Kids' Snack Menu, With 70+ Snack Ideas

I got tired of hearing things like "Mom, what should I eat?" and "There's nothing to eat!" (after I'd listed several possibilities). So I made the boys their own snack menu, to look through whenever they're hungry. I printed it out, laminated it, punched a few holes in it, and put it all together with pipe cleaners, which allows me to add more pages whenever I want.

There are more than 70 snacks on our menu right now, so I used dry-erase markers to show them what's available–what they can make themselves, what they'll need help with, and what they'll have to wait a little while for–and what's not available. At the end of the menu, I added a page for them to fill out with dry-erase markers anything they want that's not available–so in addition to having to read the menu, they get some writing practice as well. Now I just need to find a frog's eyeball for my future mad scientist...

You can print the snack menu here. The snack ideas on the menu are all healthy, although some of them might not sound it. You can find recipes for many of these ideas at Chocolate-Covered Katie.

A-Z Reading Marathon Challenge

Last weekend we had nothing to do, so Tintin suggested we have a reading marathon. I decided to make it into a challenge. Each boy had to complete 26 tasks, one for each letter of the alphabet. We picked random letters from our Bananagrams game, but one boy wanted to do some tasks (especially P) more than once, so he peeked a little.

Here's what they had to do:

A. Read 1 chapter to Mom.
B. Read 1 chapter to Dad.
C. Read 1 chapter or smaller book to your brother.
D. Read 1 chapter or smaller book to yourself.
E. Read 1 poem.
F. Read 1 magazine article.
G. Read 1 picture book.
H. Write or dictate 1 book review.
I. Write or dictate 1 story and read it to the family.
J. Have Mom read 1 chapter to you.
K. Have Dad read 1 chapter to you.
L. Have Mom read 1 picture book to you.
M. Have Dad read 1 picture book to you.
N. Do 1 exercise from reading comprehension workbook or 1 word search.
O. Draw a picture of something you just read.
P. Take a break and have a 5-minute dance party.
Q. Read 1 story on Total Reader or Starfall.
R. Read 1 chapter or short book on the iPad.
S. Read 1 story at We Give Books.
T. Use word balloons to make your own comic.
U. Solve 1 code.
V. Go on a reading treasure hunt.
W. Read a recipe and make something with Mom or Dad.
X. Open the dictionary to a random page and read it to someone else.
Y. Play Rory's Story Cubes with at least 1 other person.
Z. Play Blurt with at least 1 other person.

Here are the websites and products we used during our challenge:

Total Reader: Reading comprehension website for grades 3-12 and adult.

Starfall: Reading website for pre-k to grade 2.

We Give Books: Picture books for children through age 10; donate a book to children in need simply by reading online.

Learn-to-Read Treasure Hunts (Amazon): Both boys have been reading for a while, but they still like using this book.

Rory's Story Cubes (Amazon): Or make your own story cubes.

Blurt: We don't actually have this game (yet), so we picked our own words from the dictionary and tried to stump each other.

Here's the clue Tintin had to decipher, and here are Johnny Boo's clues.

Both boys had a lot of fun and want to do it again, next time with numbers instead of letters, and Tintin wants me to think of a math marathon challenge.

Sight Words in Kindergarten

This year I've been helping some of Johnny Boo's kindergarten classmates with letters and sight words. I've also become addicted to Pinterest, much to my husband's chagrin (Chagrinterest?). Following are a couple of sight word games copied from or inspired by pins I've made:

Sight Word Parking Lot (based on a bigger parking lot game at Juggling With Kids)

Print Parking Lot game here.

I decided to laminate it and write the words on with dry-erase markers afterward, depending on which words the kids needed to work on most. It's a good thing I left it blank, because my 9-year-old actually likes working on his multiplication tables this way. Just write whichever words, letters, numbers, equations, etc., you want; call out whatever you want the child to find; and have him drive his car to the correct parking space. This was a big hit with everyone last week, especially the boys.

Here's Tintin:

Word Roll (the original, with a free download and directions, can be found at Wishes Dream Love)

Print Word Roll here.

I used the 31 words (plus a few more) that our kindergarteners need to know by the end of the year. So far I've only used this with one boy. He got the hang of finding the correct word after I told him to "crash" his fingers when they met up, and then he wanted to keep rolling the dice (one with numbers and one with the letters added on) so he could keep crashing his fingers. The original directions have the child crossing each word off once it's read, but the boy I was working with needed repetition, so I wanted him to roll the same combinations over and over again.

Here are some more sight word activities I've pinned:

Road Race
Roll & Write
Sight Words Bingo
Spelling Practice With Nautical Flags

Play, Louis, Play! and Our New Book Club

Play, Louis, Play! The True Story of a Boy and His Horn
Author/illustrator: Muriel Harris Weinstein/Frank Morrison
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children's (December 2011)
Categories: Biography; Chapter Book

This is the story of Louis Armstrong's childhood, as told by his first horn, which little Louis purchased from a New Orleans hock shop for $5. Not only did the boys enjoy the book, but they now want to learn how to play the trumpet and go to the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York. And one of them spent two days looking up Louis Armstrong music on MOG.

The boys and I started a new book club, modeled after an idea at The First Grade Parade, and Play, Louis, Play! was our first book. We called our book club the Pop Bag Book Club because one boy wanted it to be called the Popcorn Book Club and the other wanted it to be called the Brown Bag Book Club. So we compromised.

Here are our popcorn bags, with the boys' thinking maps attached. On the thinking maps, we have characters, setting, main idea, and favorite part. I had Johnny Boo dictate to me. We talked about what they'd written down, and anything else about the book, New Orleans, jazz, and racial discrimination that came up.

