I wish I had been posting all summer long, because this activity has been going on (in one form or another) since strawberry season in June.
Harvesting.
Owen has found it thrilling, all summer, to go and find the fresh fruits and vegetables that each part of the season yielded. We have a little strawberry patch that he went to daily. Once they were gone it was blueberry season and we were able to pick from our few bushes. Once those were gone the garden was producing cucumbers. Then, the creme de la creme, tomatoes. Actually, it’s hard to say if they tomatoes trumped the blueberries.
Now that summer’s over and the garden is pretty blah we’ve turned our attention to hickory nuts. In the years prior to Owen all I’ve ever done is rake them up and shovel them (literally) into a trailer for disposal. Now that I am always looking for something interesting to do (and on the advice of a friend who said they tasted great), and in keeping with the spirit of harvesting we’ve decided to pick up nuts.
It’s been great fun. Owen has learned how to open the outsides and get the nuts out. He’ll put them into the container of the day (or he’ll dump out what I’ve collected). We’ve collected a couple thousand I bet, We have so many now that I’ve resumed dumping them into piles so I can pick them up when it’s leave raking time.
He still walks around saying ‘nut, nut’ and pointing to the door. We’ll go out, and we’ll poke around for fun, but we don’t bring in any more nuts.
Be My Pal by Bill Joyce
I don't know why Owen likes this book so much, but it is one of the 2 that he asks for directly…saying 'lo, lo, lo.' I was just going to suggest that he likes it because we've been reading it to him since he was a baby, but I just realized he's shown a preference for this book since we started reading to him. Well, no accounting for taste I guess since I think the book stinks.
There is not real plot, the rhyming is in place just to rhyme and the illustrations are lousy. It does have a little sing songy verse to it though so it can be read, sung and generally played with…its short too, which is lucky…after 250 readings it's the only thing that has kept us from lighting it on fire.
In the end I don't like the book, but I'm not the one that counts. Owen loves it……
….still.
The Wheels on the Bus Illustrated by Paul Zelinsky
I feel that I should have a better book to start with than a book I found in the free bin at the dump. On top of that, I almost left it there. But, I didn't and so have the first book to make the list of Owen's favorites.
We have to read it, well, mostly all the time, and Owen asks for it by saying 'roun, roun' and moving his hands in a circle. He really does love it.
Honestly, I thought the artwork kind of cheesy when I first saw it (which is what made me want to leave it), but after 50 readings I am still finding ways to keep it interesting. I actually like it quite a bit. The book tells little stories about the people that get on and where they go, and we work on following them through their journey to the library at the end.
The moving parts, like all our pop up books, have gotten pretty abused…but since it was a dump book I can't say for sure which parts were ruined by Owen.
Overall, I would recommend this book. Owen and I both like it.
Owen's birthday party on 5/26/07.
Owen made me a mural for Father's day. It's pretty spectacular. Looking at him, it appears he worked quite hard at it.