My husband just sent me this clip from the Japanese kids’ show Pitagora Suicchi. I’m in love with this and now want to watch this show all the time. Where else can you get a combination of Rube Goldberg devices, experiments in static electricity, and fighting stick figures?
Algorithm Exercise practice is finished!
[via Stork Bites Man]
It’s always lovely when people send me books, because I discover books I wouldn’t normally pick up in the book store. I tend to like super-colorful, in-your-face illustrations, so I might walk right by something as subtle as Pemba Sherpa.
Pemba Sherpa is “Dedicated to Pemba Doma Sherpa, the first Nepali woman to summit Mount Everest via the North Face,” which should tell you a little something about the story that follows. The narrator, now an old man, recalls his days as a boy when the dreamed of becoming the best porter and guide in all of Nepal. That was a dream shared by his younger sister, 7-year-old Yang Ki, but girls were not allowed to train to become sherpas. You see where this is headed, right?
The narrator recalls the day when he starts to take his sister’s dream seriously. Like every morning, he set out to gather wood for the classroom stove. On the day in question, Yang Ki wanted to go along so she could carry wood to become strong enough to be a porter. Through all of her brother’s refusals, Yang Ki held firm, following him on his path. When a landslide put her brother in danger, she was the only one around to save him. What follows highlights Yang Ki’s bravery and strength as her brother slowly accepts his sister in a whole new light.
I was more than happy to share this tale of a young girl’s perseverance and strength with my daughter. The book also offers fascinating insight into the customs of sherpas in Tibet, and shows how children (girls and boys) are capable of amazing strength and independence.
It’s impossible for me to show you a screenshot of Tickle Tap Apps’s lovely Sound Shaker and fully convey how innovative this app is. It makes perfect use of the iPhone platform. First, you choose a sound type, such as chimes, drums, or farm animals. Then you’re taken to a blank screen. Tap the screen and a ball will appear, which is set to a particular note (or animal noise, as the case may be.) Hold your finger longer, and you can get a bigger ball with a different sound. Then, as you rotate the phone, the balls collide with one another to make their sounds. You can really experiment to get a wide variety of sound combinations.
What’s more is there’s a lovely Easter Egg surprise. If you hold your finger down long enough, your ball will hatch and a sweet little bird will come out. This is the perfect app for the very youngest of kids, yet anyone older will have fun experimenting with the different sounds. ($1.99. Promotional code was provided to me.)
According to Gizmodo, “If you don’t know what Peggle is by now, you must have spent the past few years on Mars with your eyes closed and fingers in your ears.” So, if you’re like me and just returning from your Martian voyage, get thee to the App Store immediately. I couldn’t put this game down until I’d played through every level, and nearly missed my subway stop on more than one occasion. What’s better? Olive likes the game as much as I do. The gameplay is simple – try to clear all of the orange pegs – and the fun will appeal to everyone in your family. ($2.99)
I’ve found a bunch of character slide apps for the iPhone – you know the kind, where you can swamp heads, bodies, and feet to create different characters – but none so good as Slide-a-ma-jig. There are six different variables from the hat down to the feet. Even the backgrounds can change. Couple that with some truly funny and monstrous characters designs and this app is a winner. Olive always switches over to this one after she’s had her fill of Peggle. ($0.99. Found via Geekdad.)
And while we’re on the subject of Apple, how about that iPad, huh? I’ll admit, that it’s not the dream machine I was hoping it to be (I’d really like it to support Flash and have more of a traditional operating system), but I’m hugely interested to see where it takes gaming. Right now, the iPhone is one of the best platforms around for the littlest kids (cost aside), with no mouse or other controller to get in the way. The interaction is so direct and intuitive. With the larger iPad, I think games for kids can only get better, and I look forward to interfaces like that becoming cheaper and more ubiquitous in the coming years.
As you might remember, Betsy Bird at A Fuse #8 Production put together the quintessential picture book list with her Top 100 Picture Book Poll, an amazing resource that pooled the vast knowledge base of her readers and kidlit bloggers around the interwebs. Well she’s back with a new poll, the Top 100 Children’s Fictional Chapter Book Poll. It’s a tough thing to narrow down favorites to a list of 10, and it’s even harder to rank them. But without further ado, her is my personal top 10 that I’ll be submitting to the poll.
10. Pippi Longstocking
Like Tommy and Annika, I marveled at Pippi Longstocking and her extraordinary life. I mean, she lives with a horse and a monkey instead of parents! As a kid, reading Pippi is imagining a world without limits.
