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Virtual Book Club for Kids: Dr. Seuss--Bartholomew and the Oobleck

If you are looking for Fairy Tales in Different Cultures, it is here.

This month the Virtual Book Club for Kids is featuring Dr. Seuss. Now I must admit, I was not too excited about Dr. Seuss. I feel like he is so well known and so over done, however I still visited the library and found some books I had not read by him. We have really enjoyed reading his books and have found some new favorites. Here is a collage of all the books we own or took out of the library except one, My Many Colored Days, since it did not have a title on the cover. This however is one of my favorites since it hits so many lessons--colors, moods, etc.

For those of you who are new and do not know anything about the Virtual Book Club for Kids, I am joining a group of wonderful bloggers who each month pick an author for the month and then host a blog hop sharing one of the author's books and an activity, craft, etc. to go with the book. You are invited to join in the blog hop and link up all your Dr. Seuss (this month) book activities. It is a great way to find new books and new ideas to go with the books. The amazing blogs I am joining in hosting this book club are:

Toddler Approved - Rainy Day Mum - Adventures in Reading with Kids - 3 Dinosaurs - Royal Baloo - The Educators' Spin On It - Inspiration Laboratories - Pleasantest Thing - Edventures with Kids - Two Big Two Little - Playing With Words 365 - Kitchen Counter Chronicles - Outlaw Mom - Mommy and Me Book Club - Crafty Moms Share - No Twiddle Twaddle - The Good Long Road - Ready. Set. Read 2 Me - Reading Confetti - Mama Smiles - Juggling with Kids- Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas - Creekside Learning - Creative Family Fun - The Usual Mayhem - Teach Preschool - PlayDrMom - CraftoArt - Here Come the Girls - Being a Conscious Parent - Smiling like Sunshine - Crayon Freckles - Train Up a Child - Smile Play Learn - Enchanted Homeschooling Mom - Coffee Cups and Crayons - Having Fun at Chelle's House- Love, Play, Learn - Juggling With Kids - Motherhood on a Dime

If you have been following the Virtual Book Club for Kids for awhile you will notice we have some new hosts.

Now another exciting resource for Dr. Seuss is www.seussville.com. You can visit there and find games, activities, printables in the teacher and parent sections. Above are some of the printables we printed and have done. We have many more to try. This is also our first post of this month's author. We have done some activities for a couple more of his books which we will share later in the three week blog hop time. Plus Dr. Seuss's birthday is March 2nd, so expect to see a lot of Dr. Seuss on the web (which also corresponds to Read Across America).

Today I am going to share with you, our projects with Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Now this is one of the books we took out of the library. I had not read it or heard of it, but we enjoyed it. For those who do not know the story, the King of Didd gets angry with the sky since sunshine, rain, fog and snow are the only things that fall from it. He wants something different since he is a special king. He has his page boy, Bartholomew, call the magicians. Bartholomew tries to talk him out of calling them, but he is ordered to call them. The magicians go to their mountain to perform the magic and have promised to have oobleck fall from the sky. No one including the magicians know what oobleck is or will look like, but it is not sunshine, rain, fog or snow, so the king wants them to do it. The next morning oobleck starts falling and Bartholomew discovers it is green and sticky--think slime but stickier. Birds are getting stuck in their nests from it. He goes to warn the people of Didd to stay inside but runs into oobleck trouble everywhere he goes. Soon the oobleck is not staying outside, but starts to come into the palace. The king gets stuck to his throne. He orders Bartholomew to go get the magicians, but he cannot since they are locked in their mountain cave and which cannot be opened by him. They decide to come up with some magic words of their own and Bartholomew suggests the king say "I'm sorry." The king gets upset since he is king and should not have to apologize. But after getting frustrated and crying the king says, "I'm sorry. It's all my fault." and the oobleck stops and the sky clears. And all of the oobleck that has fallen melts away so all the people and animals become unstuck.

