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Showing posts with label Granny Guru. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Granny Guru. Show all posts

Monday, January 27, 2014

Granny-Guru: Can I Just Take a Nap?





Can I Just Take a Nap?

Readers know the classic book for reading your grandchildren to sleep, “Goodnight, Moon.” A new classic has been introduced, “Can I Just Take a Nap?”
English: A bowl of Cheerios
A bowl of Cheerios (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Ron Rauss, architect, poet and first-time children’s book author, decided to enter a contest in 2010 that Cheerios hosts every year for new children’s book authors. He won, beating out more than 8,000 entries.
Simon and Schuster published his book and General Mills, owner of Cheerios cereal, put a small, paperback version in three million boxes of Cheerios. Now, it’s out in hardback. Although Rauss is also an illustrator, his publisher chose Rob Shepperson to illustrate this book.
This is the sweet story of a sleepy little boy who wanders all over trying to find a quiet place where he can take a nap. Author Rauss says it was really a story about how tired he was as a new, stay-at-home Dad.



New parents and grandparents, unused to the early rise and unbounded energy of children and grandchildren, can relate. But, grandparents also know that one of the ways to get a tired grandchild down for a nap or down for the night is to have a soothing ritual, like reading to them in bed, or just before you take them to bed.
The child in this book, Aiden, was named after Rauss’s own, now four-year-old son. A book soon to follow will feature Rauss’s 18-month-old son, Jaxon.
Order the book from amazon for your own new sleepytime tradition by clicking on the title, “Can I Just Take a Nap?”


 Carol Covin, Granny-Guru
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Monday, January 20, 2014

Granny-Guru: Mary Poppins



I remember watching the Disney movie, “Mary Poppins” when it first came out. It was released August 27, 1964, the summer before my Senior year of high school.
I had never read the original 1933 book on which the movie is based, and, after watching the movie, it never occurred to me to read the book.


That changed when I recently saw the movie, “Saving Mr. Banks.”
This new movie is the story of how Disney came to make the “Mary Poppins”movie. He negotiated with the book’s author, an Australian who had moved to London, P. L. Travers (a pen name for  Helen Lyndon Goff). She was the child of an alcoholic father who died of influenza when she was eight.
Though the negotiations ended in Disney getting the rights to the movie, they were so contentious that he did not invite Travers to the opening and she never allowed him to make another movie from any of her seven other Mary Poppins books. If you stay through the credits at the end of the movie, you will hear a tape recording of negotiations between Travers and the writers and song-writers Disney put on the project.
Travers died in 1996, at the age of 96. She never married. Her only child was a boy she adopted from his grandparents, who were raising seven grandchildren.
So, how did this child, bereft of her adoring father as a youngster, come to write the fanciful “Mary Poppins?” After watching "Saving Mr. Banks," I had to go back and read the original Mary Poppins book.
The movie is largely very faithful to the book. Mary Poppins, a nanny, blows in on the East Wind, right when Mrs. Banks’ nanny has unexpectedly quit.
It is interesting to me that a modest family with four children, the father a mid-level bank manager, can afford a staff of four for the household. Mrs. Banks is a stay-at-home Mom only in the sense that she doesn't work. Perhaps it is as they tell us. Nearly one hundred years later, we live in an age of labor-saving devices that make up for staff.
But, historical context aside, the book’s delight comes from its whimsy.
  • What do animals do at night in a zoo, when all the people have gone home? What if some people get locked into the zoo at night?
  • What is an appropriate birthday gift for a snake to give a close friend? What does a nanny give her friend, one of the stars, for her birthday?
  • If you had fingertips that could be any flavor you wanted, what flavor would you choose?
  • Wouldn't you like to slide up a banister sometimes, instead of always down?
Though Mary Poppins brooked no nonsense from her charges, she introduced them to a fantastical world that kept them out of trouble and made her sudden departure on the next wind, as she had predicted, sadder but richer for her having been in their lives.


After seeing the movie, “Saving Mr. Banks,” you will want to read the original "Mary Poppins" book yourself and introduce your grandchildren to this classic.
Then, you will want to reward your own inner child and watch the Disney movie, “Mary Poppins,” all over again,
I can hear you already singing, “Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down…”
Order yourself a weekend of "Mary Poppins" with the grandchildren.
Click on the title here or the image below to order from amazon, "Mary Poppins" the classic book, "Mary Poppins" the Disney movie, or "Saving Mr. Banks," the movie about making "Mary Poppins" which is still in theaters but can be pre-ordered.
Mary Poppins, the classic book
 

Mary Poppins, the  Disney movie
Saving Mr. Banks, the movie about the making of Mary Poppins movie


Carol Covin, Granny-Guru

*Image Credit:  https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse455/12au/projects/project1/students/adevore3/artifact/mary_poppins.jpg
http://www.disneydreamer.com/MarryPoppins-wr.jpg
Amazon.com
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Monday, January 13, 2014

Granny-Guru: Million, Billions, & Trillions



Tumblr http://newgrandmas.tumblr.com/


Millions, Billions & Trillions

When former math teacher, David Adler, started writing math storybooks for children, he set out to explain big concepts.  Shapes, word problems, fractions, algebra and Roman numerals.