9. Chasing Vermeer
I credit Chasing Vermeer with getting me interested in reading kids’ chapter books as an adult – it felt so new to me. Sure, the story is great and the journey of the characters is exciting (and wonderfully tied to the art world), but the puzzles integrated throughout the story and illustrations put this one over the top for me.
8. James and the Giant Peach
It would be impossible to make a top 10 list like this without including the genius of Roald Dahl. The surreal world he creates in James and the Giant Peach captures the imagination of any reader, immersing them in a world of giant bugs.
7. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
In thinking back about the history of my reading life, the first book I can remember really relating to is Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Here were characters that were in similar situations having similar reactions to those in my young life. Peter has an obnoxious little brother? No way! I have an obnoxious little brother! It’s the kid experience of “it’s funny because it’s true.”
6. Gregor The Overlander
Before they’re old enough to read Suzanne Collins’s masterful Hunger Games series, kids can immerse themselves in the Underland. For the purposes of this list, I’m going with the first book in the series, where the Underland enfolds with the adventures of Gregor and his little sister, Boots, for our page-turning enjoyment. Huh, this is the second book on my list with giant bugs.
5. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
At once scary and magical, the journey into the land of Narnia felt so real to me when reading this book. You can almost feel the cold of the snow and taste the Turkish Delight. And clearly, this is a book that stands the test of time.
4. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
That whole Judy-Blume-is-relatable thing that I mentioned earlier is even more important when you’re a pre-adolescent girl reading Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Girls everywhere have Judy Blume to thank for answering some of life’s burning questions.
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
As a Potter-phile, it’s hard to narrow the series down to just one book. The first book did a great job setting the stage, and boy, when I read it, I knew it’s a book I would have loved as a kid. The second book felt like a formulaic rehash of the first, but with the third book, The Prisoner of Azkaban, that shit got real (please pardon my language). Suddenly this world of wizardry was being used to address topics of greater importance, and the emotional world of the characters became rapidly more mature. Sure, I loved all the books that came after, but this one remains my favorite (and my favorite of the movies as well).
2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
There are few characters that you root for as hard as you do poor little Charlie Bucket. When will he find that golden ticket?! Even though we know he will (see book title), the suspense is painful with each unwrapping. And the moment where the doors open and the winners enter the chocolate room? Well, there’s nothing else like it on the printed page.
1. The House With a Clock In Its Walls
My favorite author as a kid was John Bellairs, and whenever I meet someone that also read his books as a kid, I know I’ve found a kindred spirit. When I read Harry Potter, it reminded me of The House with a Clock in its Walls, where Lewis discovers that he comes from a wizarding family and dabbles in magic himself, with some disturbing results. This book will always be with me, and I can’t wait to introduce it to Olive when the time is right.
If this were my husband’s list, he’d add a few Daniel Pinkwaters and The Phantom Tollbooth. Olive is partial to The Cricket in Times Square. What would you add?
UPDATE: It was pointed out to me today that I left the beloved Charlotte’s Web off my list, which throws the very balance of this list out of whack. How could I forget Charlotte’s Web?! A glaring omission.
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Ever sit and watch Super Why! and think, “This is nice, but why can’t it be about math instead of reading?” Never fear, Team Umizoomi is here! Premiering tomorrow on Nickelodeon, this animated show aims to get preschoolers excited about the math that’s all around them.
Like Super Why!, Team Umizoomi is made by Blues Clues alum, and has the trademark talk-to-the-viewer approach (though, I confess, I’ve yet to see this work as well as it did in Blues Clues). Like Super Why!, each of the characters represents a different skill. Milli is the pattern and measurement girl. Her brother Geo builds things with shapes. Bot, the robot, has a bellyscreen that can show math information and happenings around the city.
Team Umizoomi mixes live action in with the animation. In the premiere episode, a live girl appears on the Bot’s bellyscreen to say she’s lost her dragon kite for the kite festival. The team finds the lost kite shapes around the city to rebuild the her kite. I like that the show incorporates the math-is-all-around-us approach, making math more accessible. Like Super Why!, though, the show is so beholden to its curriculum that it keeps the characters from having genuine interactions with one another and the viewer. But hey, if your kids like Blue, Dora, Wonder Pets, and/or Super Why! (and I’m guessing they do), they’re very likely to like Team Umizoomi, too, and they’ll learn some math along the way.
A new web-only premiere on PBS Kids Go! is Wilson & Ditch: Digging America, the latest effort by the Henson Company. Given that Henson has totally captured my daughter’s attention with Sid the Science Kid and especially with Dinosaur Train, when they’ve got something new in the works, I take note. I met with PBS Kids back in November, and they told me that Wilson & Ditch is a pet project for Brian Henson, who does puppeteering and voice work in the series.