We of course did the oobleck coloring page of the king stuck in it found at Seussville. After reading the story for the first time, we happened to make popcorn (using a hot air popper) and noticed the popcorn flying everywhere. We commented on how popcorn would be better than oobleck to fall from the sky. It is less sticky and soft and edible. Then for an activity we decided to try to make oobleck. Ok, we really made goo, but we pretended it was oobleck. We followed the recipe/tutorial at Science Sparks for glow in the dark goo, but we did not add the glow in the dark paint. She happened to share it again on her Facebook page right when I was going to go look for a goo recipe. This was the first time we made goo, so we didn't really know what to expect. My daughter who does not like to get her hands dirty usually absolutely loved playing with it. She got upset when I told her we needed to clean it up. It definitely has a very strange/unique feel to it.

We used a cup of corn starch and then I took a cup of water and mixed a couple of drops of green food coloring into the water and added it slowly to the corn starch. Otherwise we followed the tutorial at Science Sparks. When I mentioned to my mother what we were doing she thought we should be using corn meal. We tried it and it did not make a good goo, so we went back to our corn starch.

Now it is your turn to share your Dr. Seuss book activities. I know in the past I have some posts about Dr. Seuss. Here is how we celebrated his birthday last year. Here is my Multicultural Monday post on The Sneetches and What Was I Afraid Of?

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures--Chinese Cinderella

In honor of the Chinese New Year, I thought I would share the Chinese Cinderella. Now, I have read in several sources that the oldest, written version of Cinderella came from China. It was recorded in Yu Yang Tsa Tsu (Miscellany of Forgotten Lore) written by Tuan Ch’êng-shih around 856-860 AD. (Source) I have found two slightly different versions to the story in picture books, but the main parts are the same. First we will look briefly at China.

Virtual Book Club for Kids 2012-2013

Sharing Saturday is still open!! Please stop by to share your child-oriented crafts and activities or to be inspired by the features from last week and what has already been shared this week!

Well as August ends and September begins the end of the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids ends, however we have decided to make it a year-long event!! As you know in June, our author was Mo Willems, in July the author was Audrey and Don Wood and August the author was Kevin Henkes! If you missed any, please stop by and see the great ideas everyone has shared.

So the Virtual Book Club for Kids is a group of 20+ bloggers who will host a blog hop for activities to go with the author of the month. The Bloggers are:

Today I am going to share with you our line up for the next year!! The blog hop goes live the third week of each month and the dates are included in my list below! To participate read a book by the selected author of the month and do some activity with it. Be creative and have fun!! Then blog about it and come here to link up at the blog hop!! It is a fun way to get your child reading with you and enjoying books! Plus you may learn about some new authors that you will end up loving! Check out are great line up!

September 17th-Lois Ehlert

October 15th-Amy Krouse Rosenthal

November 19th- Tomie de Paola

December 17th- Jan Brett

January 21st-David McPhail

February 18th-Dr. Seuss

March 18th-Julia Donaldson

April 15th-David Shannon

May 20th-Leo Lionni

June 17th-Gail Gibbons

July 15th- Jez Alborough

August 19th-Donald Crews

I hope you will join us each month!!

Mulitcultural Monday:Skin Color Collage & Picture Books

I've been trying to find some good projects to share with you, but since I have a 3-year-old right now, I also want them to be something she can relate to. Thus I am sharing with you lots of picture books and such. I have lots of ideas of things to do with a group of older kids, but just one, not as much. The first book I want to talk about is a classic that we all know, Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches and Other Stories.

While reading this Saturday morning, Hazel and I took the time to talk about the pictures. Why do the plain belly sneetches look so sad? Do the star bellied ones? Why are the star bellied sneetches so mean to the plain bellied sneetches? These are a few of the questions we discussed and several of them were asked by Hazel. This is a wonderful story showing that looks do not matter. You can equate the stars to so many of the prejudices in our world--skin color, sexual orientation, disability, gender, age, etc. For those who do not know the story, the star bellied sneetches think they are the best sneetches and will not talk or associate with the plain bellied sneetches. Along comes a man with a machine to put stars on the plain bellied sneetches for a price. Then he has a machine to take the stars off the original star bellied sneetches for a more expensive price. They spend all of their money and day going in and out of the machines until no one can tell who is who. The man of course leaves with all of their money, but the sneetches realize that there is no difference between them.

