Last week, parents from my eldest daughter’s school got an email about a book donation drive that will happen this Friday, November 13, 2009.

Part of the email details are:

“As you may all be aware by now, our school went under 8ft of floodwater that easily devastated the whole school.  Our library, in fact, is almost bare with a good 99% of our books washed away in the flood.

Thus, in line with our book month in November, we are urging everyone to HELP IN RESTORING OUR LIBRARY BY DONATING BOOKS ON 13NOVEMBER09, FRIDAY.

For this purpose, our principal, _____________, specifically REQUESTS FOR NOVELS so our kids can start reading their favourite titles again.  As a book donor, you will be provided book stickers where you can put your child’s name and these shall be placed on the books you will donate. For starters we are enclosing 3 book stickers but you can donate more than three books, of course.  There will be more stickers available during the book donation activity on Friday, 13NOV09.”

The school suffered some major damage when Typhoon Ondoy ravaged the country. Classrooms were submerged in flood waters, library books and school supplies left in classrooms were deemed unfit for use.

If there was something positive about this, it was that the deluge happened on a Saturday afternoon morning and not when the children are in school.

No need to order Amazon books, too little time to do that. I plan to scour bargain book stores on Wednesday or Thursday to get books for the drive.

Holler if you have some books you can spare and I will get  these from you

How well do you know your child? I thought I know them well enough but I got surprised when I read some of the answers the kids wrote in their textbooks as part of our academic lessons.

Sample questions are (my guesses are the ones in italics):

What recreational activity do you enjoy most. My answer: watching dvd. Youngest daughter’s answer: playing the piano.

If I were food, what would I be? (ice cream) egg (ok no real surprise because son can have eggs at any given time of the day)

If I were an animal, what would I be? (dog) bettle

If I were a book, what title would I have? (Almanac) Bible

If I were a piece of furniture, what would I be? (bed) sofa

If I were a bird, where would I go? (to the beach) Norway (ok this really surprised me)

Would you ask your children these questions and see if you can guess their answers?

We love books and here in my other Photo Hunt entry is a part of our home library.

If I will be asked to choose a favorite book, I surely would have a hard time choosing a personal favorite. Here are links to the books I have featured in this blog.

But from a teacher’s point of view (well, I am after all a special education teacher AND a homeschooling mom) I would definitely choose the book “Unicorns are Real” by Barbara Meister Vitale.

The book basically introduces great learning drills to help children with learning problems.

The book also encourages parents and educators to be more creative in teaching their children the necessary skills to be able to overcome the challenges that they must face in the classroom setting. Adaptations to the learning style of the child is encouraged.

I leave you with this page from the book:

Here are  more detailed posts about how a mom blogger friend used the book to help her child succeed and graduate as a Magna cum laude.

Have a great weekend, everyone and I hope to finish “Hour Game” by David Baldacci this weekend

photohunt

I think we have a budding artist and writer in our midst.

No, not the eldest child nor the middle child but our youngest child, who is 5.9 years old.

Tania has always been advanced with her fine-motor skills even when she was younger.

She can draw well using the pen and paper. Please take notice of the dimensions of the bunch of balloons.

She can also use the MS Paint in the computer.

She also loves to write her own stories. I know I have thrown out some of her stories and have not documented these but now that she has a new set of stories, I plan to put these together and make something like children’s book with her drawings and written stories in it.

This would be a good gift for relatives especially grandparents during Christmas or special occasions. You might want to try this too

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is a well-loved book for children written by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault. This book is best read by rapping the words or in a sing-song tune. The rhymes are fun and easy to memorize.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is a book about the alphabet that climbed up the coconut tree. When all of them were at the top, the letters all fell down. So the big letters came to their rescue because some got hurt.

We had this before on a tape, played on a tape player. The rhythm is catchy, upbeat and like a rap. The new format for DVD was different though but not less fun. The book is being recited like a song, with high notes and a wonderful rhythm that the children and adults too, would really love.

Below is a photo of my students, though they can’t be seen, watching a video of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom in the biggest room in the center where the occupational therapists work.

This room also doubles as a group or class venue because of its size. It also has a big television so it can also be turned into something like an audio-visual room. There are no seats though the children prefer to just stand and/or dance and/or move about when the video is playing songs or just sit on the floor when the video is not for dancing and moving around. They sit on rubber mats though if the center decides to upgrade using a home theater carpet, that would be good too.

Now, this singsong part, which is my favorite part actually, I can’t get it out of my mind now, “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, look there’s a full moon. A is out of bed and this is what he said, “Dare double dare, you can’t catch me, I’ll beat you to the top of the coconut tree, Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom!”

This is the fifth story in our Story Telling group activity this summer: “Grover, Grover, Come On Over” by Katharine Ross. This is a book I bought my daughter Trixie when she was just a few months old.

This story has many aspects or lessons to be learned by the reader.

First, Grover made a kite by using recyclable materials that he got from his friends. Then it also teaches about kite making using step by step sequences. It also teaches about patiently waiting for something to finish to be shared and enjoyed.

And because the lines were repetitive and rhyming, the kids enjoyed reading along with me (those who can already read) or just plainly reciting along with me. We had our oral reading wherein they assumed the role of Grover and I assumed the role of the other characters. Oh what fun we had!

Noel, an occupational therapist who is with me in the group, put up some yarns to some of the fixtures on the ceiling. Then the children were asked to get a hold of one and pretend to be flying kites. They had so much fun!

Then the children settled down to design their own kites. One of them had high hopes of flying the kite when he gets home. If it rains, he said he will use a fan

Here is heart-warming story about a girl who learned to read this story.