Wilson & Ditch are gophers and brothers, traveling all across the country. Videos show them visiting and talking about major landmarks, as though you’re on vacation right along with them. Wilson has a blog about their travels, and Ditch writes comic strips. This is a fun way, short of making the travels themselves, for kids to learn geography, social studies, and American history.
As a parent, as the site becomes more populated with travel videos, I can see using this site to get Olive excited about visiting new places. If we were traveling to Philadelphia, for example, I’d show her Wilson & Ditch visiting the landmarks to fuel interest for the trip. I also appreciate such a large internet-only effort, where too-small-for-TV topics get their day in the spotlight.
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When last I left author Michael Buckley, he was writing the awesome adventures of The Sisters Grimm. His new book, N.E.R.D.S.: National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society
Jackson Jones is a 5th Grade star athlete, incredibly popular, and truth be told, something of a bully. All that changes on the day his orthodontist dooms him to the fate braces (with headgear and the works) to fix his medical oddity of having a mouth full of sixty-four teeth. Kids can be cruel, and soon Jackson is kicked to the curb, a social outcast in the same world where he used to be king.
Friendless, Jackson begins to fill his time uncovering and solving mysteries, all of which are benign and not terribly interesting until he uncovers the N.E.R.D.S., a pack of nerdy kids engaged in the kind of espionage that adult spies are not even capable of, because a nerd kid can go totally undetected and unnoticed. It’s perfect. Beneath the school is their secret lair, and even the janitor and the bearded lunch “lady” are in on the action.
The pack of N.E.R.D.S. consists of Duncan “Gluestick” Dewey, Ruby “Pufferfish” Peet, Heathcliff “Choppers” Hodges, Julio “Flinch” Escala, and Matilda “Wheezer” Choi, all of whom have had their nerdiest weakness modified into a superpower by a supercomputer named Benjamin. Soon the team has to face off against the evil mastermind, Dr. Jigsaw, and his hired wanna-be girl assassin, The Hyena. Jackson has to fight hard to be accepted into the team (there’s quite a bit of bullying to live down) so that he can help save the day.
Though this book is heavy on the clique cliches (especially for the 5th Grade), this book is great fun to read. Boy readers are sure to dig Jackson and all of the super spy action, but the sympathetic girl assassin and some of the awesome girl N.E.R.D.S. make this book great for girls, too. I’m looking forward to reading more in this series that shows that nerds have more fun.
Last week I attended a lovely panel put together by Women in Children’s Media called “Ready to Learn? Turn on the TV”. On the panel were some heavy hitters in children’s entertainment: Linda Simensky, VP of Children’s Programming at PBS; Shelley Pasnik, Director of the Center for Children and Technology; from Super Why!, Angela Santomero and Dr. Alice Wilder; Beth Kirsch from Between the Lions; Jennifer Kotler, Ph.D. from Sesame Workshop; and the panel was moderated by David Kleeman, the Executive Director of the American Center for Children and Media. Appropriately, the panel was held at Teacher’s College, and it felt quite like attending a graduate seminar.
With me the panel was preaching to the choir. I do believe that kids can learn from watching TV (and from the range of other media as well), and I’m now getting to watch it first hand with my 4-year-old. The focus on the panel was on teaching literacy through television, through shows like Super Why!, Sesame Street, Between the Lions, and Electric Company, and results of efficacy testing indicates these shows are really making headway with measurable signs of literacy improvement in kids, as well as closing the achievement gap with lower-income kids.
Linda Simensky talked about the master grid used at PBS, listing all of the National Reading Panel standards for literacy and checking off the shows that cover those skills in the attempt to cover as much ground as possible with as many shows as possible. Through the range of PBS offerings, they’re trying to hit a bunch of standards with each show with the hopes that one or more shows is a hit with each child. It’s a noble effort, not always the best way to create the most entertaining shows as they all stretch to hit these standards, but noble nonetheless.
One of the things I found most interesting about the night was the conversation about all of the great science shows coming out of PBS. Where there is this mega-matrix for literacy, no such standards matrix exists for science. Linda Simensky said of going to an NSF (National Science Foundation) conference, no on was ready to have the conversation about kids learning science. The scientists came from the point of view that kids at an early age are not ready to learn science.
