Category: Early Childhood

In Honor of Dr. Seuss’ Birthday – My Favorite Seuss Story

(Repost from 01/04/2009)

I decided to begin building My Google Library so that I can:

  • Share my favorite books with our own children.
  • Easily access books, images, citations, etc. during class, presentations, workshops, etc.
  • Share and suggest resources with other educators

When it came time to add my favorite Dr. Seuss books to my library I realized that I would have to add most of them, so I decided to try and narrow it down to my very favorite book. It took some reflection and deep soul searching (I’m exaggerating.) but I was able to identify my very favorite (Thanks to a technicality that I’ll share in another post.) Seuss story.

The Sneetches and Other StoriesI remember the first time I read Too Many Daves (from The Sneetches and Other Stories). I was sitting at a table in my elementary school library with two of my friends. I read the book silently and the ridiculousness of one naming all 23 of her children the same thing just sent my imagination spinning. It remains one of my favorite poems all these years later. I’ve included the poem below in case you’re unfamiliar with it. Unfortunately, I can’t also include the artwork because it really sales the story – as is typical of all of Seuss’ work.

Discussion
What is YOUR favorite Dr. Seuss story? Why?

—————

TOO MANY DAVES
From: The Sneetches and Other Stories
By: Dr. Seuss

Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave
Had twenty-three sons, and she named them all Dave?

Well, she did. And that wasn’t a smart thing to do.
You see, when she wants one, and calls out “Yoo-Hoo!
Come into the house, Dave!” she doesn’t get one.
All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run!

This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves’
As you can imagine, with so many Daves.
And often she wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn.
And one of them Hoos-Foos. And one of them Snimm.
And one of them Hot-Shot. And one Sunny Jim.
Another one Putt-Putt. Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O’Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate…

But she didn’t do it. And now it’s too late.

Related Articles

Children’s Book Author Encourages Our Youngest

As I mentioned last week our youngest and I had a great time reading The Pout-Pout Fish. It was an evening filled with lots of silliness and laughter. We had such a great time and I liked the book so much I wrote a blog post about our fun and included a few ideas regarding educational connections that could be made with the story, rhymes, etc. Less than 3 hours after my blog entry posted I received the following message on Twitter from the book’s author, Deborah Diesen.

It would be an understatement to say that our youngest was excited to have received a message from the book’s author. The reaction was so strong that I felt compelled to tweet the following reply to Deborah.

Needless to say, we since have read The Pout-Pout Fish many more times, we have enjoyed Pout-Pout Fish-inspired videos, a full-scale search is underway to get access to Deborah’s other children’s books, and our youngest has a renewed interest in reading and writing.

Many, many thanks, Deborah!

Free Apps: Everyday Math

The McGraw-Hill School Education Group has made all of their Everyday Mathematics apps available for FREE during the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Conference. The apps are available in iPod Touch/iPhone and iPad versions. Students often find these drill and practice educational games to be engaging for long stretches of time. The NCTM Conference begins April 13th and concludes on April 16th, so be sure to download your free copies of these apps by the end of Saturday.

Addition Top It Beat the Computer Multiplication
Tric-Trac Equivalent Fractions
Subtraction Top-It Divisibility Dash
Baseball Multiplication (1-6 Facts) Name That Number

 

Hat tip to Karyn Keenan and Cindy Brock for bringing this to my attention.

Kids Get Creative with AudioBoo

In episode 3 of Thinking Out Loud I pondered ways that AudioBoo might be integrated with teaching and learning. I shared a few ideas that sprang to mind and invited you to share your ideas and examples. I want to share a couple of AudioBoos that our two youngest children put together.

Listen!

Listen!

It is important to note that these 2 kids are young. They selected their topics, identified the major points that they wanted to share, recorded their interviews without rehearsing, and selected the title and images for their boos. They did this with minimal assistance from me. They learned to use the AudioBoo iphone app, planned their interview, and recorded and published both boos in well under 30 minutes. It was a fun and educational activity for all three of us!

Educational Uses
I encourage you to join me in exploring the potential classroom uses of this technology. Please share your thoughts and examples as text, audio or video comments. Together we learn more!

Elementary Teachers, I Need Your Advice

I’m providing professional development at an elementary school this week. I’ve been asked to survey some of the most commonly used Web 2.0 technologies in elementary classrooms. I’m very curious what others are using in their classrooms as I prepare this workshop. Please, please, please share the tools and services that you and your students recommend. I’ll compile and share the results along with related resources and examples on the workshop wiki.

Appreciatively,
Clif

It’s Good to Be Back, Again!

Kannapolis City SchoolsI’m excited to be working with Kannapolis City Schools again. I spent 4 weeks here last summer and I’m back for the 2nd time this summer. I’m helping provide professional development for part of their grant funded technology integration initiative called IMPACT. I’ve been asked to facilitate the following workshops:

Please share any resources, information, cases, scenarios, etc. that you think will help teachers learn more about these topics by clicking on the session titles above and adding your contribution to the Notes and Resources from My PLN section at the bottom of each wiki. Rest assured that I welcome your input in this endeavor.

Together we all learn more!

Free Inspiration Webcast

(NOTE: I received this announcement via email from Inspiration.)

Webcast: Using Visual Learning Techniques to Improve Academic Performance with Inspiration®
Date: Thursday, January 29th, 2009
Time: 12:00-12:45 p.m. Pacific Time, 3:00-3:45 p.m. Eastern Time
Register for this event today!

Inspiration® helps students develop ideas, analyze concepts and improve organizational skills. Join us on January 29th to explore templates and examples that will help your students improve academic performance in Science, Language Arts and Social Studies. Cathy Cuff, our Education Development Manager for Science, will host a complimentary 45-minute webcast demonstrating how you can use Inspiration 8 to:

  • Expand on ideas to create well-supported thinking and conclusions
  • Build knowledge by increasing comprehension of new concepts
  • Increase organizational skills by connecting ideas into a logical hierarchy

Join us for this professional development webcast!

If you are unable to join us, don’t worry – the webcast will be archived and available to you shortly after the event concludes.

View our archived webcasts!

The Electric Company Returns to PBS

The Electric CompanyI was a big fan of the The Electric Company as a kid. It was full of cool music (Such as Silent E), skits (Remember Easy Rider?), cartoons (like Letter Man narrated by Joan Rivers) and Spider-Man. The Electric Company is the reason I became such a big fan of Spider-Man. He was so cool.

Take a look.

And who could forget these fun segments…

Yes, that is Morgan Freeman’s silhouette on the left in the above video.

I was excited to learn that The Electric Company is returning to PBS. We’ll no longer have to mine through YouTube to find the videos to help teach our children how to read (Our kids really enjoy watching the “old show that [I] watched when [I] was a kid.”). The new version debuts today on PBS. Check your local listings for times.

The revamped Electric Company…bears little resemblance to the old show. The new program aspires to be as culturally clued-in as its predecessor was. It’s imbued with a hip-hop sensibility, deploys cutting edge graphics and drops allusions to touchstones like 24 and Indiana Jones. But instead of a series of sketches that have little to do with one another, each new episode has a cohesive narrative built around the antics of the Electric Company, a team of four singing and rapping wordsmiths who use the power of reading to defeat the nefarious Prankster gang…There is also a new stable of celebrity guests: in the debut episode, Sean Kingston contributed a song about the two different sounds the letter C makes. Pete Wentz, Jimmy Fallon, Wyclef Jean, Ne-Yo and Common all pop up in the first season. (Source)

Discussion
What was your favorite part of the 1970s version of The Electric Company?