The Flat on Cabaniss Crescent

Seuss Studies

  OCTOBER WAS OUR SEUSS STUDY MONTH

We started October with a Catholic Mosaic Collection Book: Horton Hears a Who! since October is Respect Life Month.  I had bought a nice hardcover copy of this book over the summer at a Used Book Shop in Jacksonville.  But then we saw it at our local library on tape, so we listened to it on tape in the car for 2 solid weeks.

We also rented this DVD from the Library:

Then the second week of October we checked out these collection of Cd's to listen to during bedtime although Seuss did not have the soothing effect that Peter Rabbit and Winnie the Pooh had so we had to stop the bedtime listening of Seuss and just listen during playtime.

The following books were all in this collection:

So we checked all these books out from the library, minus the two we own (Hop on Pop and One Fish, two fish...).

And we read them all.  Several times.

And both kids memorized them all.

We also rented this DVD from the library.

Then we watched this tape (we own it... I found it awhile back at a garage sale)

I found this website and Tigger really enjoyed it:

FUN INTERACTIVE SEUSS GAMES

Then in Week 3, I picked this book up from the library:

We learned Dr. Seuss was born in Massachusetts.  We found Massachusetts on our Map.  We remembered how Make Way for Ducklings also took place in Massachusetts and we talked about the family we have there and how we went there last year.

In the third week of October, after we returned the first Seuss Cd's we rented this one:

The stories on this CD were a little longer.  I actually enjoyed them more than the first CD.  Each story story seemed to have a moral, often over the kids heads, but enjoyable for adults to read.

These are the stories on it:

Again, we checked out all these books and read one new story each day for 10 days (Yertle the Turtle actually has 3 stories in it- also Gertrude McFuzz and The Big Brag).

We will end the month of October celebrating Halloween where our whole family dresses up as Seuss characters!

And now that we have read practically every Seuss book, I would like to start planning a trip to Universal Studios to go to Seuss Land

In the Car

In Which I finally find Peace in the Car and look forward to driving...

Books on tape in the car.  It is so simple, but it works.  Up until recently I was having a very hard time in the car with my kids going into Silly Mode while I drive.  They would talk in loud voices, talk over each other, and then get mad at each other and start arguing.  I could not focus on driving with all the noise, so I made a habit of pulling over and issuing time outs along the side of the road.  It was extreme, but I was desperate for them to listen to me in the car.  I guess I wasn't offering much for them to listen to except, "Be quiet" "Don't yell" and "Stop that now."  Once in awhile I would play a word game with them, but that took a lot of energy on my part and again, when I drive I like to focus on the road.  One reason I never really got into Books on Tape is just that: Tapes.  We have a cassette player in the car, not a CD player.  It seems like all the audio books out there are on CD.  I find it hard to find tapes in the book stores.  And our previous library did not have a collection of books on tape. 

When we travel to Michigan, and other long trips, we take along the lap top and watch movies on it and we can also listen to CDs on it.  That is how we started our Audio Adventures this summer.

It started with Peter and the Wolf all the way to Michigan.

Then, after a gift from Grandma Hayes, we listened to Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle Duck all the way back to Florida.

This led to our bedtime listening habits.

This past month we have listened to:

Make Way for Ducklings

Ferdinand

Three Little Pigs

5 little Monkey's sitting on a Tree (one of my Mommy and Me favorites!)

Scary, Scary Halloween

Currently in our car we have:

All of the Maurice Sendak stories

The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland

In the future I would like to look into listening to the Rosary in the car.  We do not say the Rosary now, although the kids know the prayers, and it would be a nice and peaceful thing to build into our day.  Not to mention their faith development...I am going to put this on our Christmas Wish List.  Of course, for the car we will need a tape.

Bedtime Stories

In Which I say Goodnight to the Children and press Repeat Play and Walk Away...

We have gotten into a bedtime habit of listening to books on tape.  It started with Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle Duck.

This was a gift from Grandma H.  What a hit!  After about a month of listening to it every night the kids started reciting it.  We were shocked.  They had memorized the stories word for word.  Both of them.  They even had a bit of a British accent!

I know children have the capacity to memorize things and this was just proof to me that they will memorize anything we feed them with, if we feed them enough.  So I decided to continue to feed them often with good quality children's literature.  And that is how we started our Bedtime Listening.  That and the fact that our new library here has a great audio selection. 

The next selection for the children was Winnie the Pooh.

I had tried reading Winnie the Pooh to the kids myself and could not hold their attention.  It was frustrating for me so I welcomed this CD that they could listen to in the dark and fall asleep to.  Another benefit of this Audio Book is the voice of the reader.  He uses different voices for all the characters. 

After a few weeks of this we moved onto The House at Pooh Corner

A nice quality of all of the above audio books is the accompanying orchestra music.  I really enjoy listening to these stories just as much as the kids do.

We are now listening to Dr. Seuss selections which has led to an entire Seuss study.  I am working on gathering ideas now for more Seuss stuff on line.  The Seuss books are great because they are EASY READERS and Tigger can read many of the words in them (and the words he can not read he has memorized).

Of course next week we will start the The Cat in the Hat audio book (more Seuss, just some of the longer books...)

Finally, we just started a study on Beethoven so The last two nights the kids have listened to Beethoven Lives Upstairs

We throughout the day, but since I am no longer reading to the kids at bedtime, I make a point to read a story to them after dinner or during bathtime.

In Which I say Goodnight to the Children and press Repeat Play and Walk Away...

We have gotten into a bedtime habit of listening to books on tape.  It started with Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle Duck.

This was a gift from Grandma H.  What a hit!  After about a month of listening to it every night the kids started reciting it.  We were shocked.  They had memorized the stories word for word.  Both of them.  They even had a bit of a British accent!

