Tag Archives: literature

Literary Guide for Robert McCloskey’s “Make Way for Ducklings”

“Make Way for Ducklings,” written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey, is our featured title this week in our Summer Reading Resource series. This downloadable literature guide, written for use with 1st & 2nd grade students, includes outlines for activities that call for readers to create their own list of rhyming family names, write a new adventure for the Mallard family, and gain practice reading aloud. The guide also includes suggestions for post-reading discussions about the historical context of the story, the book’s illustrations, protecting animals, and the relationship that animals have with humans when they live so close to each other…

Literary Guide for Roald Dahls’ “Danny the Champion of the World”

Our Summer Reading Resource Literary Guide series continues this week with Roald Dahl classic, “Danny the Champion of the World.” The literature guide is written with 4th grade students in mind, but the story can be easily read and appreciated by youn…

One Clover & A Bee: A Writing Challenge for Families

Big Ideas (in the Ordinary) I’ve noticed that often when we try to write, we get stuck because we think we need to write about “big” subjects. So we sit and chew on our pencil and stare into space and decide our lives just aren’t exciting enough for Art with a capital A. It’s really […]

Little Free Library in Wilbraham

Little Free Library in Wilbraham Honors Neighbors & Remembers Tornado Well, it is little, and it is a library, and, yes, it is free… so it must be a Little Free Library. The first Little Free Library appeared in Hudson, Wisconsin in 2009 and now they can be found in every state and at least thirty-two […]

7 Children’s Books that Embody Peace

Blessed are the Peacemakers Now more than ever it seems imperative that we engage and embody and choose peace. From events that hit close to home like the Newtown tragedy and the Boston Marathon bombings, to our sisters and brothers all over the world …

Edible Books: Creative Free Play in the Kitchen Meets Literature

What Happens When Creative Free Play in the Kitchen Meets Literature? EDIBLE BOOKS! If you devour books, does that make you a bookworm?  Does your family sometimes seem to subsist on the sustenance of words alone, rather than actual food?  Creative book lovers rejoice, for the ultimate opportunity to show your love for books has […]

Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves & Other Female Villains

New Book Portrays History’s Bad Girls with a Modern Twist Delilah. Cleopatra. Anne Bonney. Catherine the Great. Mata Hari. Bonnie Parker. Just a few of history’s bad girls. Or are they? Might they just be misunderstood girls? Smart, strong, outspoken girls? Or girls who are victims of bad circumstance? In their new book, Bad Girls: […]

One Clover & A Bee: Making a Fist

Behind All Our Questions: Yet Another Reason Poems Are Good For Us I don’t know about you, but I don’t always know what I’m feeling. Or I have a general idea, but I’m not sure I understand it, or know what to do about it, or if there is anything to do about it. I […]

George Washington Carver: A Life in Poems

In honor of Black History Month I want to share an extraordinary book about an extraordinary human being: Carver, a life in poems (Front Street, 2001) is an intimate portrait of the botanist, inventor, scientist, artist, musician, and teacher, known as…