Comments (4)

By Mom Unplugged, September 17, 2008 9:58 pm

With 10 comments and 135 page views so far, it seems that people really liked the first post in my new Chapter Books Suitable for Extra-Young Readers series! Perhaps I shall have to make this a regular weekly feature at Unplug Your Kids rather than simply stop at the three posts that I had in mind. I’ll certainly run out of ideas eventually, but I do have quite a few to share.

If you are interested in this subject, then I urge you to read all the wonderful comments I received last week on Part 1. Many of you left suggestions of “nice” chapter books that you or your children have enjoyed, and I am so grateful for the helpful input! You even reminded me of a few that I had enjoyed as a child and forgotten about. Thank you!

My plan for this week was to mention another book (again, part of a great series) that I was lucky enough to discover at the thrift store:

Happy Little Family (Fairchild Family Story)by Rebecca Caudill

My children fondly refer to this series as “The Bonnie Books.” When we are reading one of these at bedtime, they shout “Let’s read about Bonnie!!!”

The books are about a family of five children and their poor but happy life in the mountains of Kentucky at an indeterminate era (early 1900′s judging by the autobiographical aspect and the fact that author Rebecca Caudill - real name: Mrs. James S. Ayars - was born in 1899).

The series is about the whole family, although it does focus mostly on 4 year-old Bonnie, the youngest of the five Fairchild children. My two oldest children are endlessly amused by the similarity between Bonnie and their own little two and half year old sister.

Happy Little Family is the first book of this series of four Fairchild family stories. The books are very reminiscent of the Little House series: horse-drawn wagons, the excitement of a pair of shoes or a trip to town, a one room school house, adventures in the woods… but no prairie since this is Kentucky.

Plus, while the Little House books do have a few suspenseful episodes that might be difficult for particularly young and sensitive types to enjoy, we have read two of the Fairchild series so far, and I cannot recall anything remotely frightening taking place in either of them.

Book 1 is Happy Little Family . It consists of various amusing, sweet, and simple adventures of the Fairchild children.

Book 2, Schoolhouse in the Woods, has a more specific theme: a Fairchild family school year in their one room school house, and most importantly - little Bonnie’s very first year of school. (By the way, the school “year” only went from August through Christmas. In January and February the weather was too snowy to make the long walk to school, in March and April it was too rainy, and May through July were busy times on the farm and the children had to stay home and help.)

By popular demand, I am on my way to order Book 3: Up And Down The River

Each of these books is around 120 pages long. Type-face is medium, and there are 5 chapters in Happy Little Family, and 7 in Schoolhouse in the Woods . This series is definitely for more advanced readers than Cynthia Rylant’s Cobble Street Cousins series that I reviewed last week, however I think it might be a small step below the Little House books.

These are also an excellent choice for a sweet read-aloud and my 6 year-old son enjoys them as much as my 8 year-old daughter.

Here are the books in order, but they needn’t be read in order:

Book 1: Happy Little Family
Book 2: Schoolhouse in the Woods
Book 3: Up And Down The River
Book 4: Schoolroom in the Parlor

If you prefer a visual, here are the covers!

Please come back next week for Part 3 of this series!

AN AFTERTHOUGHT: Rebecca Caudill also wrote one of my favorite childhood easy chapter books (I loved it so much that I kept it and it now resides on my daughter’s bookshelf!): The Best-Loved Doll. This is a shorter and much easier chapter book, more like Cobblestreet Cousins in difficulty. It deserves it’s own post one day, but I thought I should also mention it here.

Comments (17)

By Mom Unplugged, September 11, 2008 3:06 pm

My oldest daughter (now just turned 8) is a really good reader and has been reading at chapter book level for quite some time.

Since she started reading so well at a young age (6) and is also a somewhat sensitive child, I found it difficult at first to find books that were challenging enough, but not scary or upsetting. She was ready for upper level reading, but not for mature or even remotely suspenseful themes.

Of course everyone knows that the The Little House series is wonderful (although beware, there are a few scary episodes). Since I adored those books as a child (and I am a terminal packrat) I kept all my old Little House books and gave them to my daughter.

I also kept some other wonderful classic books from my childhood, but at the time, they were a bit beyond my daughter’s comfortable reading skill level: Heidi, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, the Anne of Green Gables series, the Emily books (my old copies are the ones my mother read and loved as a child in the 1930′s!), The Borrowers series…etc.

So once the Little House books were all read, what then? We only have one bookstore in town and as it is very small, the choices there are limited. I began looking online, and scouring the local thrift stores.

I had some great thrift store luck! My first find is the subject of today’s post:

The Cobble Street Cousins series by Cynthia Rylant

These are very easy first chapter books about nine year-old cousins Lily, who wants to be a poet, Tess, who wants to be a Broadway star, and Rosie, “who wants a little cottage with flowers by the door.” The girls share some happy, innocent adventures while spending a year sharing an attic bedroom in their Aunt Lucy’s house.

Cynthia Rylant immediately piques every young girl’s interest in the first page of each book by explaining that the cousins’ parents are all ballet dancers and are off on a world tour for a year. What young girl wouldn’t want ballet dancing parents? Your girl will most likely be hooked from then on!

The six books in the series are each only a bit over 50 pages long (except for Wedding Flowers which is a bit longer) and are quite suitable for beginning chapter book readers. The type-face is fairly large and the chapters (between 3 and 6 depending on the book) are each short enough to accommodate young attention spans.

My thrift store find was Some Good News, which is actually Book 4, but the books can really be read in any order. It was a perfect choice for my then 1st grade daughter. Since she loved it so much, I ordered the other four online and she devoured them all.

The Cobble Street books would also make pleasant read-alouds for children not quite ready to read them on their own.

