My mother came to our house after the cookout today and delivered a Mom Trifecta. She dropped off 3 sets of homemade goodies, all worth blogging about. I’m spreading them out over the next few days to let each soak in, and I’m starting with The Most Awesome of Them All.
Tag: elephants
Since I didn’t actually do my Animal Mania: Elephants! program, I didn’t list all the books I read. These are the elephant books I pulled, in case anyone is interested:
My Friend Is Sad by Mo Willems
Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss
Elmer by David McKee
Kidogo by Anik McGrory
The Hubbub Above by Arthur Howard
The Elephant’s Pillow by Diana Reynolds Roome
I Am Invited To a Party! by Mo Willems
This morning I had a delightful class of second graders come to see me for a field trip. We had a FABULOUS time! I gave them a tour of the library, some of the kids got library cards for the first time, I read a bunch of stories, we made this great elephant craft they’re holding up, AND our library mascot came for a visit! The kids came in quietly and left chatting up a storm about how great the library is. I have the greatest profession ever.
I used some of the books I’d pulled for my canceled elephant program plus some other silly stories. We did this craft that I’d planned for Animal Mania: Elephants! but I skipped all the weird hygiene education. They just blew air to make the trunk flap.
In the midst of my stories, our mascot arrived for our prearranged surprise. They danced together, I read a special Summer Reading Club story, they got hugs and autographs. It was so much fun.
Here are the books I read:
Now that I’ve started hanging out on more and more blogs, I’m a little jealous of the photography skills on some of them. Everyone has artistic lighting and interesting compositions. Adam’s a great photographer, I love seeing his point of view. I’ve taken several photography classes in my time, so I’m used to this feeling. Students in my classes would have technically brilliant photos with some complicated angles happening, like a skateboarder sailing over their head. Mine would be the one with dust marks from the negative and it would be slightly out of focus, and it would be a picture of 2 guys whitewashing a wall. I’m almost strictly a documentarian when I take a picture. Usually I see someone doing something interesting and I want to catalog the moment to use later in a painting or project. Sometimes I stumble onto an incredible picture, but it’s usually entirely accidental. So that’s my approach. Point the camera and hope for the best. Nothing fancy, just telling it like It Is. Unfortunately, sometimes It Is out of focus.
The next program I have coming up is Animal Mania: Elephants! So I was cruising through our picture books on said large mammals when I came across The Strangest Book I Have Ever Read. Bertil and the Bathroom Elephants is a Swedish book translated into English. It’s the story of 3-year-old Bertil, who splashes water all over the bathroom and blames it on a pair of special bathroom elephants living under his tub. His mother invites them to stay and starts to leave bowls of raisins for them, which Bertil eats because the elephants are not real. Then the elephants start attacking him every time he goes to the bathroom, which suggests they are real. This leads to many gratuitous pants-around-the-ankles drawings of little Bertil on the pot or falling on the floor. Not full frontal, but I feel very well acquainted with his rear end. He becomes terrified of the elephants and refuses to use the bathroom. Eventually his parents have to get the training potty out and he uses it in the hallway. That image will be etched on my brain forever. This goes on and on until some trickery from his dad and a neighbor convinces Bertil the elephants are gone, and the book ends with him having a successful experience on the toilet and yelling, “DONE!”
Read more on Bertil and the Bathroom Elephants by Inger Lindahl…