Lucinda's Library Notes

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, they are an important part of a child's educational world. There are a variety of ways to incorporate pictures in activities. Pictures are part of personal expression, art and media. 1. Draw pictures with a variety of mediums: crayons, markers, pastels, paints, colouring pencils, ink etc. Draw them on a variety of materials: paper products, canvas, foil, wood, walls, fabrics etc. The pictures can be black and white, grey-scale or multi-colour and sepia, pastel or vibrant in nature. They range from random scribbles to multi-layered, highly detailed masterpieces. They can be copies of another person's design/vision or images from the surrounding world or unique creative expressions of personal ideas. They may or may not follow a set artistic style but the key issue is that it is your own drawing/art. The drawings can be part of a game such as Pictionary.  They can also replace words in notes such as drawing a heart to represent I Love Yo...

 P is for Protest is the plan I had as it is very important for children to be able to protest and use the word 'no!' to express themselves. While adults quickly tire of the continual use of the term, it is a time when children learn that they are an individual able to express their own views, wants and needs. While a foot-stomping temper tantrum level of NO! is quickly squashed, we do encourage the use of the word overall. For today, I will simply say that protesting is a valuable and necessary, developmentally appropriate skill to build in children. Another P word is Productivity. This is something that is a lifelong endeavour and a skill that is highly valued in society. We all want to be productive and contribute to the world we live in according to our knowledge and skills. What is not always realized by people, though, is that even the very smallest ones have an innate desire to be productive. A toddler wants to help wash dishes and sweep the floor and they are happy to h...

Today I ate a pancake so naturally, pancakes came to mind for the letter P.  I was about to do a book called Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie de Paola to introduce you to another popular author. It is a wordless picture book. I realize the value of this style of book as it gives children and their caregivers an opportunity to share their ideas based on the pictures without having to follow a set of words. This helps them to focus on the same things together and to build vocabulary and ideas at whatever level they are at from infancy through to grade school. In the story, the lady found a solution to the problems that came her way and finally got to enjoy pancakes for breakfast! It is an excellent choice of books and one I would recommend reading for pancake Tuesday! However, I saw another book by Eric Carle and want to highlight it. If you ever want to spend quality time with your children and make your own pancakes for breakfast, this book will give you the information needed to ma...

N ot simply hot and cold but I went so far as fire and ice to represent opposites for today's post. I could also have selected day vs night or light vs dark or a host of other opposing terms. It is useful to understand what something is by knowing what it is not. Once you are clear on what love looks like, hate is very easily identified as being something different and the  differences help you to define both of the terms. Peace is not war and an ally is not an enemy and truth is not a lie. To expand on that, as these terms are more social, in the concrete world around us a solid is clearly not a liquid, west is not east, up is not down and inside is not outside. Interestingly, as I began to consider opposites, my first thoughts were for preschoolers as these terms help them learn. However, I found myself quickly looking for shades of grey. For example, how do you define rich vs poor? What is truth wealth or poverty? Or consider large vs small or difficult vs easy. Some definitions...

What kind of opportunities are we looking for in life?  Typically we want to be able to have a way to make a living, a home, food on our table and people who love us. As a result we are looking for opportunities to get a good education and a job that allows us time to spend time with family and friends too. So, can we find a 'Wish' and close our eyes and blow and have it all come true?  Can we tap our heels together three times to find our way home or rub the genie's lamp to get three wishes?  Sharing these stories with children help them understand that it is 'magical' if a wish suddenly comes true but that with work, with dedication, it is possible to make dreams happen with the help of those around us.  There is a fairy tale where a man and a wife live in a cottage and he catches a fish that gives him three wishes if he lets him go.  Sadly, they waste the opportunity and end up only with a meal of sausages. However, while they could have had so much more, and...

🎗 Orange is the colour that supports the First Nations children who were put into residential schools. Orange shirt day on Sept 30 is a means for people to respectfully stand by this community and show their sorrow over the past and commitment to make things better moving forward. It is meant to celebrate resilience and remind people that every child matters. Although we may want to shield our children from the harsh realities of this world we live in, school curriculum wants our children to learn about these historical events. I am not confident about properly depicting this subject but after talking about the North and thinking about people in Northern Canada, when I came to O and didn't have a book, orange and then The  Orange Shirt Story  came to mind. There are several books on the topic but I selected the one with that very same title.  Phyllis's Orange Shirt is a simpler, rhyming version of the book for younger children. This book is based on a true story as it h...