Here are all six titles in order:

Book 1: In Aunt Lucy’s Kitchen
Book 2: A Little Shopping
Book 3: Special Gifts
Book 4: Some Good News
Book 5: Summer Party
Book 6: Wedding Flowers

Tip: These are currently part of Amazon’s 4-for-3 promotion, so if you like the series and want to order online, you could get 4 books for the price of 3!

Next week I’ll publish Part 2 of this post: another wonderful discovery of nice chapter books for girls.

UPDATE: Here is the link to Part 2.

Comments (9)

By Mom Unplugged, August 29, 2008 8:42 pm

Unplugged Project Special Edition

Now that my camera cable is back, here is our project for trees. Better late than never I suppose!

++++++++++++

I was fairly uninspired for the Unplugged Project theme of trees. It needed to be simple since we were in Albuquerque for the weekend, away from any supplies beyond crayons and paper. No one had ideas, then I suggested making trees out of our hand outlines. The idea was met with very little enthusiasm, but my oldest daughter and I decided to give it a go.

First we traced our hands:

Then we cut some small branches off some trees that needed a bit of pruning anyhow. We took the leaves off the branches to stick them on our handprints:

What started off as a rather dull project quickly became exciting when one of the leaves I was stripping off a branch suddenly hopped onto the countertop and began walking around!

He was amazingly similar to the leaves I was using and none of us had seen him, even up close, until he jumped off.

We all ooed and aahed and squealed with delight as our surprise visitor crawled on our hands and showed us that he knew how to fly.

After we had all had a very gentle turn with him, we carefully returned him to his tree.

Here is a photo of him in the tree to show you how well camouflaged he was (if you are having a hard time spotting him, look for the brown spot. That is him pooping - much to the delight of the children):

After that bit of unexpected excitement, we finished our projects with new enthusiasm!

++++++++++++

This was an Unplugged Project “special edition.” Be sure to check back on Monday morning to see what everyone comes up with for this week’s theme of insect.

Comments (5)

By Mom Unplugged, August 13, 2008 7:45 am

Last week I just flew our new plane from Denver to my Arizona hometown and thought I’d share a few photos of the spectacular scenery over the Rockies. Enjoy!

Comments Off

By Mom Unplugged, August 11, 2008 7:19 pm

Finally, here is my hot post that disappeared into the ether last night. Thanks so much to Julie K in Taiwan, Angi and Nature Mama for having the brilliant idea of emailing me the post from their Google Readers. That saved me at least an hour of rewriting! I was so down on computers this morning, but this evening I am uplifted by the fact that three people I have never met in “real life” can help me out! Thank you!!! Now, on to the post:

++++++++++++

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was hot. Finally, we managed to get back on schedule and do it, although we broke away from our usual craft project and went in a more scientific direction.

While away this summer, I found a number of good books in my Dad’s favorite thrift store (he’s a packrat too). One is called Science Experiments You Can Eat by Vicki Cobb (more about the book at the end of this post). While we were trying to come up with hot ideas, my 7 year-old daughter picked up this book and wanted to choose a food-related project. We decided on Caramel Syrup: Sugar Decomposes from the Kitchen Chemistry chapter.

Older children will find this scientifically interesting and fun to do. Younger kids will enjoy the end result!

The goal of the experiment is to teach about chemical compounds and how they can sometimes be broken down into completely different substances. Although I always liked science in school, I am not a chemist so forgive me if I am not 100% perfect in my description.

Since I am a terminal nerd, I didn’t trust the book’s very simple explanation, and actually researched sugar and how it decomposes. I learned that sugar and its breakdown process is rather complicated. (If the mysteries of caramelization keep you awake at night, then read this.)

I tried to keep it 7 year-old simple and explained to my daughter that sugar is actually carbon and water fused together. When you heat sugar, it breaks down into its original carbon and water elements. I showed her the scientific formula for table sugar (sucrose): C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁ . She already new that H₂O was water and could see that in the formula. After I explained that C meant carbon, she saw the carbon and water in the formula.

Heating the sugar would cause it to become watery (the release of the water) and dark (the carbon). It would no longer really be sugar.

What we needed - sugar, water, a heavy frying pan:

First my daughter poured half a cup of sugar into the frying pan:

We heated the sugar over medium-high heat and my daughter stirred it:

After about 5 to 10 minutes, the sugar started to melt:

As my daughter continued stirring, the sugar melted further and began to darken and become very watery:

Finally it turned “straw-colored” and we had transformed our sugar into a new substance - caramel. We turned off the heat and slowly added half a cup of water in order to create a runny, edible solution. I did the pouring as the caramel was so hot that it steamed and spattered:

The shock-cooled caramel formed a brittle sort of candy-lump that we just had to taste:

My daughter continued stirring the mixture on low heat for about another ten minutes - until the big caramel chunk dissolved into a solution:

This is what we ended up with: a delicious carbon-water mixture that we ate over ice cream!

++++++++++++

If you haven’t heard of Science Experiments You Can Eat and you have scientifically-inclined children (or you homeschool), you might want to check it out of the library. Ours is an old version (1972), but the new one is supposedly revised and updated. I haven’t seen the new one, but our book has the following chapters about the science of food: A Kitchen Laboratory; Solutions; Suspensions, Colloids, and Emulsions; Carbohydrates and Fats; Proteins; Kitchen Chemistry; Plants We Eat; Microbes; and Enzymes.

+++++++++++++

If you did this week’s hot Unplugged Project, please put your link in Mr. Linky below so we can all find you. If you didn’t, please read how to join in, and consider doing next week’s project.

+++++++++++++

Next week’s Unplugged Project theme will be:

Trees

Have fun!