Opening Day is coming!

Last year was the first year Max played baseball, and I was shocked at our first game, which was Opening Day for our league. When I was little, our baseball league was several teams with three fields, one of which was down the hill and rained out any time it sprinkled. Where we live now, baseball is a BIG deal. Opening Day started off with a fly-over (what?!) followed by high school choir and JROTC team performances, and it boasted bounce houses, a rock wall, a band, and food trucks. It was insane!

It might have been because of how awesome Opening Day was that Max decided baseball is life. This year’s Opening Day is still a few weeks away, but in the meantime we have been reading any and all baseball books we can get our hands on.

Two books Max received for Christmas are part of Cal Ripken, Jr.’s Hothead series: Hothead and Out at Home. Here are Max’s thoughts on each of them:

Out At Home by Cal Ripken, Jr. is 208 pages. The main characters are Mickey, his team and coast, Abby, and his dad, who is his coach. The setting is the baseball stadium and Mickey’s house. Mickey is a catchr who loves baseball. His pitcher hurt his arm, so his coach found a new pitcher who called himself Zoom. But Zoo was a big idiot/jerk. So the coach benched him so then Zoom realized that he had to be a team player. I love this book so much!

Max gives Out At Home five snacks:

The other book I read was Hothead by Cal Ripken, Jr. It is 144 pages. The main characters are Conner, his team and coach, his dad and mom, and Melissa. The setting of this book is on the baseball field and Conner’s house.

Conner has a very small temper, so when he fails on the field he flips out. Eventually, his coach says that if he flips again then he’s off the team. He’s about to do it! But he saves himself and they win.

Max gives Hothead five snacks:

As a special treat to celebrate baseball season, enjoy a free printable Baseball Word Search, courtesy of Education.com.

Click the image to download the PDF, and click here for the answer key.

This baseball-themed word find worksheet will be a home run with kids! Word finds are great for spelling practice and word recognition. For more even more educational resources that will knock it out of the park with your kids, visit Education.com.

Meet the Max of Snacks For Max

When I started the Snacks for Max blog in December of 2011, my son Max was nine months old. I could tell his preferences by whether he screamed or smiled, but I always wanted to know what he was thinking. These days, Max is in second grade, and I get to hear what he’s thinking whether I want to or not!

When Max was little, I read to him every night, but now that he knows how to read (which felt like it happened overnight when he was in Kindergarten; one of the coolest things ever was watching him learn), we take turns reading to each other. His favorite books are mysteries, though he also has a penchant for nonfiction since his Team Read sheets at school let him skip a couple of categories with nonfiction books.

If you’re unfamiliar with Team Read, it’s a program at his elementary school that rewards students for reading, similar to the Book It! and Accelerated Reader programs my schools participated in years ago. For Team Read, students fill out a sheet about each book they read, and the pages add up to advance them through the levels of the program. At our parent teacher conference in the fall, Max’s teacher said she knew that he read a lot at home from talking with him, but he hadn’t been turning in his sheets. He and I spent his fall break filling out sheets for five or six books he had read to me before bed over the previous two months, and when he took them to school, they added up to already push him into not the first or second but the third category of readers!

Here is Max’s review of one of Ron Roy’s A to Z Mysteries:

Title: A to Z Mysteries: The Deadly Dungeon

Author: Ron Roy

Illustrator: Ron Roy

# of Pages: 86

Characters: Dink, Josh, Ruth Rose, Wallis, Walker

Setting: The setting of this story is a castle and the time is a few days.

Summary: They got on a bus so they could visit their friend Wallis and her brother Walker. Walker took them lobstering when they got there. He told them a ghost story. When they got back to the castle, they heard a scream like a ghost. They got hungry so they had a picnic and then they found a trap door. In the trap door they found two parrots. It had to be a poacher, and it was, so they caught him and the parrots went back to where they came from.

I rate this book a 4 because the bad guy pretended to be their friend, but he really isn’t. I like that there is a castle right next to the ocean.

The series about Dink and his friends is one of my favorites. I would give the series as a whole 5 snacks.

Sit still before Mommy screams!

