My mother met Ted in 1966. They were both married to other terrific people at the time. As couples, these four had wonderful fun together. Circumstances, though, brought them to different places. Time passed and their marriages ended. Ted remarried. More time passed and Ted’s second wife died. In January 2009, Ted called Mom. And finally, two people who should have been together for decades were together again.

I believe my mother fit decades of fun in to the two and half years that she and Ted had together. They traveled and dined. They talked and laughed and smiled. And smiled and smiled and smiled. It’s not that I had never seen my mother smile. Of course she had smiled. But never like this. Never with the absolute joy that she smiled over the past two and half years.

Ted died on July 3rd at the age of 85.

By all accounts, an 85 year long life is a life well lived.

If only he could have shared a few more of those years with Mom…

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Lauren Child’s version of the Princess and the Pea is absolutely, positively to die for…

A few weeks ago, one of my favorite on-line people, Mariah Bruhel of Playful Learning, wrote about this book. I commented that I was not familiar with it and couldn’t wait to go read it.

Mariah responded that the Princess and the Pea was sure to be a new favorite. As I wrote this winter,  we devoured Child’s version of Pippi Longstocking so I was fairly sure that Mariah would be correct.

The telling of the story is clever and the illustrations are out of this world- a combination of photographed doll house furniture and beautifully crafted people and clothes made out of virbrantly colored papers. We just can’t get enough of this rendition of such an old tale.

We have now moved on to many of Lauren Child’s other books… More to come on them here I am sure…

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I have mentioned one of my favorite people/children’s authors here before- Meg Medina. If you didn’t check her out the last time I wrote about her, please check her out now.

And then you’ll know why I had an author crush on Meg before she created an awesome summer reading list and you’ll be able imagine how I feel now that she has created such a list. Please go check out The Girls of Summer here, a book list for strong girls about strong girls.

I will let Meg and her co-list creator Gigi Amateau, describe the list to you in their own words…

“We are two writers, two friends, two women, two former strong girls, who decided to tackle a project we wish had been around when we were thirsty for books that moved us —  but struggling through Ivanhoe.

The result is Girls of Summer, a list of 18 of our personal favorites that we think speak to girls uniquely and help them understand the journey. These are books – new and old, well-known and quiet. What mattered to us most was the celebration of a girl’s connection to the world around her. In the pages of these lovely books you’ll find middle class girls, girls with disabilities, girls of color, girls who might know God, good girls/bad girls. But always girls who stare into the eyes of what’s ahead and refuse to flinch.”

Super fun, right? Click here to find the entire list of 18 amazing titles on IndieBound. I am going to work my way through this list as soon as my friend and I finish our first list of the summer so be sure to leave a comment and let me know which of the Girls of Summer books should be my first read…

 

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Where we’ve been….

Lucky, lucky us…

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I’m pretty sure she has the biggest smile at the stadium!

We had a beautifully unscheduled day and the Yankees were playing a 1pm game. A perfect combination. Caroline and Rob headed in to the city while Katherine and I stayed home, did some errands and relaxed.

It was a win-win kind of day for everyone. Including the Yankees!

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I find there are so many wonderful things I know about because I am an educator. Part of why I write this blog is to introduce all my readers to these finds. Because after all, if we are reading to and with children we are all educators.

I am embarrassed to admit that I only recently learned about Scholastic’s Book Wizard, a remarkable tool for all book lovers. By simply going to Scholastic’s web site and clicking on the Book Wizard logo on the right hand side of the site, you will be directed to a fantastic tool. You can enter your child’s grade level, reading level or interest level to get a long list of books from various publishers. You can mix and match interest level and reading level which is great for the kid’s who are a bit slower or more reluctant to read. You can enter genre or topic. The options seem endless.

And then there’ my favorite tool. The BookAlike. Have you ever finished a book and wished for another one just like it? Have you ever watched your child listen with rapt attention to a book that is too hard for her to read to herself? Enter BookAlike. With this feature, you enter a book title to find many more just like it. You can also choose whether the books you want are on the same reading level as the one you want to match or above or below that level. Again the options are endless.

Assuming that you made it to the end of this post without jumping over to Scholastic, go there now. You won’t be sorry!

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Yeah!! School is out for the summer!!

And Caroline learned today that she will be having a fantastic teacher next year. And she has many friends in her class. And the kids that she doesn’t yet know in her class are known to be ‘good kids.’

Tomorrow we find out who Katherine’s teacher will be and who will be in her class but if today is any indication, next year should be a great year!!

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We had a fabulous evening on Saturday. Fun new friends, good pizza and fireflies. And an introduction to the greatest website I’ve seen in ages.

If you don’t know about Wordle, go straight there now. But don’t forget to come back here.

Wordle allows you to create beautiful pictures full of words. All you have to do is type in a string of words and the site generates designs full of your words. With the click of a button you can change the arrangement, color and font of the words and then print your designs.

Caroline has created gorgeous end of the year teacher gifts by writing her teacher’s names followed by adjectives describing them. While Wordle offers their designs in beautiful colors, Caroline chose a black and white image so that she could color in the words with her own flair of color.

Katherine created unique designs with the names and descriptions of two dear friends who have moved to Switzerland. Her designs will be in the mail today.

And I of course turned Wordle into a teaching tool. I’ve printed out page after page of CVC words for Katherine to read. She is at the point where reading simple words in different colors and fonts is a great experience for her to grow in fluency. If you have a newer reader, be careful that your words don’t run into each other and focus on the clearer fonts.

Now I’m off to Wordle…

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When the girls and I were brainstorming about how to celebrate Father’s Day, Katherine suggested we play mini golf. We have a great little course attached to a golf course down the street from us so it was the perfect idea. And pretty sweet too. Rob has been playing a lot of golf lately so Katherine must have thought this was something he would enjoy on his special day.

Father’s Day is a weird day for me. I’m always happy to celebrate with Rob but sad that Dad’s not here. It makes for a strange combination of emotions. As we watched part of the U.S. Open this afternoon, I knew that if Dad were here, we’d be annoyed that he was stealing the remote and hitting mute so that he could provide the commentary instead. As life goes though, we miss him today, remote stealer and all.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads with us and not…

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If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over
the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each
child in the world would be a sense of wonder so indestructible that
it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the
boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation
with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of
our strength.

– Rachel Carson

I found the quote above on my friend Lindsey’s blog this morning and immediately thought to include it with this beautiful picture of Katherine. It’s just a perfect match. A perfect match to a perfect summer moment. Yesterday, Katherine was playing at a friend’s house and the hoses came out. Katherine didn’t have a bathing suit with her so she stripped down to her undies without a second thought. She is pictured above making a vat of ‘chocolate milk’ out of mud.

As I watched Katherine,  I found myself wondering when we stop finding things like water play fun. What I guess I was questioning was when we lose our sense of wonder. When does a pile of mud become dirt instead of chocolate milk? When do wet clothes become a nuisance  instead of a fun part of summer play? When indeed do we lose our wonder.

And I realized maybe never as long as we continue to wonder with the children in our lives… Let them continue to wonder for a long, long time.

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