Autumn and Thanksgiving Books

Hard on the heels of Halloween, it's time to discuss autumn books. I love this season, though we experience little of it here in the Central Valley of California. We do get cooler weather and changing leaves, but not the brilliant colors so many of you enjoy. We get our fall color on the pages of favorite stories! Thanksgiving is my favorite time of year (along with Christmas and spring). Oh, how we need to remember to be thankful to the Lord for His abundant blessings! Here are a few (and I do mean a few!) of the books we enjoy this time of year.

The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dagliesh is one that we read every fall. Helen Sewell's illustrations are so gentle and classic.

Now It's Fall is a tiny little Lois Lenski story. It's a perfect before-bed story, short, sweet and filled with Lois Lenski's gracefully illustrations.

A Plump and Perky Turkey is the funnest book to read! It's a traditional November book for The Crew. It's got great rhymes and cadence and a creative, humorous story.

Leaf Man is one that I do not own, but it's one I will grab the first time I see it. I like all of Lois Ehlert's other books!

I have many of the adorable Mousekin books. Mousekin's Thanksgiving is as good as any. The details of Mousekin's life, and the animals he encounters, make this series useful for nature studies as well as literature.

Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving I love the way this book gives all the glory to God. Squanto's life parallels the Bible's Joseph and it's clearly laid out in this well-illustrated story.

Sarah Morton's Day and the rest of the series are good for studying the life of the folks who lived in the 1600's. They are accurate representations of the activities of their days.

If You Were At The First Thanksgiving is full of facts about the life and times of the Pilgrims and Native Americans. Small paragraphs make the nuggets of information easily understood by younger readers, while not being "dumbed down" in content.

Scary Books...

... but not too scary! I am not a big fan of Halloween. I very much dislike the ugly, death-exalting facets of it. I don't mind "Hallowee-lite" costumes; the innocent, playful Halloween of days past. I'd rather attend a Harvest carnival than trick-or-treat. I do like to read some 'scary' books to the Littles at this time of year. Here's are some favorites.

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything is a classic. Every one of my children has listened to this repeatedly. Now, my older children are reading it to the younger.



Teeny Tiny is a teeny tiny paperback book that shares an ancient folktale. It's not a very long or complicted story, but children love it anyway.



We were introduced to the the Cranberry Family by FIAR. This is a fun story with engaging characters.



Another illustrated by Tomie de Paola, The Vanishing Pumpkin tells the tale of a couple, each HUNDREDS of years old, bickering their way through a spooky adventure. I think it's a darling story!



Mercer Mayer has a great series of books with monsters and such. I avoided these books with little-Littles until they were about six. No need to introduce the idea of things living under the bed or in the closet if they haven't made that up themselves already. If I did have a child with a fear of creatures, I would use these books to assuage them. He also has a series of Little Monster books that are similar to his classic Little Critter books.



McBroom's Ghost is just part of the great McBroom series with which every child should be familiar. I can't say enough about McBoom and his family. I love their tenacity, their aplomb and the simple fact that they are always there for each other.



Mommy? is a great pop-up books that we have enjoyed. I have even blogged about it before.



The Trip is a sweet book, like all Ezra Jack Keats books. It's another story in the Louie series.



Can I add another Tomie book? Four Scary Stories is always worth the read.

What about you, Do you have any favorite scary-but-not-too-scary stories? Please share! I'll post The Crew's favorite Autumn Books next time.

New Books

I went to a book sale tonight and came home with a mixed bag of great books. The first is "A Voyage of the Basset" by James Christensen. Wow. This book leaves me speechless.

The art is truly amazing. I can't believe that I hadn't heard of it before! Make a search of the title in Google images and enjoy some of the lovely artwork.
I haven't read the story yet, but if it matches the illustrations, it'll be wonderful!

The next one is "Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like" by Jay Williams.

This is illustrated by Mercer Mayer, so you know the art is great. The colors in this book are deep and earthy, just like I like best. The story is good, too! Han is polite and generous, to the joy of all involved. He also knows not to judge a book by it's cover!

I grab any and all Patricia Polacco books I see, if they are a reasonable price. This nice hardcover is a library-bound copy that looks new. Bonus-I didn't have this title yet!



Bill Peet doesn't write great literature, but he does write entertaining stories that stick with my children. The vocabulary is challenging, but the Littles understand just fine and always want another book. I am *this* close to having ALL his stories now!



I will be reading about the Kweeks with the Littles tomorrow, I believe.

Stand Back......

I picked up a gem of a book at the thrift store today! For one thin little dime, I became the owner of "Stand Back," Said The Elephant, "I'm Going to Sneeze!" by Patricia Thomas, illustrated by Wallace Tripp. Have you read this story? It's hilarious! I am always on the lookout for good rhyming books. Two of my sons and one of my daughters seem to have been born without the ability to rhyme or recognize a rhyme when they hear it. We read lots of rhyming books to help them overcome this lack of poetic ears.

I read it to Troubles, Jack and Missy and they immediately asked to hear it again. That's a sign of a great book. As I was looking it up on Amazon to get the link for this post, Troubles saw the computer screen and gasped, "Your going to sell that book???? I don't want you to sell that one!". That's another sign of a great book!

Anatomy Dude

I've written before about how much Troubles likes anatomy. He's enjoying sitting in on Exploring Creation with Anatomy with the bigger kids. He's not required to do anything he doesn't want to, but he's listened to most of the lessons and participated in several of the "Try This's" and experiments. Today we got out Anatomy Dude to examine his muscles. Guess who has been playing Dr. Frankenstein all day?

I showed Jack and Troubles an Amazon page of anatomy models. Oh, how they want everything, especially the Anatomy Dude's Head, Skull, Heart and Hand! Maybe "Santa" will be bringing human models for Christmas!!

California State Unit

Here's a nice colorful map to show the different regions of California. We discussed the mountain ranges (Coastal and Sequoia), the Central Valley, the desert regions (Mojave, specifically) and the differing climates, plants and animals.

Here's a nice selection of printable maps of California.

We discussed the state symbols: flag, motto, bird, flower etc. This was just an overview, with no requirement for memorization of this information.

California State Flag Online Coloring Page I like activities like this since they use no ink to print, create no paper to manage, are fun and engaging for a time and teach mouse skills and hand/eye coordination.

Lots of printable and interactive activities

Mission Pictures We briefly discussed missions, but we do not devote very much time to them. We looked over the pics we took at Mission San Buenaventura when we visited and talked about how the Spanish helped and hurt the Indian culture.

We played a game with California trivia.

We learned about the failure of the Kaweah Colony. This area isn't too far from us, and we have been to the site in the past.

Here's an Amazon Listmania that I found helpful.

We watched a neat video clip of Market Street in San Fransisco days before the Great Quake. We also looked at lots of pictures of the aftermath and compared the with the 1989 quake in Loma Prieta. This, of course, led to a discussion of earthquake preparedness, the reasons we prep, and the real-time earthquake map I have bookmarked. Go to the left sidebar to change to a view of the whole USA or the world.

Books we read:

Nine For California by Sonia Levitin
John Muir by Charles Graves
If You Lived At The Time Of The Great San Francisco Earthquake by Ellen Levine

The Tower of Babel

We are using Mystery of History this year and are studying Sumer and the Tower of Babel. Among other activities, the younger kids created ziggurats using Lego. I love how each has their own personal style, yet all are similar to the pictures we looked at online.

 
These are the remains of a ziggurat in the ancient city of Ur. Abram might have walked past this!

This is an imprint of a seal from ancient Babylon showing a ziggurat. I love history.