Back in October, Max and I received and reviewed two books in the Mini Myths series by Joan Holub, illustrated by Leslie Patricelli (and gave them both 5 snacks!). One was about Hercules and being gentle, especially with little kids, which is an excellent lesson for a new big brother like Max. The other was about Pandora and being patient, which is an excellent lesson for … pretty much any preschooler, including Max!

We were lucky to recently receive the two new additions to the Mini Myths series from the author in exchange for an honest review: Brush Your Hair, Medusa! and Make a Wish, Midas!

Make a Wish, Midas! equates the king of myth with a little boy who can’t get enough of the color yellow. When Mommy picks out a blue shirt and jeans, he finds his own yellow t-shirt and pants. He draws a yellow sun, a yellow house, and even a yellow Mommy! Midas’ best friend is a green dinosaur, which is a problem. He wants to be surrounded by yellow! He figures out a way to turn Dinoboo yellow, but it doesn’t work out how he thought it would, and Midas is sad.

Luckily, Mommy is able to fix Dinoboo, and Midas learns to appreciate what he has rather than wishing for something else. Great lesson in our world full of materialism!

In Holub’s other tale, Brush Your Hair, Medusa!, Medusa is a little girl with crazy hair. Her curls stick out in a wild wave around her head, and she puts off using her hairbrush anyway she can. (Can’t really blame her: I wouldn’t want to try to get a brush through those tangles either.)

I struggled with finding a lesson out of this story. I would say that Medusa learned to listen to grownups, but at the end you can tell from her mischievous grin (which is super adorable) that she didn’t plan on letting Dad brush her teeth anymore than she allowed him to brush her hair. What I finally landed on was using Medusa’s experience to explain consequences for not doing what parents ask you to do:

Because Medusa wouldn’t let her daddy brush her hair, they had to cut it off!

Make a Wish, Midas! deserves 5 snacks for the beautiful illustrations that elicit so much emotion from the characters and the lesson to appreciate what you have.

Brush Your Hair, Medusa! deserves 4 snacks for the cute depiction of a well-known myth.

A cupcake a day keeps the whining at bay

Some lessons you just HAVE to teach your kids. Being gentle with babies and small children, waiting for turns quietly rather than screaming and throwing fits, and learning to love reading are three top ones, to me.

Knowing Max needs to work on these things, I was thrilled to receive for review two board books from Joan Holub’s Mini Myths series, “Be Patient, Pandora!” and “Play Nice, Hercules!”

We started off with Hercules, first because it featured a boy, second because Max loves the Hercules Disney movie, and third because I’ve found myself saying “play nice” quite a bit since May. Luckily my five-month-old is laid-back because his brother likes to play rough. The board book format is perfect because I can read it to both boys at the same time and not worry about the baby ripping or drooling all over the pages; rather, the only problem is the possibility of Max throwing the books at nap time or bedtime because he’s “NOT TIRED” – yeah right – but I digress.

In “Play Nice, Hercules!” the character, just like my toddler, plays a little too rough with his little sibling. Hercules’ father has eyes in the back of his head (or just knows the nature of toddlers) and asks when he walks by, “Are you being nice, Hercules?” This is enough of a reminder to Hercules that he starts to play nicely with his sister without threats from Dad. Perhaps rereading this book a few thousand times will teach Max that lesson!

Next we moved on to “Be Patient, Pandora!” which also fit in well with our household experiences. Little man doesn’t wait well. I’ve been trying to teach him with the mantra “What is being patient? Waiting without whining!”

In the book, the little girl finds a wrapped present that her mom tells her to leave alone. While Pandora keeps herself from straight out opening the box, she gets a little closer to it, nudges it, stands on it, and jumps on it. When she jumps on it, the box opens by itself, and ruined cupcakes fly out. Pandora is worried that her mom won’t love her anymore, but of course Mom banishes that thought quickly. Great lesson, though. Next time Max starts to whine, I just have to remind him that he might ruin the cupcakes!

At the end of each story is a page that summarizes the myth. While it’s a lot of text on one page for my boys right now, I do love the introduction to Greek mythology. It was one of my favorite concepts to learn in elementary school!

Joan Holub’s Mini Myths earn five snacks:

Lay off the baby, please!