The other stories in this book have similar themes or at least themes that teach lessons about differences, stubbornness, etc. The second story is The Zax. There are two zax in this story. One is a south going zax and the other a north going zax. The south going zax never go any direction besides south and the north only goes north. Well they bump into each other and neither is willing to step aside to let the other go, so the world grows around them and they miss out on their lives. Talk about a great story to talk about compromising and getting along. Hazel and I took the time to really discuss this and what was happening in it.

The next story, Too Many Daves, Hazel did not seem to like and asked me to stop reading in the middle of it. It is about a mother who named all of her twenty-three sons Dave. Needless to say it is about the confusion of having the same name.

The last story is a story I remember from my own childhood. I remember in kindergarten the class always wanted to listen to it during quiet time. (The teacher had it on an album.) It is What Was I Scared Of? It is a story of a creature (it is Dr. Seuss so I don't know what type of creature it is) that meets a pair of pale green pants with no one inside them one night. The creature then tells of a few more times where he runs into the pants at night. Needless to say the creature is scared of a pair of pants that can walk, ride a bike, etc. In the last instance of them meeting the creature screams for help but then notices the pants are crying and trembling with fear as well. He comforts the pants and then whenever they meet they say hi. Again, a great story for relating how people who are different do not mean you have to be afraid. Something I need to work on with Hazel a bit more.

Now for a few more books and a project. You may remember a few weeks ago we explored the book The Color of Us by Karen Katz. We played with mixing paints to make the different shades of skin. This project goes right along with it and could be used with The Color of Us as well as these books.

Shades of People by Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly is about the different shade of skin color. It has different pictures of all different shades and talks about skin like wrapping paper where you cannot tell what is inside a person.

The Skin You Live In by Michael Tyler is about how we all have skin and it is yours, but your skin does not make you who you are. You still dream, think, act like you not based on your skin color.

All Kinds of Children by Norma Simon is another book talking about the similarities and differences between children around the world. All children need food and live in houses and have belly buttons. The houses may be different, but everyone lives somewhere. It goes on like that. It is a nice story bringing that we are all people no matter what our differences are.

Now for our simple project. I gave Hazel a bunch of magazines, catalogs and newspaper ads and had her cut out pictures of people of different colors. I helped with some and had to do some trimming on a few. Then we pulled out one of her The Colors of Us paintings to make a collage. I wanted her to glue them over the paint colors we came up with but she did not want to ruin her painting so we glued them on the back.

This gave her great practice in cutting!! Plus recognizing the different shades of people. One of my goals has been to get her comfortable with seeing people of different colors. We tend to have a mostly white community around us, but I want to expose her to the differences so she can be comfortable with anyone.

Do you have any good multicultural/diversity books to share?

This is where I link up...

Sharing Saturday #9

Wow!! What amazing entries we had in last week's Sharing Saturday. If you haven't had a chance to check them out you really should. There were some really great ones added at the end of it. I know I had a hard time picking features. It seems to get harder and harder the more entries we get.

Last Saturday when we went to Lakeshore Learning Store for their free craft, we discovered they were celebrating Dr. Seuss' Birthday, which is today! Not only did they have their free craft but they had story times and other crafts. Hazel made this Thing Hair there. They had all sorts of ways to decorate it. It was precut by the employees but it looks like they used a wavy scrapbooking pair of scissors.

Today we made easy Cat in the Hat hats. We used a paper plate, a piece of white or red construction paper and red or white crepe paper (streamers). We glued the streamers on to the construction paper to make the stripes. Then curled the construction paper to form the top part of the hat and cut out the inside circle of the paper plate and taped the tube of construction paper in.

To tape them in we cut slits so it would fit the curve better.

Then Hazel attempted to get a picture of me. It took several times, but she managed to get me and the hat in a picture. Not a very good picture, but a picture.

This afternoon we also made some cupcakes and took out some Dr. Seuss book from the library. Our birthday celebration continues for Dr. Seuss. I finally used the silicone turtle cupcake cups I bought. (Steven loves turtles so I got them for him.) They are perfect Yertle, the Turtle cupcakes. Too bad we didn't get that book.

I quickly frosted the cupcakes. Hazel picked out the pink frosting at the store. She of course wanted to add more to hers.

Then she added some sprinkles to all of them in her style.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Look later on for a new knitted swap idea. I'm hoping to post it today or at least over the weekend. And of course Sharing Saturday will be starting up tonight!!