  When I began this post, I thought about focusing on the NORTH . Some of the reasons why follows: Northern lights :  They have been of interest to me lately. I think chalk or pastel drawings are the best childhood depiction of the northern lights though they pale in comparison to the real life display. North Pole : Adventures with Santa, escapades to see the reindeer? The North Pole is a classic! We the North : Go Raptors Go! Naturally we want to create a cheer for our team and also go have fun playing basketball with friends! Who knows? They may be the future of the sport! True North : A direction that is always true, immovable, unchangeable, dependable. Know it. Be it.   Northern biomes : These are defined areas of land with specific wildlife. Create a project to learn more about them and all they entail.  But then I decided that there was another great word to consider, NATURE ! There is a wide open smorgasbord of activities that come under the broad topic o...

When I thought of natural consequences, I thought of the inevitable ebb and flow of waves and tides that come and wash away carefully designed castles in the sand. It may be incredibly disappointing and yet it is literally a consequence of nature and not dependent on any emotional response.  If I eat too much and my stomach hurts or if I am not patient and burn my tongue by ingesting something before it has had time to cool, those too are natural consequences. In building skills in our children, it is most helpful for them to learn by experiencing natural consequences even though we frequently try to shield them from the outcomes of their actions. If you touch the hot stove, you will get burned. If you climb a sandy hill, the ground is likely to give way under you and pull you back down. If you swear at your teacher, you are going to visit the principal. And so it should be. We need to push our limits to expand our boundaries and accomplish things we have not been able to do in the...

  There is a game where you put a plastic nose on the card of the matching animal called Who Knows Whose Nose?. It is a game for 2-4 year old children that is a great beginner game. Another game called WhoNose? is similar to Headbanz.  It is for 6+y and each player is to hang a facial card from their nose and ask questions to guess who it is from a selection card. A player has to get three correct to win.  Pin the nose on the clown is also a nose game. Operation has a light up nose if you accidentally touch the sides while 'operating'. Pencil Nose requires you to wear special glasses with a pen attached to the nose and the other person has to guess what you are drawing 'with your nose'! These are samples of some of the games available to people with an interest in noses. Pinocchio has a video game, a board game, a movie and a book. Pinocchio helps children learn about his special nose that grows when he lies.  Who else has a special nose?  I think now i...

  Although I lead our music team, I am not particularly gifted in music.  I did take viola and flute classes as a young person in school. I learned some piano and was part of the choir. I am fair at reading music and singing and I use those skills but they are not highly developed. These skills are valuable though because music is a language that reaches across cultures and throughout history. It spans all ages and touches people and restores them in incredible ways.  Music bonds people together. It is something that can be enjoyed individually or en masse. Music has as many personalities as the people who create it. I do not simply mean genres of music or styles. I mean music has a voice that represents the one conveying it. It may be the deep resonance of a cello or the high trill of a piccolo or the rhythmic beating a drum. It may be a soulful crooning, a booming crescendo or a gentle strumming or humming that conveys a story unique to the one telling it. Music has pow...

So cute to see these 'wild animals' outside playing! This one is pretending to be the one elephant who went out to play upon a spider's web one day! It's a cute song by Sharon, Lois and Bram if you don't know it!  Or perhaps he is trying to cross over a river on the log to save himself from hungry crocodiles below!  Make believe is a developmental milestone as children learn to think beyond the concrete world and imagine what could be possible in the world around them. They can take the toy food objects and not just name them and the colour or quantity but they can imagine pulling them from their place of origin in a land far away and cooking them up as a world famous chef! Why not? It's fun! Some children are not very keen to use their imagination but it opens such a wonderful world to them when they do and so it is a skill that should be encouraged. I mean, what would it be like if nobody thought up the best of children's books or the greatest Disney movie...

Jan Brett wrote this beautifully illustrated Ukrainian fairy tale whose pictures help children to predict what is about to happen on the next page.  Not only does this book help with the skill of predicting what may happen next, it also helps children practice story recall as it is written in a very methodical and predictable manner. Cutouts from this story can be used to sequence the events correctly to help the child retell the story to another person and in doing so build their speaking abilities as well as their academic skills. This is a winter based story about a lost mitten so it is very relatable to those who have experienced the recent snowfalls in Ontario. It is a lot of fun to play out in the snow and mittens are a key part of outdoor clothing choices that are required to fully and safely enjoy outdoor play in the cold. Find out what the child thinks is going to happen to the mitten that the animals are looking at on the front cover. It is clear that this is a forest bas...