At bedtime, I always tell my three year old that I will read him two stories, emphasis on the word story rather than book. The reason I have learned to use the word story is because once when I made the mistake of saying book he brought me his copy of Disney Storybook Collection.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I can’t read you a book with 320 pages of stories,” I told him.

“But you said…”

I know, kid, I know. You’re too smart for me.

Anyway, not only did the Disney Storybook Collection teach me something valuable, but it also has quite a few lessons for my toddler.

“Donald’s Campaign Trip” teaches him the value of books; “Pinnochio” shows why disobeying and lying is a bad idea; and on and on. Last night we read the story about Pinnochio. In the story, Geppetto warns the puppet not to let a cuckoo out of its cage, but the minute his father’s back is turned, Pinnochio lets it free. Rather than confessing, the puppet blames the missing bird on Figaro the cat, then tries to get the bird back, telling a lot more lies in the process.

While we haven’t had a problem with lying yet (fingers crossed), we certainly have a problem with obeying Mommy and Daddy, especially since baby brother came home in May. Max gets jealous of the baby and acts out by pulling on Mason’s arms and legs. Mommy says stop; Max doesn’t; and that starts the not minding.

Hopefully, reading Pinnochio a few more times – and other books with a similar lesson – will help us out so poor Mason is stretched and screaming! (Actually, that’s not accurate. Nine times out of then, no matter what Max does to him, all Mason does is smile and laugh, leading Max to say, “But he likes it, Mommy!”)

Long story short, the Disney Storybook Collection earns 5 snacks:

Travoltify your favorite kids book character

Author C. Drew Lamm did John Travolta one better by actually meaning to mix up the words in the title of “The Prog Frince: A Ribbeting Mixed-Up Tale”. I picked it up at the library first because of the frog on the cover – Max is a huge fan of frogs – and then because the title made me giggle.

Scroll to the bottom of the post to Travoltify your favorite kids book title!

The Dinosaur Blues

At Christmas, the one present Max wanted from Santa (whose lap he refused to sit on) was a blue dinosaur. We searched everywhere for a blue dinosaur. I went to five stores in one day. My husband went to several more throughout December. We finally gave him Rex from Toy Story, even though he’s green. Luckily, Max was cool with it (mostly because Rex snaps when you make him sit down).

One of the wonderful women I work with tried her best to help, calling her son to search through his old toys for the elusively colored reptile. While they didn’t end up finding the toy, she did find a book that she passed onto us, “Ten Terrible Dinosaurs” by Paul Stickland.

The Mom Dreaming of a Three Year Nap

Every mom has at some point wished she could take a three-year nap. I have not even been a mom for three full years yet, and I know this. Every mom has also at some point wished her child would do a little more around the house. For those with infants: come on, you know you’ve wished your child didn’t fill up diapers quite so fast!

Several times over the past week Max and I have read The Boy of the Three Year Nap written by Dianne Snyder and illustrated by Allen Say. This book has so much going for it! The illustrations are gorgeous, the twist is excellent, and the lesson is perfect.Some of the honors this book has deservedly won include Caldecott Honor Book (1989), ALA Notable Children’s Book (1988), and Boston Globe/Horn Book Award (1988).

THANK YOU Fireman Small!

In honor of 9/11, today we’re reviewing a book called Fireman Small by Wong Herbert Yee. I came across this book at Half Price Books and couldn’t not bring it home with us, especially with the anniversary of the tragedy coming up, giving all of us another chance to remember the great sacrifice made by so many first responders 12 years ago.

Fireman Small is about a fireman in a small town who comes to the rescue for everything from a cat up a tree, to a child down a well, to a fire at the bakery. Like the first responders at the Twin Towers, Fireman Small is brave and true of heart. He puts his own needs (like safety and sleep) aside to help others. The book tells the story of so many courageous firefighters all over the country and shares wonderful values that I want my son to embody.

This is one burning book

The Library Dragon is one burning book. An elementary hires a new librarian who really fires up the rest of the faculty. She has green, purple and gold scales; she breathes fire; and she incinerates any books she deems cruel to dragons.

The worst part of the new librarian’s reign is that she is too good a guard of the books. She posts signs telling students not to even think about touching, let alone reading, any of her precious books. The students’ spirits and grades die down like a doused campfire—until one brave yet unwitting student changes all of that.