Read Aloud Roundup: February 2014

Black History Month came again, with a new round of children's books! Some favorite authors and illustrators made their appearance -- Jacqueline Woodson, Andrea Davis Pinkney, and Kadir Nelson are always excellent choices. My wife reminds me that I should seek out biographies of activists like Bayard Rustin (watched this documentary today) and Malcolm X (for kids? maybe middle school) for next year. I had an overflow of books about African-American women, so a couple will be featured in March for Women's History Month.

I had some trouble finding accurate and thoughtful books suitable for our youngest students, so both kindergarten classes were assigned poetry -- one short poem per book, which was closer to the usual picturebook experience than the anthologies I'd tried earlier this year. Still, the big ideas behind the little words means more work for the volunteer reader leading the discussion. If I'd had unlimited time and funds, I would have tried to find something better for kindergarten.

Reading List 2014

Here's an archived copy of my reading list for this year. I'll be keeping up the new list here: http://mlisunderstanding.blogspot.com/p/reading-list.html

I would recommend the bolded titles with enthusiasm, and I enjoyed the italicized titles but probably wouldn't read them again.

Goals Check-in: December

Here's my end-of-the-month wrap-up regarding my 2013 goals:

Freezer Inventory: December

Here's an update on what's in the freezers headed into the new year (beginning in January, these posts will move to my new blog):

Resolutions for 2014

2014 will be full of changes for my family! Adjusting to new things can be tough, especially large-scale things like where we live, work, and volunteer, and who shares our life with us. Instead of nailing down a bunch of quantifiable goals, I've decided to change things up. I have had long lists of resolutions for previous years, but 2014 bodes to be both simpler and fuller in several ways. So my new year's resolutions are less numerous, but larger in scale.

CC by BazaarBizarreSF (Flickr)