. On the last two pages, a little girl is introduced. She find the bird's tail feather and puts it in her hair, exclaiming to her mother, "What a good day!"

I used this book to introduce the idea to Charlie that bad things and good things can happen in the same day, and that even though some bad things happen in your day, it can still be a good day. I think he's catching on. From the moment I brought the book home, he was very interested in it. He's concerned for the animals as the bad things happen to them, and then he's happy together with them and the girl as good things happen. After we read the book, I usually ask him whether he can think of a bad thing and a good thing that happened in his day. He usually can't, but at least he's started being more talkative about what he's done. When he tells me things that happened, I try to point out the good things and remind him that they were good and/or fun.

The illustrations in this book are quite nice. They're done simply, but with bright and vivid colors. You can definitely see the expressions of sadness and worry in the animals' faces in the first half, and their joy in the second half.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the simplicity of this book, I've found it to be a great parenting tool for this problem that we've been having.

Green Eggs and Ham

Dr. Seuss books are most commonly marketed to beginning readers in kindergarten and first grade. But some of them are excellent for barely-verbal young toddlers as well. Charlie fell in love with Green Eggs and Ham when he was about 15 months old, and it was a constant favorite in our house until he turned two.

Most people know this story already, but here's a brief recap for anyone who, like me, did not actually read this book as a child (I think my mother disliked it because ham is unkosher). Sam asks his nameless Friend if he'd like some green eggs and ham. Friend says that he does not like green eggs and ham. Sam then asks Friend if he would eat green eggs and ham in various exciting situations (in a house? with a mouse? in the rain? on a train?), but Friend repeatedly insists that he will not eat them anywhere. Finally, after much harassment, Friend agrees to take a bite if Sam will finally leave him alone. Lo and behold, Friend turns out to really like green eggs and ham.

The story is written as a cumulative poem, introducing concepts of repetition and rhyme. The incidental words change (for example, "I do not like them in a box" changes a few pages later to "I would not, could not in a box") but the major subjects appear every time in the same order as new situations are added. The easy rhymes allow a child to think of the correct word to fill in the blank at a very young age.

The simple story is also easy to follow from a very young age. This was the first book that Charlie ever tried to read to me. He must have been about 18 months old, and his rendition went something like this: "Green eggs and ham? No! In car? No! In boat? No! On train? No! All gone!" It was completely adorable.

A friend reminded me yesterday that many Dr. Seuss books have made-up nonsense words throughout. This can be problematic for babies and toddlers who are still trying to acquire a basic vocabulary. Montessori advocates talking to even very young children in ordinary English, without baby talk or nonsense words. Fortunately, Green Eggs and Ham doesn't have any nonsense words. It's composed entirely of short, simple, real words.

This is a classic that served us well for many months. It's back on the storage shelf now, but I plan to bring it out again during the early reading stage if not sooner.

For a hilarious coda, here is Jesse Jackson performing a dramatic reading of this book on Saturday Night Live.

My Little Word Book

Our copy of My Little Word Book is tattered and held together with clear packing tape, despite being a board book. This is because Charlie slept with it in his bed from when he was about 9 months to when he was about 18 months, and we read it every night (not to mention in the daytime as well). It's your standard word book, with a photograph of something and its name written below, but extremely well done.

Montessori prefers the one-item-on-a-page style of word book, but that format is limiting for the simple reason that you can only have a certain number of items before you run out of pages. This book has between five and twelve items on each page. Most pages separate each item into its own box (as shown on the cover), but a few pages (flowers, vegetables, actions) are in a more freeflowing, overlapping format). Even on the item-in-a-box pages, at least one item takes up two or more squares. So, for example, on the toys page, the doll is two squares tall and the train is two squares long. This adds some visual interest and makes the book a bit more fun to look through.

What I really love about this book is how each two-page spread shows a category of items. First is body parts and people (boy, girl, man, woman).Next is actions (walk, sing, dance, kick). Next is clothing, then household items (clock, sofa, cup, computer). Next come toys, then food, then flowers and other outdoor items (tree, fence, frog). There's a vehicles page, then farm animals, then pets and birds, then wild animals (from squirrel to camel to tiger). The page labeled "our world" combines pictures of the sun and moon, a street scene, and a park on one page, with things like jungle, farmland, and beach on the opposite page. The last page is colors and shapes.

Charlie would go through phases where he was interested in particular pages/categories and ignored others. It was fascinating for me to watch him enthralled by the parts of the body one month, then skipping that page and heading right to vehicles day after day the next month. It allowed me to easily figure out what his little brain was focusing on, and then to enhance that focus by talking about it and bringing out other books on the same subject while he was most interested.

During his animal phase, Charlie also very much enjoyed My Little Animal Book, in the same series. It's the same size, shape, and style as the Word book, but obviously, focusing entirely on animals. The animals are categorized on pages for different types: farm, pets, African, jungle, ocean, forests, polar, rivers and lakes, reptiles and amphibians, bugs, birds, and Australian. The last three pages offer interactive activities that are not found in the Word book: match moms to babies, match patterns to animals, and counting.

Both of these books get my absolute highest recommendation for the under-18-months crowd.

The Handiest Things in the World

The Handiest Things in the World is an intriguing compare-and-contrast book about using tools. The idea is that there are many things we can do with our hands, but we can do the same things more efficiently by using the proper tool for the job. Examples: Eat with your fingers, or with chopsticks. Shade your eyes with your hand, or with a hat. Mix dough with your hands, or with a mixer.

The concept of the book is very Montessori-friendly. Having the right materials for each task is key. It's also quite pretty -- an oversized full-color photograph illustrates each job done with the hands, and on the opposite page, done with the tool. Charlie loves it, even if he's a little bit too young to understand the underlying concept of the book.

I definitely recommend this book, but there are two things that I wish were a bit improved. First, all of the text of the book rhymes, but many of the rhymes are trite or fudged. ("Digging in and scooping down. Let's move lots of dirt around.") Second, not all of the hand-tool connections make a lot of sense. For example, chopsticks are a tool to help you eat, but how many small children actually can eat more efficiently with chopsticks than with their fingers? For another example, one page shows a child counting on his fingers, then using a calculator. I think at the ages this picture book would be interesting, most kids don't understand what a calculator does. Then again, other examples are much better, such as catching a butterfly in a net, and sweeping with a broom.

Despite those few reservations, I love this book. It's an interesting concept that I haven't seen in many (any?) other children's books, and Charlie always enjoys it.