Here's Tintin eating his popcorn and figuring out where New Orleans is and how far away it is from the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York:

It's a Boy-Tested Book Bonanza!

Check out our new page, It's a Boy-Tested Book Bonanza!, for a list of books my boys love. Come back often to see what we've added!

And now, in honor of Ice Cream Sandwich Day:

Share a Story, Shape a Future: iPad/iPhone Apps That Promote Literacy

Share a Story, Shape a Future is a five-day online literacy event whose theme this year is "Unwrapping the Gift of Literacy." Today's topic, hosted by Danielle at There's a Book, is "Unwrapping Literacy 2.0." For my part, I'll be talking about some of the book and reading-related apps my children use and how they fit into our reading lifestyle.

First, though, a little background on us. We're a family of readers. I read to my boys (8 and 5) during breakfast every morning, and their dad and I read to them every night. The whole family (dad on weekends) has sustained silent reading time every afternoon. The 5-year-old doesn't have much trouble convincing me to take him to the library two or three times a week, and the first thing the 8-year-old does when he gets home from school is run to our stack of new library books. At school he has library time once a week and usually picks one book for himself and one for his little brother; his little brother is entering Kindergarten next year, and the thing he's most looking forward to: library time. The older one is always reading three or four chapter books or graphic novels at a time; the younger one likes to line up series books in order of publication date.We all love playing bookstore and library. And, as I write this, the older one is reading library books to the younger one (overheard from the other room: "You want me to read you another book? I'll read you whatever you want, even if it's a chapter book"). It's important to us that we see one another around books (and any form of the printed word, really), and we have books in every room.

Bottom line: In our house, the printed book isn't going anywhere.

But then there's the iPad. And the 8-year-old's iPod Touch. Here, they complement our print material, except in the case of the newspaper – we read the local paper on the iPad, and the 8-year-old reads his comics on Flipboard. Both boys have their favorite book and reading-related apps. We don't have a standalone e-reader, so sometimes when I think they're reading or doing something else educational, they're actually playing Cut the Rope or World of Goo (both fine games, when used in moderation). Or they're creating their own accounts on Amazon and adding Harry Potter books to their carts (don't get me started). But mostly, I think, they use the iPad and iPod Touch for good.

There are the books, of course, some of which we get via NetGalley, iBooks, and Kindle, and some of which we get from the App Store. We've reviewed a couple of our favorites: How Rocket Learned to Read and The Three Little Pigs. Here are a few of our other favorite bells-and-whistles book apps:

Bookster (free): Listen to a book called What If... (more stories coming soon) in read-along mode with words highlighted as they are read, or record yourself reading the story. Individual words highlight and are read aloud when tapped.

Dr. Seuss books ($2.99): Listen to the narrated story with words highlighted as they are read; read it yourself; or let it automatically read and turn pages. Words zoom up and are spoken when pictures are touched, and individual words highlight and are read aloud when tapped.

PopOut! The Tale of Peter Rabbit ($3.99): Listen to the narrated story with words highlighted as they are read, or read it yourself and hear individual words spoken with the tap of a finger. Features include pull-tabs, spin-wheels, and spring-mounted elements.

Toy Story Read-Along (free): Listen to the narrator, read it yourself, or record your own voice. The record-your-own voice feature is the 5-year-old's favorite in a book app – hearing his own voice gets him (even more) excited about reading.

Our favorite book apps that appeal to our obsessive, book-hoarding nature:

International Digital Children's Library (free): Features a collection of thousands of books in dozens of languages; you can also view the books online.

Tales2Go (30-day free trial): Gives you on-demand and unlimited access to more than 1,400 streaming audio stories for kids, including one of our favorite series, Ivy & Bean. This is now the 8-year-old's favorite app, and the 5-year-old loves searching for his favorite books.

And, finally, some reading-related apps that really challenge my boys to think and create:

BrainPOP (free): Delivers daily animated, captioned movies, covering the following subjects: science, social studies, English, math, arts & music, health, and technology & engineering. After watching the featured movie, children can test their comprehension with the accompanying interactive quiz. Thanks to BrainPOP, I might just have the only preschooler who knows how to use a semicolon (the featured topic on National Grammar Day).

Mad Libs (free; $3.99): Just like the Mad Libs books, except that this app features an interactive fill-in-the-blank type-pad for those kids who know their parts of speech and, like Mad Libs Jr. but interactive, a plethora of words from which to choose for younger kids.

Montessori Crosswords ($2.99): Helps kids learn reading, spelling, and writing with three levels of crossword play; displays colorful interactive visual effects that can be manipulated by the child every time a crossword is completed. For open-ended activities with letters, the standalone movable alphabet lets kids move letters around, resize them, and form words or sentences.

Story Patch ($4.99): Write stories for your children or have them write, illustrate, and read back their own stories. The app includes several themes, such as A Trip to the Zoo and Discovering a New Planet, for which kids answer a few questions to personalize an already existing story. Kids can also create stories from scratch. There are more than 800 illustrations to add to both themed and made-from-scratch stories. Both boys love this; the 5-year-old has been spending copious amounts of time creating stories and reading them back to us.

Timed Reading ($1.99): Readers in grades K-4 practice fluency by reading short, timed stories. Read our review to find out more.












Let's face it: Children need to read, to be read to, and to have access to reading material. All that matters is that they're excited about reading, whether it's print books, e-books, or reading-related apps (or, in our case, all three). As Maya Angelou said, "Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him."

Disclosure: The Share A Story, Shape A Future button was created by Elizabeth Dulemba.