In his brand-new, 2013 book, “Millions, Billions & Trillions,” he tackles big numbers.
Parents and teachers may care that it “meets the Common Core State Standards for fourth-grade mathematics in Number and Operations in Base Ten.” Grandparents will delight in its whimsical illustrations and real-world-based representation of how much a million, or billion, or trillion means, after you find out how many zeros there are in the number.
He looks at big numbers by comparing them to things around us:
???????: ??????? ??? ?????.• How many pizzas can you buy with one million dollars?
• How many people would it take to have one billion strands of hair?
• How high is a stack of one trillion dollar bills?
He looks at big numbers by comparing them to time:
How long does it take to count to one million? To one billion?
He looks at big numbers by comparing them to each other:
How many millions of people are in New York? In California? In the U.S.?
For your grandchildren to get a feel for big numbers, before they learn the abstraction in school, introduce them, gently, with fun and imagination, with Adler’s “Millions, Billions & Trillions: Understanding Big Numbers.”
You can order Adler’s book from amazon by clicking on the title above or the book cover below.


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Monday, January 6, 2014

Granny Guru: Grandma's Button Box Book



Grandma's Button Box

This is a story about a girl who spills all the buttons in Grandma’s button box while Grandma is out taking her morning walk. She loves Grandma’s button box because Grandma tells a story about each button.
English: Spanish metal button circa 1650-1675,...
Spanish metal button circa 1650-1675, 12mm diameter. (Photo credit: Wikipedi
There are buttons from Grandma’s wedding dress, her own baby sweater. Lost buttons that turned up in the doghouse, the fishbowl, the gerbil’s cage. Buttons from everyone in the family – Grandpa’s suspenders, her brother’s tuba recital.
She and her brother and sister looked all over to find all the buttons that had spilled. And, then came the sorting. They had to try to remember if Grandma sorted them by color, shape or size, and match the number of compartments in the button box.
Join in their adventure to find out what they figured out.
Grandma’s Button Box is part of the Math Matters series published by Kane Press, a publisher founded by Joanne Kane, a former teacher and developer of reading and math materials for the classroom.
Not only are their books designed to be read to children or read independently by children, but, they include additional activities in the back to enjoy with your grandchildren, in this case emphasizing sorting by color, shape and size.
Order your own copy of this book from amazon by clicking on the title, “Grandma’s Button Box,” and share this sweet math adventure with your grandchildren.

Carol Covin, Granny-Guru
http://newgrandmas.com
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Monday, December 30, 2013

Granny-Guru: The Iron

On January 4th my husband and I will celebrate our 12 year anniversary.  I laughed when I read the post today from Miss Carol, there have definitely been some "training" gift moments in my marriage! Sometimes a good tool is fabulous, like the Kitchen Aid I opened up for Christmas!  This one I specifically asked for that and hinted and hinted and hinted for.  However, I must say if I had received an Iron my reaction would probably not have been as calm as Carol's :).  It is possible, you can train your hubby to know what to get you for a gift, even if you have to slap him over the head with it, i.e. my new Kitchen Aid!

