For the first time in 2 1/2 years, Gage’s mouth is metal free! He was very excited until went back 3 days later to pick up his retainer and they told him he had to wear it 22 hours a day for the first week, lol. He’s almost to freedom!
Jason and I went to an Octoberfest last night and had fun even if neither of us drinks beer. We’re doing alphabet dating and I had F. So we went to a Festival in Cuyahoga Falls on Front Street and the first thing we did was hit up the ice cream parlor for a Flight of ice cream. The weather was perfect, the band was good, the Italian restaurant was great, and we even came home with some art.
This week the Friends of the Solon Library had our annual meeting and we brought in an animal shelter and their resident cartoonist. It was a fun night learning about how she’s made a living with her art, she pens the syndicated Flo & Co, and also lends her talent to Rescue Village. Of course I bought the book that benefits the shelter.
What I Finished This Week
Before I Do by Sophie Cousens was another lovely British romance by Cousens. What would happen if there were some bad omens around your wedding weekend, with the final one being the man who you thought of as your soul mate showing up? The story was told by jumping around different times of Audrey’s life where we get to know her and men in her life better. This had all of the things I like about her books, even if it wasn’t a favorite.
I’ve read 93 books this year.
What I’m currently reading
Waking Lionsby Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is my fiction pick for Israel and I really like it, but it’s not something I’m racing through. An Isreali doctor hits man with his car and watches him die. The wife of the man tracks him down a has a proposal for her to keep quiet about it. I am really hoping to finish this today.
What We Watched
We made Gage watch two 80s movies this week and he complained. Until he watched them. First watched War Games with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. Thumbs up from all. Then we watched Coming to America with Eddie Murphy and I hadn’t realized it was rated R until we saw 2 naked ladies in the first five minutes. I was not happy (this was Jason’s pick), but the rest was just swearing, which Gage assures me is no different than what he hears at school. Insert any unhappy emoji here. We all laughed a lot so I guess that’s good.
Plans for the weekend
It’s book sale week! So, today I’ll be checking my lists and getting everything organized. I should really go to the library, BUT I will be there pretty much all day every day for the next week starting tomorrow and a few hours every morning the week after that, so I’m trying to rest up.
The beginning of every school year seems to bring different emotions. Today it’s excited nervousness or nervous excitement, take your pick. Gage went to the same school K-3 and 7. We homeschooled 4-6. Today he started 8th grade at a new school.
This school will challenge him in every possible way. I envision a rough few months, but like everything I’ve ever asked of Gage, I know he will rise to the task. I know that. What I don’t know, yet, is how much of his rising will depend on me.
Being on the autism spectrum and finding the right school can be tricky. We live in a district with very good schools, but not right for Gage. Some kids thrive, but Gage needs a smaller class with teachers who can see when he’s zoning out. He needs a school that teaches executive functioning skills to all students. He needs a school that knows all kids learn differently. I hope that we’ve found that school.
Over the summer Gage went back to FIT Learning (we used then when homeschooling) for tutoring in reading and writing, every day for 45 minutes. I also hired a math education major home for the summer to come twice a week for an hour to teach him math. I had a meeting this morning to go over his end of the summer assessment. He improved in the reading and writing (but it’s still a struggle), but in math he scored in the 97th percentile for his age!
When you have a kid who falls behind in some areas of learning it’s easy to get stuck focusing on that. Having a young woman come and teach him math, a subject he really likes, was a new approach for me and one that paid off. Celebrate all of the successes and let the kids truly excel at what they are gifted at. Here’s to a great school year for all the kids and teachers.
Gage’s favorite was Seeds by Ken Robbins and I highly recommend it as beautifully done introduction to seeds for kids.
Gage’s thoughts…
This book is about all kinds if seeds. I liked the interesting facts about seeds because I love nature. I never heard about sticktight seeds and they are sticky. Maple tree seed wings are called samaras. The photos are incredible. I recommend this for anyone who is interested in seeds or great photos.
Every Friday Gage will choose his favorite book from the school week and write a short review of it. Sometimes he’ll write two if his teacher makes him 🙂
Geronimo Stilton (author) is the pseudonym for Elisabetta Dami from Italy
The book is fiction since Geronimo is a mouse.
This is book #46 out of 65.
Geronimo goes to a ceremony at the castle but he doesn’t know what it was. Two mice fall in love and more. I really liked the Stingysnouts, Geronimo’s family because they were crazy. I liked the part where Geronimo figures out that the ceremony is fake. I like the end where Geronimo faints. I would recommend this book to kids who like mouse stories.
Mom’s honorable mention…
Explorers: Ancient Egypt by Jinny Johnson. This was a nice precursor to our Ancient Egypt studies. Heavy on the photos and text in small, easy to read bites. This is not comprehensive in any way but a starting place to generate interest.
