If you are a stu­dent, pay­ing for a course, please for the love of all that is holy in this world open the book. Open it at least once, even if just to look at the pic­tures. The pic­tures are bright & col­or­ful. Even if your instruc­tor is not. You paid for the book, open it.

And as a side note: what­ever you do, don’t tell your instruc­tor that “I had a cool party to go to so that’s why I missed class” or any­thing else along these lines. Instead read the book, go to class for lec­ture and pre­pare your­self. If you don’t show up because you’d rather party don’t tell your instruc­tor because I hate to break it to you she or he does NOT care. Unless they are invited to said party, keep it to your­self. It will make every­one happier.

Tech­no­rati Tags: book, col­lege, school, stu­dents, work

Mamacita and Mr G. are both learn­ing to read. Mr. G is learn­ing to rec­og­nize words. While Mamacita is in the ear­lier stages of “read­ing” a book, mean­ing she looks at the pic­tures & tries to tell a story based on the pic­tures in the book. She’s try­ing to under­stand the under­ly­ing mean­ings to words, & it’s darn cute. Espe­cially when her sto­ries involve dia­logue. “Oh, what do we have here? A sugar bug? Bet­ter get the bug spray.” Let’s hope she real­izes sugar bugs don’t require actual bug spray before she goes on to med­ical school–what am I push­ing? Just because she reads books on the den­tist and Dora going to the doc­tor doesn’t mean she’s going to med­ical school? Well, I think it just might.

Tech­no­rati Tags: book, fam­ily, kids, read­ing

One of our favoritest (Yes, that is a word. Why? Because I say it is) books in the whole wide world is Glad Mon­ster, Sad Mon­ster: A Book About Feel­ings. It’s by Ed Ember­ley & Anne Miranda. We were intro­duced to it through the preschool the chil­dren have attended. The preschool uses it as part of their feel­ings sec­tion & the kids LOVE it. Each child has their own favoritest mon­ster, well except for D-man. He has a lit­eral taste for all the mon­sters. Seri­ously, the kid will try to eat anything.

Mr. J’s…Glad Monster.

Mr. G’s…Silly Monster.

Mamacita’s…Loving Mon­ster.

You can hold the mon­ster faces up to your own & use them as a way to talk about what you are feel­ing or what makes you feel wor­ried or angry (it cov­ers these too). The kids think it’s freak­ing hilar­i­ous to see Mommy or Daddy or any­one for that mat­ter put on the mon­ster face. Well, actu­ally I would hope NOT just any­one. I mean if it was the mail­man enter­tain­ing my kids then I’d won­der why the heck was the mail­man using our book & why was he enter­tain­ing my kids…wait where was I?

Oh yah, the book.

You can also have the kid­dos cre­ate their own feel­ings mon­sters. But no fair ask­ing lit­tle Timmy why he wants to be an angry mon­ster who destroys his sister’s toys & doesn’t he want to be a happy mon­ster who loves but­ter­flies. Because it’s about them learn­ing to express feel­ings in a healthy way. Not like a lot of us adults who express them by eat­ing a car­ton of ice cream or yelling at strangers while dri­ving. I mean really they should know NOT to be in the fast lane if they’re only going to drive 50 miles an hour. It’s a 70 mile an hour zone! Move it OR Lose it.

Hmm…It might be time for me to make my own feel­ings monster.

Tech­no­rati Tags: book, ed ember­ley, fam­ily, kids, mon­sters, read­ing