Wisconsin Sheep And Wool 2008 - Bug

Bug's impressions of the sheep and wool festival, with added Jedis (click on picture to go see notes and label on Flickr)


A sheep

Wisconsin Sheep And Wool 2008 - Bean

A sheep


A ball of roving


A wool snake (I don't have a clue!)


A sheep herding dog


Dyed fiber

Books for Pre-readers to "Read"

Bean has been a little jealous of big brother learning how to read and demanded that I teach her to read. Since she only knows a few of her letters, she just isn't ready, but we did find a solution that makes her happy. Books with no words! She "reads" them by describing the pictures on each page.

Rainstorm
by Barbara Lehman


The Surprise
by Silvia Van Ommen

Portside Pirates by Oscar Seaworthy

A fun book and it includes a CD with a song version of the main text. It also has several pages with interesting pirate facts!

Tomie De Paola

We ran across a biography of Tomie De Paola in our Pebble Books and he has the greatest illustrations. We have taken out a few of his books and are enamored! We have read Strega Nona, Tony's Bread, and Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile. We will most certainly be reading more!

Nancy Drew

A couple of months ago, Kitty Daddy rented the new Nancy Drew movie from the video store*. Just for kicks, I put one of the original Nancy Drew mysteries on hold at the library. I figured that we would read a few pages, get bored with it, and move on. Boy, was I wrong. We have been reading a chapter a night, sometimes two, occasionally another chapter or two during the day. We are about a third of the way through our third Nancy Drew book now. Nancy Drew has even found her way into Bug's imagination and stories. When we went to the Alpaca Festival, he was carrying around a program and telling everyone he met how he was reading it and it was called "Alpaca Adventures" and how the alpacas met Nancy Drew. Apparently, the mystery novel junkie gene has been passed on!

* Quick and dirty movie review: Meh. Longer version: it was a cute movie, but didn't have much to do with the original series, other than a little good natured fun-poking.

Eager Reader

Since Bug developed a sudden interest in letters and sounds, I figured that starting to read wouldn't be too far behind and it turned out that I was right. Developmentally, he has approached this milestone the same way as he always does. While he has loved having books read to him since day one, he resisted anything to do with reading with his trademark stubbornness until he decided it was time. Just a couple of months ago, he knew most (but not all, and not necessarily in the right order) of the alphabet song. Now, he is actually sounding out words and reading on his own. We have the first set of Bob books out from the library. He has read the first nine books all by himself. There are only three more in the first set, so I guess that means I had better get the second set on our hold list!