The Iron

A soon-to-be cousin from the other side of the family, young and single, at a recent family wedding asked me if it is true that men have to be trained after they are married and if they are trainable.
My husband and I looked at each other and both said, “the iron.”
My husband broke the ice.
“Both people train each other to what they need.”
Then, I told the story.
On some occasion, I no longer remember whether it was a birthday or Christmas, but let’s just say it was Christmas, my husband gave me an iron.
He knows better now than to give such a practical gift. But, it was a nice iron, irons aren't cheap and it was early in our marriage when money was not spent lightly.
To a guy, there is nothing better than a good tool.
And, to a guy, they’d rather have something they could actually use rather than one more tie to hang in their closet.
Even a dozen nice handkerchiefs are better than another tie, but pretty much any tool is a good gift.
So, of course, he thought I would appreciate it.
And, this is where the training comes in.
You have to learn that just because you would like something doesn't mean it would be special to the other person.
For me, as I imagine for most women, a household tool or appliance as a gift does two things.
It suggests her husband thinks of her primarily in terms of her function as a housekeeper.
I know now that this is not what he intends. He intends to make her life easier with a good tool just as he imagines how much easier his life will be every time he buys himself a tool.
It also suggests he has not been paying attention to hints she has probably dropped by commenting on something she particularly likes but won’t buy for herself because she doesn't need it and it would be an extravagance.
In my family, we were not allowed to ask for things directly because our parents wanted the freedom to give us what they thought we would like and what they could afford.
So, we were only allowed to hint and we were supposed to be watching out for what others in the family liked when we bought gifts for them.
I thought all families did this.
This is where the mutual training comes in in a marriage.
For me, a personal extravagance, preferably one I’d been hinting at, was exactly the kind of gift I wanted my husband to get me.
In my husband’s family, by contrast, they flat out told each other what they wanted, a practice I found crude and rude, but learned to adopt after the blue-watch incident.
In the early years of our marriage, since my husband didn't have the drop-hints or express wishes habit common in my family, I started going Christmas shopping with him a few weeks before Christmas.
If he showed an unusual interest in something, I went back later and got it for him.
One year, he lingered over and commented on how beautiful and interesting a watch was that had a blue face.
When he opened it on Christmas morning, he said, "What is this?" "Well, you really seemed to like that watch, so I got it for you."
"I liked it, but that doesn't mean I wanted it." Oops. After that, we had a serious discussion about how to buy gifts for each other.
The first time he asked me what I wanted, after the iron-as-a -gift and blue-watch incidents, I cried. I’d never been asked before.
The last time my watch broke, we went watch-shopping together. My watch now has a blue face.
My reaction to the iron? Not just vague disappointment that he hadn't been paying attention to what I liked, but also curiosity.
“But, I have an iron,” I told him questioningly as I held it up.
“Yours doesn't work.”
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Monday, December 23, 2013

Granny-Guru: Bedtime Math. Modern Children's Book

I am happy to introduce a new Contributor to A Handful of Everything! Miss Carol Covin aka the Granny Guru! She has a fabulous blog http://newgrandmas.com.  Check it out for some great posts from her 4 fold mission: To inspire grandparents to write their autobiographies, highlight inspirational cancer survivor stories, to show how parenting has changed, and to describe fun activities to enjoy with your grandchildren.  And lets face it, kids always love to go to Grandma's house! We can learn a lot from the experts!  So without further ado, please welcome Miss Carol Granny Guru!

Bedtime Math. Modern Children's Book.

Pumpkins, photographed in Canada.
Last summer, my grandson took some of the money he’d earned from cleaning off shelves for me and we went to the bookstore so he could buy a book of his own.
He looked through biographies and fiction, then picked a Math workbook.
This shocked the bookstore clerk, who could barely contain her delight when he put the book up on the counter and brought out his own money.
He asked his grandfather to read the exercises to him while they did the math problems together.
His mother, of course, an accountant, approved when she heard the story.
My granddaughter, similarly, loves math and is good at it. Her parents have taught her to recite the numbers of pi when she has trouble drifting off to sleep.
It is with this backdrop that I ran across a site a few months ago called Bedtime Math.
It seems that Laura Overdeck, an astrophysicist, has been putting her children to bed with math problems, or rather stories with math questions, since they were two.
When I told my son's family about this book, my daughter-in-law, a computer consultant, said that her mother, too, had put her to bed with math stories.
Eventually, other parents began asking Overdeck for her problems. She put together an email and sent it to 10 parents.
Her email list doubled practically overnight and continued to double quickly.
She began to realize she wasn’t the only parent interested in “mathing” her children to sleep as often as reading them to sleep.

Her book, Bedtime Math: A Fun Excuse to Stay Up Late, illustrated by Jim Paillot, was released in 2013.
It is now accompanied by a web site where, not only can you get more math stories and activities, but you can sign up for a daily activity to be sent to you.

Her format is approachable, slipping math in quietly after explaining something in the real world.
And, by giving three levels of difficulty of the activities, it allows children to find their own level.
Here’s an excerpt of one:
“Totally Squashed”
“A large cucumber or a bag of potatoes can get really heavy.”
“That’s because veggies are made mostly of water, and water itself is pretty heavy.”
“Wee ones: if you have 4 giant squash and 5 giant pumpkins, how many enormous vegetables do you have?”
“Little kids: If each giant pumpkin weighs 1,000 pounds and your car weighs 4,500 pounds, how many whole pumpkins do you need to outweigh your car?”
“Big kids: What weighs more, 4 of your 900-pound pumpkins or 5 of your 700-pound zucchinis?”
Overdeck hides the answers on each page and lays out the math equation it takes to solve the problem in an answer sheet at the end of the book for parents and grandparents.
If your grandchildren are like Overdeck’s children, they’ll be asking for their bedtime math every night along with their bedtime stories.
You can start off with the book from amazon, by clicking on the title, Bedtime Math: A Fun Excuse to Stay Up Late.

Or, sign up for Overdeck's daily math post at http://bedtimemath.org to get started today.

Carol Covin, Granny-Guru
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