I know children have the capacity to memorize things and this was just proof to me that they will memorize anything we feed them with, if we feed them enough.  So I decided to continue to feed them often with good quality children's literature.  And that is how we started our Bedtime Listening.  That and the fact that our new library here has a great audio selection. 

The next selection for the children was Winnie the Pooh.

I had tried reading Winnie the Pooh to the kids myself and could not hold their attention.  It was frustrating for me so I welcomed this CD that they could listen to in the dark and fall asleep to.  Another benefit of this Audio Book is the voice of the reader.  He uses different voices for all the characters. 

After a few weeks of this we moved onto The House at Pooh Corner

A nice quality of all of the above audio books is the accompanying orchestra music.  I really enjoy listening to these stories just as much as the kids do.

We are now listening to Dr. Seuss selections which has led to an entire Seuss study.  I am working on gathering ideas now for more Seuss stuff on line.  The Seuss books are great because they are EASY READERS and Tigger can read many of the words in them (and the words he can not read he has memorized).

Of course next week we will start the The Cat in the Hat audio book (more Seuss, just some of the longer books...)

Finally, we just started a study on Beethoven so The last two nights the kids have listened to Beethoven Lives Upstairs

We throughout the day, but since I am no longer reading to the kids at bedtime, I make a point to read a story to them after dinner or during bathtime.

Computer Software- Reading, Spelling, & Written Expression Skills

This is a list reccomended to us by Tigger's Neuropsychologist:

Computer Software To Develop Reading, Spelling, & Written Expression Skills

Age 3-6 Reader Rabbit’s Interactive Reading Journey 1, The Learning Company. Kids journey to 20 different lands, each focusing on a different letter of the alphabet or sound.  Then they answer questions about the information they’ve read along the way.

Age 3-10 Arthur’s Teacher Trouble, Broderbund. Arthur the aardvark is having problems at school. He got stuck with the strictest teacher (Mr. Ratburn) & needs to prepare for a school-wide spelling bee. Kids help Arthur prepare.

Age 3-10 Sierra’s School House/English, Sierra On-Line. A friendly alien named Adi runs a multiple-choice quiz show on vocabulary, reading comprehension, proofreading, & more. Excellent graphics, animation, & video clips. Interactive learning games are accessible as a reward for good quiz performance.

Age 4-8 Reading Blaster, Jr., Davidson & Associates. Join Kid Blasternaut & his crew on missions in fanciful worlds. Learn beginning reading, decoding vowels & consonants, matching pictures, forming sentences.

Age 5-9 Reader Rabbit’s Reading Development Library (4 reading levels), The Learning Company. Stories told from 3 different points of view. These games help kids learn how plots work.

Age 6-12 The Amazing Writing Machine, Broderbund, ages 6-12. Helps kids express their thoughts by creating stories or adding to pre-written ones.  Hundreds of layouts feature different places to insert text & graphics.

Age 7-10 Reading Blaster: Invasion of the Word Snatchers, Davidson & Associates. Illitera has stolen all the words from Earth. Help get them back by completing reading activities.

Age 8+ Creative Writer II, Microsoft. Hundreds of “story starters.” Many fonts, music themes, pieces of clip art, & an Internet web project.

Grade preK-1 Kid Phonics 1, Davidson & Associates. Beginning reading and decoding skills.

Grade preK-3 Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! For Kids, Mindscape.

Grade K-1 Reader Rabbit 1, The Learning Company. Improve letter & word recognition, memory skills & vocabulary.

Grade K-2, 2-3, 3-5 Explore-A-Story, D.C. Heath & Co., only for Apple. Students examine new possibilities & appreciate the variety of forms a story can assume as they move objects & characters on the screen & provide text for their own ideas.

Grade K-12 Language Experience Recorder Plus, Teacher Support Software, only for Apple

Grade 1-3 Reader Rabbit 2, The Learning Company. Work on compound words, consonant blends, homonyms, antonyms, & alphabetizing skills.

Grade 1-3 Kid Phonics 2, Davidson & Associates. Progress from decoding words to building whole sentences.

Grade 1-6 Kidwriter, Spinnaker. Create stories by selecting a variety of pictures & writing stories to go with them.

Grade 1-8 Read, Write, and Publish, D.C. Heath & Co. Creative writing is the focus.  The program helps generate ideas, take notes, organize information, write & edit, and revise the text.  Graphics included.

Grade 1-12 Spell-It!, Davidson & Associates. Practice spelling rules & 1,000 commonly misspelled words using drills presenting the word in sentence context. An arcade game format provides additional practice recognizing the word among incorrect spellings & in an unscrambling game.  Personal word lists can be created.

Grade 2-4 Reader Rabbit 3, The Learning Company. Join Reader Rabbit in an investigative journey that builds reading skills while improving writing, vocabulary, & thinking skills. Complete stories & even print a newspaper to display their skills.

Grade 2-12 Spellicopter, DLM, grade 2-12. Maneuver a helicopter through obstacles in the sky in order to pick up letters to spell a word. The word is presented in sentence context. Personal spelling lists can be added.

Grade 3-8 The Grammar Examiner, Design Ware. As a cub reporter, the student works in a newspaper.  To earn pay, kids edit paragraphs and practice punctuation, capitalization, subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, adverb & adjective usage, & homonyms.

Local computer software stores have many of these products or can order them.  Some of the publishers’ phone numbers are listed below.

Broderbund -          800-521-6263      
Davidson & Associates -          800-545-7677      
D.C. Heath & Co. -
Design Ware -
DLM -
Edmark -          800-691-2985      
The Learning Company -          800-227-5609      
Microsoft -          800-426-9400      
Mindscape -
Spinnaker -
Sierra On-Line -          800-757-7707