Bunnicula. Written by Deborah and James Howe and illustrated byAlan Daniel. Finished 8-7-20, 5/5 stars, children’s literature, 144 pages, pub. 1979
Oh, how I loved Harold and Chester. And the Monroes. And everything else. This book is a warm blanket on a cold winter’s night. There was humor and intelligence for both you and a child. I appreciated some of the humor more than Gage did, but Chester’s antics had him laughing. A children’s book not to be missed.
Gage’ thoughts…
Bunnicula was a bunny found at the Dracula movie by the Monroes. Chester (the talking cat) thought he was a vampire because he was turning vegetables white, was out of his cage at night, and slept all day. Chester tried starving him, putting a steak (instead of a stake, lol) on his chest. and doused him with water. Chester was right, but not in the way you think. Harold (the talking dog) tells the story.
Gage successfully completed the book-a-day challenge in September. Woohoo! I found it increasingly difficult to keep up here and on IG near the end, but we made it. I do plan on having Gage pick a few favorite books of the week and review them here on Fridays. I think we can both manage that.
Thank you all for reading and commenting. It has meant a lot to Gage 🙂
I Am Every Good Thing by Derrick Barnes, illustrated by Gordon C. James, 32 pages, published 2020.
I adored this book. A love letter to African American boys about everything good they are and all of the great things they will become. It did not specifically name a race, but all of the gorgeous illustrations were of black boys. I read this story to Gage twice telling him that it was the way I felt about him and he felt that. A nice thing to pick up when your boy is having a bad day.
Gage’s thoughts…
What do you think sums up this book?
“I am not what they might call me, and I will not answer to any name that isn’t my own. I am what I say I am.” (a quote from the book)
Emmanuel was born in Ghana, West Africa with only one good leg, but he didn’t let that stop him. Forced to support his mom and siblings at a young age, he did all he could until his mom passed. Then he decided to raise awareness for people with disabilities by biking across Ghana. This is an inspirational story about a man still living and fighting the good fight.
Somehow I have misplaced Gage’s notes on this. If I find them I’ll come back and ad them.
This book could go deeper of course, I believe it is a story about climate change?, but I think it’s a cute picture book for younger kids about the power of working together. We did tie this to our earlier book of Why We March.
Gage’s thoughts…
My favorite person is number 673 Red-Hooded spectacled female (juvenile). There was a bird who liked to go people watching. Fog comes and the bird can’t see people. The person sees the girl and they sent out boats asking Do you see the fog? They floated it out to sea and they waited for a reply but none arrived. They finally get replies and goes away.
Gage loves Monopoly. I did when I was a kid, too, although I have less patience for it now. He did like learning about the real story, although I don’t think he was all that terrible interested and zoned out. I liked the story more than he did 🙂 A woman makes the most popular game in the world and made men rich.
I asked him what new things he learned.
Gage’s answers…
Lizzie Magie made the first Monopoly game. The longest Monopoly game was 1,680 hours.
The man had the name Rich Uncle Pennybags until 1999.
The boat, thimble, and a wheelbarrow were the first pieces. Then they added a penguin, rubber ducky, and t.rex.
This story of Gino Bartali, two-time Tour de France champion is for the older elementary child. There is a lot of story, each page having a paragraph or more, but it takes it’s time with the fun stuff first to draw the reader in. From his childhood working to save money for a bike to his heroic efforts to save Jewish Italians during WWII, this was an inspiring story. We both loved it and Gage did share parts of the story with his dad, but because it was so long and at the end of a Friday afternoon of school, I only made him write one sentence about it.
Gage’s review…
Gino Bartoli helped save Jewish lives by delivering fake IDs on his bike.
“It takes Courage to Grow up & become Who you Really are.”
Gage’s review…
EE stands for Edward Estlin. He writes poetry. His first poem at age 3 was, “Oh my little birdie, Oh with his little toe, toe, toe.” He liked to make new words and squished others together. When he was 11 a teacher noticed how good he was. He started Harvard when he was 16 years old. After he moved to New York City we entered World War I and he became an ambulance driver (in the war). His first book was The Enormous Room. He didn’t follow writing rules.
Most reviews we might work on together, some are based on a series of questions he writes the answers to and some, like this, are what he comes up with himself. Can you tell he hates to write? We paired this book with this video of the author.
Gage’s review…
His dad knock knocked on his door and came onto the bed and sat down and the boy jumped in is arms. One day his dad didn’t knock and he was sad. A letter was on his desk and it said, dear son I will not knock knock on your door so you have to knock for yourself.