Hogwash! It’s totally with science that learning from TV is measurable in our household. Sid the Science Kid lighted a science fire, which brought conversations about scientific method and simple machines. The girl is always quick to point out a pulley, and will talk about how one was used to get Sid’s toys in his treehouse. We haven’t watched good ol’ Sid in a while, though, because Dinosaur Train came and knocked every other show off the map. Olive’s knowledge of dinosaurs is crazy, and I love hearing her talk about becoming a paleontologist. For our day off today I took her to the American Museum of Natural History, and she could identify dinosaur bones from across the room with amazing accuracy. She talks about types of dinosaurs and the different periods when they lived. It’s really a marvel.
My favorite story about her dinosaur mania came while at her best friend’s house. She was clomping around in these 3-toed dinosaur feet. Trying to be the cool mom taking an interest in her dino-life, I asked her, “What kind of dinosaur are you? Are you an Argentinosaurus?” I am not kidding when I tell you that she looked mortified by the embarrassment I was causing her as she rolled her eyes and said, “An Argentinosaurus is NOT a theropod.” My bad.
I hope that the lovely TV makers keep shows like this coming, igniting the imaginations of budding scientists. They’re ready to learn the language of science in the facile way they can pick up other languages. Scientists, take note!
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It might have something to do with this ever-enlarging belly bump, but board books are back on my radar in a big way. Yesterday I fell in love with this little Things That Go
It’s actual board – as in wood. And it feels great to hold. Add to that some wonderfully simple illustrations in bright colors and you’ve got yourself a winner. There’s also a sweet Animal Homes
Time to start up the baby collection again…
As I’ve previously mentioned, we decided to forgo air travel over the holidays this year and drove to the midwest. We clocked 2,400 miles on the rental car and heard barely a peep out of the backseat as Olive cycled through the range of gadgets that we had in the car. We had Nintendo DS, my video iPod, and her Leapster, but the big winner of the group was my iPhone. It’s interesting. The iPhone might well be the best gaming platform for the PreK set, especially as the apps get better. Here are some of the apps that delight her.
Sesame Street has entered the app world with Grover’s Number Special, featuring the classic bit with Grover as the terrible waiter in video that looks terrific on the iPhone. The customer orders up the special, and you help Grover catch a specific number of falling ingredients on the tray by tilting the phone. Too bad the food will never make it to the customer, thanks to the lovable, clumsy Grover. ($2.99)
Nickelodeon has jumped in as well with a more classic-style arcade game. Rainbow Ride is an app tied to the special episode, Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom. Dora is sliding down a rainbow, and you tilt the iPhone back and forth to collect the color crystals to save the Crystal Kingdom. There’s also a coloring book built in for some bonus gameplay. ($1.99)
WordGirl Word Hunt is the latest from my friends at Scholastic. Each round of play starts with a comic book-style set-up, where a villain is doing something villainous. There are choice points in each of these mini-stories where you choose the appropriate vocabulary word for the situation. After each set-up, you fly WordGirl (again with tilting) around the city to collect the word you just learned, a great reinforcement too. This set-up a little beyond Olive’s skill level (better for readers), but she loves flying WordGirl around so it doesn’t matter to her. Plus, the gameplay allows for her to play through without frustration, even providing definitions to wrong answers along the way. ($0.99)
For classic gameplay, there’s Pickin’ Stix. In this one, all you have to do is touch the top-most stick and it disappears, a great app for her age. ($0.99)
In the latest of art apps, Spin Art seems to be her favorite. I mean, why wouldn’t it be? You get a piece of paper spinning and then get to splatter paint all over it to make cool designs that you can then save to your photo library or even add to a Spin Art Flickr Group. ($1.99)
And, it took a while for her to be ready, but now one of Olive’s most-played games is the fabulous Dizzy Bee, reviewed here. ($2.99)
I can now say with reasonable confidence that all of the Christmas presents have been opened, unpacked, and played with. Here are some of the highlights from Olive’s holiday haul. (Hauliday?)
The biggest boon to Olive’s pretend play was delivered by Santa, the contemporary dollhouse from MOMA. She’s filled her house with the legion of Calico Critters and Littlest Pet Shop pets she also received, and goes wild recreating different family scenarios, usually involving the care of a crying baby (perfect practice for becoming a big sister).
Captain Corndog vs. Baron von Broccoli made us laugh, so our hope was that they’d make Olive laugh, too. For days Olive took the feuding duel with her everywhere.
She also got the Lego Brickmaster Castle set
I don’t think I’ve mentioned lately how OBSESSED Olive is with Dinosaur Train, and as a result, with dinosaurs in general. To that end, Grandma found her Dinosaur Mountain. Coupled with the handful of other plastic dinosaurs she got, she’s in dinosaur heaven.
Santa also brought Digging for Dinosaurs
This is going to warrant it’s own post, but the new Super Mario Bros. Wii
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