The week of January 21st through January 25th is No Name Calling Week. In recognition of these days, I wrote an article highlighting books on friendship and kindness.

You can find the article here and here and copied below.

Hopefully you can find some inspiring titles to share with the little ones in your life…

Books for No-Name Calling Week

 When I heard the word bully, I used to picture a middle school boy, looming on the playground, ready to throw a punch. As the mother of two elementary aged girls, I now know that this was naïve thinking. My oldest daughter met a ‘mean girl’ in first grade and was deep into the world of cliques and name-calling by the time she was in third grade.

Unfortunately, my daughter’s experience is not usual. According to the New York Times, in an article originally published in 2010, a survey of 273 third graders in Massachusetts found that 47 percent of children had been bullied at least once and that 52 percent had reported being called mean names.

Given what I now know about bullying, I take every opportunity I can to model and talk about kindness with my girls. Keeping an open line of communication with children is crucial to understanding the role that your child may play in social situations. While some children will open up easily with parents, some do better when talking about others.

I find that the best way to communicate with my children about difficult issues is to read with them. Below is a collection of recent books that focus on bullying, kindness and caring for elementary aged children. These titles would be perfect to read anytime but especially during “No Name Calling Week” scheduled for January 21^st to January 25^th.

Kindergarten & First Grade

A Sick Day for Amos McGee- Philip Stead

Chrysanthemum- Kevin Henkes

Molly Lou Melon- Patty Lovell

The Name Jar- Yangsook Choi

The Recess Queen- Alexis O’Neill

Second & Third Grade

Bully- Patricia Polacco

Each Kindness- Jacqueline Woodson

Goal!- Mina Javaherbin

Oliver- Birgitta Sif

The Quiet Place- Sarah Stewart

Fourth & Fifth Grade:

Inside Out and Back Again- Thanha Lai

Liar and Spy- Rebecca Stead

Out of My Mind- Sharon Draper

There’s a Girl in the Boy’s Bathroom- Louis Sacher

Wonder- R.J. Palacio

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My most favorite Pilates and spin instructor, Maren, always tells us to do one thing everyday that scares us. So this weekend, I did and was reminded of why doing scary things is important.

I haven’t been on skis in close to twenty years (after growing up on them thanks to my dad) and the girls have never skied. Rob was not a big skier growing up and each year, when we debated getting the girls on skis, it always seemed like more effort than it would be worth.

This weekend though, I decided it was time. We went to a tiny mountain twenty minutes away, rented skis and took a lesson as a family.

And here is why doing scary things is meaningful…

Katherine, who hadn’t wanted to go at all, took to skiing with ease. If I had decided to let her sit with me in the lodge sipping hot cocoa while the other’s skied, she would never have come to understand that sometimes things that seem scary can in fact be a lot of fun.

Caroline struggled and struggled at the beginning, unable to keep her feet going in the right direction and to still them when she needed to stop. Instead of crying and letting frustration take over, she worked and worked and by the end of the hour she could go down the hill and stop unassisted. During one short hour this weekend, Caroline was able to gain amazing confidence in a unique way. The thumbs up and smiles she gave me as the hour went on were infectious.

I was reminded on a really basic level that skiing is fun. And on a more important level that doing uncomfortable and challenging things is what parenting is all about. My girls learned more about themselves and about life on that hill than they have in a long time.

So here’s to doing one scary thing every day…

 

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In case you are in need of inspiration today, take five short minutes and watch. I dare you not to go out and do something wonderful after you do…

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“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

                                 -Mary Oliver

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The girls play very few video games. The only device we have is an iTouch and I do my best to keep most of their games in the educational category. Over time, though, some purely fun ones have snuck in to the mix. Lately the girls have been playing a mindless game called Air Penguin whenever they get their hands on the iTouch. I have been feeling guilty as I do every winter when their screen time increases more than I really like. Fortunately, the other day, I was reminded that all the time spent on these devices is not truly wasted…

Me: While reading a book, the word iceberg came up and I began to tell Katherine what an iceberg was.

Katherine: “I know! An iceberg is a large piece of ice in the ocean.”

Me: “How do you know what an iceberg is?”, I said, assuming she would tell me that she had learned about icebergs in a book.

Katherine: “From Air Penguin.”

And there you have it…

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I’m not sure my mother knows this but lately, she has adopted a new phrase that I love.

After she talks about something fun that she has read, learned or done, she’ll end the story by saying, “And that’s a good thing.”

When she said it the other day, I had an idea for a blog post and here it is…

Good Things

Snow (at least in the small amounts we’ve gotten this winter)

Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool

My on-line writing group

A wonderful activity the girls are doing at school based on Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed by Emily Pearson

Homemade turkey soup left overs

Walks with friends

Snuggly puppies

Hot pink

 

 

 

 

 

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Yesterday, I took the same walk that I take nearly daily. Usually, I walk with friends or just with the pooch but today, Katherine joined me. And the walk was completely different. We walked the same roads, passed the same houses, crossed the same streets. But because I had a pair of six-year-old eyes with me, I saw things I have never seen before.