The Proudest Blue by Ibtihaj Muhammad with S.K. Ali, art by Hatem Aly, 36 pages, published 2019.
This is a Wonderbook that first reads the story aloud and then asks questions at the end. Gage’s review is the answers to those questions. I think this is a good book for the younger set. It’s an introduction to the hajib.
Gage’s review…
What did you like best about the book? the illustrations
Who was your favorite character and why? Asiya because she is strong when people make fun of her.
What was your favorite picture and why? I liked the cover page because of the detail.
This Caldecott Medal Winner was a hit with both of us. Gage still loves stories told from the animals point of view and this one was fun. Until the death, that hit me hard! For the record, mosquitoes love Gage and each bite swells up terribly. We went to the botanical garden this week and he came home with about a dozen bites all over. It was after we read this book and he’s made jokes about the mosquitoes since.
Gage’s review…
The iguana puts sticks in his ears because a mosquito was talking about nonsense, so he doesn’t answer the python. The python gets scared and hides in the rabbit hole. Mother Owl was sad because her owlet died and she wouldn’t wake the sun. King Lion called a meeting of the animals.
Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Chris Riddell, 97 pages, published 2008.
We spent about a week reading this one. The book itself with the abundance of gorgeous illustrations is one worth buying for the bookshelves. We both loved it. And it’s a great introduction to Thor, Loki and Odin for newbies.
Gage’s review
Odd is a boy who ran away from his family. He went to his dad’s cabin. A fox led him to a bear that was trapped. The bear, an eagle and the fox went back to his cabin. He discovered they were gods when they started talking. They needed to go to Asgard because Thor’s hammer was stolen. Odd beat the Frost Giant so they were allowed in Asgard.
So, we’re not exactly horror experts here, but I liked the shortness of the stories so we read this over a few weeks, culminating with Gage writing his own scary story on the last day. The stories themselves were hit or miss for both of us and some of them were brutal. I had him choose his two favorites and he chose one in which the heads were chopped of two dead men and exchanged for the funeral, and the other was about a butcher who ground up people as the special ingredient in his sausage. Yeah. A good read for October if your older kid can handle it.
So, so behind here. The good news is that I finally got Gage a reading and writing teacher for 4 hours a week (with the option to do more if it works out), so that means that I not only get 4 hours of my own time, but also the planning time for at least those 4 hours 🙂 The tutor is covered by an Ohio scholarship.
Let’s catch you up with some of our fun books this week.
The Amazon rain forest is a hot place. The canopy is the sunny place that touches the sky. The understory is the dark place. A man went into the rain forest and hit the giant kapok tree with his axe. He fell asleep and a snake came to him. Then the bee whispered in his ear. “all living things depend on one another.” Then a troupe of monkeys and three birds. According to the frog a ruined rain forest means ruined lives. The jaguar didn’t want him to cut down the trees because then he wouldn’t get his dinner. Humans need trees for air. Several ant-eaters, sloths, and finally a child from the Yanomama tribe came to the man and he woke up.
Does the man cut down the tree?
Vermeer by Nicole K. Orr, 32 pages, published 2017
A snapshot into Vermeer’s life via a fictional boy. There was enough of a story for interest, but also had lots of details too, including information about the paintings that were included in the book. This was a nice introductions for kids and Gage liked it. It led us easily to another book I purchased for this school year…
I love this coloring book and Gage has had fun with it too (you can see one of his ‘masterpieces’ in the next photo. There’s a story for each painting that talk about the painting and the artist and then the other page is for the kids to recreate the picture. Highly recommend when you want to introduce some of the big names in art. I think they could have done a bit better with the selection of artists (many artists had more than one painting) but I still love it. You don’t even have to be a kid to love it 🙂
You can see that we used the Start Exploring Masterpieces book from yesterday. The Scream was the only one that was included in Anna at the Art Museum. The book was a little young for Gage, but I did like the artwork on each page and how there was info on all of the included art in the back.
Gage’s thoughts…
At first Anna didn’t like the art museum. She got into trouble. She saw herself in the paintings and then she liked the art museum.
(This is very simplistic, but true. Worth a look before a museum visit)
We both loved this book. It told the story of the sphinx from why it got built, all of the people needed to get it built, and then how many and what people were involved to get it into the museum to be viewed by us.
Gage’s thoughts…
This is about all that the Sphinx went through just to get to the museum. My favorite part was that every page added another person who got it to the museum. It was repetitive and fun to read.
After our visit with the Sphinx we looked through this book that gave step-by-step instructions on how to draw things from ancient Egypt. Gage drew both an anubis and pyramid and had a lot of fun doing it.
Kudos to both of these author/illustrators because they both commented on our Instagram post and thrilled the boy.
