Let's Make Stuff - KBWT

Check my Let's Make Stuff page for directions on how to make a paper campfire with your young friends and family members.  Very cute and you can use it as a fire starter when you go camping.

It's KBWT!  I'd like to feature Kathy Ross' website as the Kids Book Website for today.  Kathy has written slews and slews of books about making crafts with kids, or about kids making crafts.  Her crafts often use items that other people will toss away.  Some of her crafts are SO clever and SO easy that I am speechless with wonder.  To be completely unbiased, I have to admit that a few of her crafts do not appeal to me.  But every single one of her books has several crafts that I wish I had thought up first.

So many craft books for kids result in "cute" things that are really more about technique and/or about keeping the kids busy than they are about making something useful.  Kathy Ross' crafts often have a play or gift component.  The Comet Balls from her book Crafts for Kids Who Are Wild about Outer Space are a good example. (Sadly, the book is no longer in print.)  We made those last week for the Stories in the Schools.  They are simple aluminum foil balls with ribbon tails that allow children to toss the balls and catch them by the tails.  So easy to do.  So cute.  Have I been effusive enough?  Check out the website.  Look for Kathy's books at the bookstore or library tonight!

Confession Time

Can I be honest here?  Sometimes, I get....down.  And being me, I sometimes wallow in my down-ness.  Sniff, sniffle....  So this weekend I was down-ish and I didn't want to "do anything".  My Hub was tolerant - at best - but I knew I'd get no pity from him.  He has lived with me too long.

So I have decided on a new tact when this down-ness hits.  It is the advice my mother, - long may she reign! - gave me when I was an eleven year old.  Do Something! 

Here's the thing.  Once I start Doing Something, I suddenly find so many things to do, I no longer have time to feel down!  Amazing!   Like weeding! and a weeded bed looks so nice, who can stay down?  Or FINALLY turning that old towel into reusable mopping cloths as per Michele over on Michele Made Me.  (Hers look nicer but mine work just fine.)

What about replacing the foam cushions in our old sofa with foam from the cushions in the attic?  Or writing up directions on how to make Bead Bugs, or sending cards to my friends, or shortening the curtains, or working on that song I wrote or practicing the piano or the accordion or the guitar....   Oh no!  Now I feel down because I have TOO MUCH TO DO.  Just kidding.

Or I could work on the Craft Fair, October 13th, 2012! Here is Genevieve at last year's Fair.

So I will make a list of Things to Do When Feeling Down to keep with me at All Times.

I am not feeling down today but here are some things I hope to do:
Go to Quaker Meeting - It is First Day after all.
Practice the accordion!!  Yay!
Make a bath puppet from another old towel.  Because puppets are so much fun and easy to do and I don't really need a pattern.
Write - a poem, a story, directions for a craft, a letter.
Send e-cards to my sister and brother who share a birthday - eight years apart.
Maybe even straighten up a room or two.

Thanks for reading! 

KBWT - First Book - more

Check out First Book, an organization that distributes books to children who live with few or any books in their lives.  First Book supports other literacy programs as well.  Please look at their website at www.firstbook.org and help this fine organization out.

Parents are always asking which books are best for their children - best as in "most likely to make my child smarter" and best as in "I don't want to waste my time on some silly little book."

My answer has always been, "If you and your child both like the book, THAT is the best book for you."

Hmmm, not good enough, I'm afraid.  So check out Scholastic.com's 100 Best Books for children.  There, that should keep you all happy for awhile.

Start them young.  Start them right - or is that correctly?

But, in case, you really want more, more, more - as well you should - check out Betsy Bird's blog, A Fuse#8 Production, and scroll down til you see the little tabs on the right hand that say 100 Best Picture Books,  and 100 Best Chapter Books.  You may be able to get a Pdf of Betsy's latest 100 best poll that finished up at the end of June.  So many great books are on these lists.

Ode to Libraries video

Thanks to the Huffington Post for sharing this quite, um, laudatory video of Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman performing, as you will, an Ode to Libraries.

I couldn't figure out how to embed the video so follow this link.  It's lovely.  And it features my FAVORITE instrument.  Guess which one.

Just Breathe

I love the blogs I follow, Cold Antler Farm in particular.  Today Jenna posted a video clip, a song she uses when she's afraid and worried.  The song was written by Ze Frank when one of his fans asked for something to help her in times of worry.  Thanks to Jenna, I can share this clip to you.  Thanks to Ze Frank, we can all sing this little song the next time a deadline looms, a family member hurts us, a bill arrives unexpectedly, a leak springs up.

Book Review - The Agency

I was lucky enough to score an ARC of Y. S. Lee's second book in The Agency series (The Body at the Tower) last Fall.  Shame on me for not reviewing it here.  When I saw the third book, (The Traitor in the Tunnel), I scarfed it up.  Now all I have to do is read the first book.

Fans of Victorian England will eat this series up. The period details are well drawn and in the third book the readers even get to meet Victoria herself!!  Here's the set-up.  Mary Quinn is a half-Chinese, half- Irish orphan who is rescued from a life of crime by The Agency, London's only all female private investigation operation.  Mary gets a good education, room and board and training in detective skills.  In The Body at the Tower,  she investigates a scam at an expensive building site and meets James Easton, a dashing engineer.

In The Traitor in the Tunnel, Mary is assigned to Buckingham Palace to solve the mystery of small thefts from the Blue Room.  While she is on assignment in the palace, a drinking buddy of the Prince of Wales is murdered in an opium den and the suspect just may be Mary's long-lost father.  Mary discovers a secret tunnel - not on any of the palace maps - that leads to the new sewer tunnels and a project overseen by....James Easton!  Romance, intrigue, an attempt on the Queen's life and an attempt to find and save her father keep Mary very busy in this third outing.  And there is a promise of more to come and very interesting developments at the end of this book.

Storytelling Thursday! The haircut.

There are a lot of very cute posts out there about very young children telling stories.  The link  directly below this paragraph will take you to "The Worst Haircut EVER", recorded by an NPR journalist after one of his pre-school daughters cut the other pre-school daughter's hair.  These kids are so cute.

The Worst Haircut!  "Everybody does that kind of stuff sometimes!"

Here is another clip which gives advice on helping children tell their own stories.  Thanks go to Detroit Public Television.