I knew things were going to be different when we rounded our first corner.

“Look at those beautiful flowers that are still out in the winter!,” Katherine shouted as we passed the plants above.

And then, she started to look down.

“It’s so prickly, Mom. Can we collect them all?”

And then she looked up.

“I think there’s a bird on top of that pole.”

And then down again.

And down some more.

“Look at those giant roots!”

I literally walk these same steps, day in and day out. I have never seen the giant roots or a bird perched high above or a 48 carved in to the sidewalk.

How simple, really. Just to look.

I wonder what I”ll see tomorrow…

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Recently, I’ve been sending articles out into the big wide world for publication. I will be sharing a few of them here over the next few weeks. The article below was recently published in the magazine, Nashville Parent. 

“Turn Reluctant Readers into Bookworms: Three Secrets Revealed”

As most parents imagine, there are secrets to getting your children to love reading. But the secrets are surprisingly simple. Read yourself, read to them and let them read anything to themselves that they want.

We don’t expect our children to learn to drive before they’ve watched us behind the wheel for 17 years. We shouldn’t expect them to learn to read before we’ve read and read and read in front of them and to them. We all know that children do what we do, not what we  say so if we want our children to be readers, we ourselves have to be readers.

And as is true with children, we as adults can read just about anything we want in order model good reading behavior. As long as we are prioritizing reading over other activities, our children will too. If I ever find myself getting too busy to read, I read middle grade or young adult novels. By definition, they can be easier to read but equally if not more thought provoking than adult books.

Some recent favorites include, Ok for Now by Gary Schmidt, Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai and A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park.

And then read aloud to your children for as long as you can and definitely after they have started to read on their own. Read often during the day, not just at bed time. Keep books all over the house to make this easy. A basket at the breakfast table, a basket in the car, books in your purse.

And read to children who can read to themselves. Children’s listening comprehension and reading comprehension do not converge until the 8th grade. Therefore, you are able to read books to them that they are not yet able to read to themselves. This activity loads their brain with new vocabulary, comprehension skills and a fantastic model of what fluent reading sounds like. Reading aloud sounds too easy but in fact, as Marilyn Jager Adams, author of Beginning to Read states, “Reading aloud with children is known to be the single most important activity for building the knowledge and skills they will eventually require for learning to read.“

Browse children’s literature blogs to find great read aloud titles. There are tons of them but my current favorites are Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Playing by the Book and A Fuse #8 Production.

Research shows that to be strong and avid readers, children need to read a lot. One study reports that proficient fourth grade readers read for at least 2 and a half hours a day while the poorest fourth grade readers read for only half an hour a day.

Often we look for magic bells and whistles to get our non-readers reading when the solution is so simple. Let them read.

Literally think in terms of quantity not quality, at first. Jim Trelease, author of The Read Aloud Handbook states, “[Research] demonstrates the powerful role that recreational “lite” reading…plays in developing good and lifetime readers. Is it classic literature? Of course not. Does it have a better chance of creating fluent readers that the classics would? Definitely. And can it eventually lead to the classics? Yes, and certainly sooner than would The Red Badge of Courage.” So let kids read series books, comic books, e-books. Literally whatever they want.

My favorite places to go to find great titles that children love include the Children’s Choices Project (yearly lists of books kids love are posted as far back as 1998) and the Cybils Awards list, which this past year added an entire category for book apps.

With secrets revealed, parents can do simple things to encourage their children to read. Without the pressure of flashcards and tutors both parents and children alike can rediscover the joy of a good story and time spent sitting still.

 

 

 

 

 

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Things I Loved This Week…

A Smart Quote: As I was struggling through the last few minutes of my spin class, the instructor said, “We are here, riding bikes on a Friday morning. We are damn lucky.” That pretty much says it.

A Fascinating Facebook Find: Click here to learn about the world-famous musician who played in a train station, incognito for 45 minutes. Only 6 people stopped to listen as the rest rushed through their day.

A Book (again): Bridge to Terabithia. This is one of the first books that made me cry. All these years later, it made me cry again.

A New-to-Me Blog: Making it Lovely

A Wintery Book List: No Time for Flashcards has a great collection of books about snowmen. I suppose if we are pretty snow-less winter, we can at least read about it.

A Perfectly Chosen Book Award: The Charlotte Zolotow Award was presented to Each Kindness by Jaqueline Woodson and illustrated by E.B. White. The book is superb. The illustrations are gorgeous. I was lucky enough to hear both the author and the illustrator speak at the Bank Street Bookfest this year. What a powerful team. It is no wonder they created an award-winning book.

 

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“Peace can not be kept by force, it can only be achieved through understanding.”

                                                       -Albert Einstein

I found this quote while thumbing through Mariah Bruhel’s beautiful book, Playful Learning. I hadn’t picked it up in a bit and I was so glad to revisit it. The quote heads a chapter called ‘Raising Citizens of Tomorrow.’

Whether we are raising pets, children or ourselves, what a noble and important task we all have to be thoughtful citizen’s of tomorrow. Let  us achieve this through understanding….

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