We started reading this book at the beginning of the month and it’s everything I hoped it would be. Information about mindfulness, a picture book portion for kids to better explain, the ten movements themselves, and then a bio on Thich Nhat Hanh. We will be doing the movements at the beginning of our school day for the rest of the month. The DVD was fantastic, even having Thich Nhat Hanh himself showing the movements.
Gage’s thoughts…
His friends call Thich Nhat Hanh “Thay”. He’s a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. Thay talked with the US government to stop the Vietnam War. Vietnam wouldn’t let him come home. One way people can develop peace in themselves is by just sitting quietly and breathing. This is called meditation. I’d recommend this to people who like yoga.
I loved this book so much and so did Gage. We enjoyed finding some YouTube videos of Barnes and his gallery work. I’m a fan of his and want to buy one of his prints. Gage’s thoughts, while incomplete, give you the idea 🙂
Gage’s thoughts…
There was a boy who liked to make art. His mom forced him onto a football team. Twenty-six college teams wanted him. He loved art so he paid his coach money. He became a football painter and got the salary of a football player.
Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting and Ronald Himler, 32 pages, published 1991.
Although dated, especially since it takes place in a 1990s airport, this is still worth a read with your kid. The realities of being homeless will encourage conversation, understanding, and empathy. We spend the better part of an hour on this and surrounding research.
Gage’s thoughts…
It wouldn’t feel good to be homeless. It’s sad. I don’t know what I can do to help the homeless. Maybe we (the country) could give people money or make houses cheaper. I think Andrew and his father will get their own place someday because they both save money.
Before we read the book we watched this video with Kwame Alexander on writing haiku. Gage loved his energy and after we finished the book came back to the computer to watch 3 or 4 more of his videos about poetry. Kwame for the homeschool win!
It’s filled with a haiku on each page about some aspect of the earth. The last dozen pages are packed full of information about what the haiku has introduced. This book was fine, but I was hoping for more.
Gage’s thoughts…
It was interesting. I liked the information pages in the back that explained everything the best. The illustrations were pretty good. I would recommend to people who like to see how the earth works.
My favorite haiku
nestled in sandstone,
Maiasaura shields her young
fossil family
Gage also read this with it and it provided a bit more fun.
Our book of the day was The Undefeated written by Kwame Alexander and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. Published 2019, 40 pages.
After the success of Kwame yesterday I chose this book today (FYI- I went through many lists for about a week, reserving anything that looked interesting at the library. I have all the books I need to finish up this month and then some, but choose the books on a weekly basis, sometimes switching them up when something like this happens)
I love this book so much. The poem, written by Kwame is perfectly highlighted by the gorgeous illustrations. This might be one I actually buy to have in our library. I read the book to Gage, explaining the things that Kwame was referring to the second time around and then we looked at the list in the back of the book to get more detail about a few of the things and then we watched two Kwame videos where he read the book/poem himself. Then we were able to talk about the way the poem was transformed when read by the poet.
Gage’s thoughts…
This is about black lives matter and it celebrates black people. I liked watching Kwame read it best because he read it with such force.
For our reading time Gage read me Imagine, one I hadn’t put in my stacks because it didn’t look like it had enough to delve into, but after he read it we discovered it was the true story of Juan Felipe Herrera, US Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. It was about growing up in the migrant farms and finally going to school and beyond. This was well worth the read.
Thank You, Mr. Falker, written and illustrated by Patricia Polacco. 40 pages, published 1998.
This book is the autobiographical story of the Polacco and her horrible school experiences before finally learning to read in the 5th grade. It was hard to read about the bullying, but the message of being different and everyone learning on their own timeline will resonate with a lot of kids. And let me give a shout out to Mr. Falker. May all students have such a teacher in their lives! I’d recommend this book for everyone, although the 3-5 grade set is probably the target. It touches on so many painful childhood experiences and will enable you to have honest conversations with your kids.
Gage’s thoughts…
This book is a memoir.
In kindergarten Trisha loved to draw but when she looked at a page to read she saw wiggling shapes. Numbers looked like a stack of wobbly blocks ready to fall.
Her grandma told her being different is the miracle of life and everyone is different. Her grandparents died.
It took five days to move from Michigan to California. The kids at her new school called her dummy, stupid, and ugly. In the 5th grade Mr. Falker came. When kids laughed at her he said, “Stop! Are all of you so perfect that you can look at another person and find fault with her?” The only time she was really happy was when she was around Mr. Falker. Mr. Falker kind of knew she couldn’t read, but not really. He told her, “you fooled many good teachers.”
In three to four months she could read a paragraph. She was happy, so very happy to read.
Stacy's Books 