If you are ever in an elementary classroom, take a moment to notice the books on the shelves. You can tell this book, Alone by Megan E. Freeman, is a favorite. Just look at those corners! Some people might get frustrated by that kind of damage, but not me. Only loved books usually get that kind of wear; that book is well traveled and a current favorite of the girls in my classroom (as is book two: Away.)
In verse it tells the story of a middle school girl who fakes a sleepover and ends up having to survive, alone, after being left behind during a community-wide evacuation. If you have a tween girl on your shopping list, I highly recommend Alone.
Today is The Quilted Turtle's sweet sixteen! It doesn't seem like I've been blogging that long, but my very first post was on February 10, 2008. (And yes, I still have that table runner.) During those 16 years I've written 1,276 posts about just about everything, but mostly Mackinac Island life.
By far my most popular post is Homemade Superhero, in which I shared the pattern I created to make my daughter a cape for Superhero-Princess Day at school. Someone saved it on Pinterest and its now been downloaded thousands of times.
I've received the most questions regarding my post about my daughter's Captain Underpants costume. I still get emails with questions asking for a more in depth explanation about how I created it.
Most of my posts don't attract much attention, but it makes me happy to journal about my life, so I'll continue. I've actually started getting my blog printed in yearly editions. Just in case Google ever decides to discontinue Blogger, I'll still have a copy. I hope, when my kids are older, they will enjoy leafing though the pages, and remembering long forgotten snippets of their days on Mackinac.
The Mackinac Island Christmas Bazaar is an annual fundraiser held the first weekend in December. All the money raised at the Bazaar is used to support local organizations such as the Mackinac Island Community Foundation. Since the Community Foundation is a huge supports of the school, the kids and I do our best to support them.
This year the second - sixth graders folded trees out of tattered books destined for the compost pile. After folding, painting, and decorating, the trees were ready to be put up for sale. Their little forest may have only raised $100 for our community, but the lesson in donating your time to support causes you believe in was priceless.
Camilla the Christmas Chicken has returned to my classroom. I'm not really an Elf on the Shelf kind of girl; instead we have a Christmas Chicken. (Currently, all my students celebrate Christmas, but she'll become a Holiday Chicken when needed, and she is going to bring the kids books about Hanukkah and the Winter Solstice.
She's brought treats and a tree so far, and shared an interesting video on chicken communication. Who knew chickens could make over 30 distinct vocalizations!
It makes me smile to see the kids rush over when they get to school to read her newest note. A Christmas Chicken may be weird, but I guarantee none of there other teachers will have done it!
My students were sad that we didn't have a classroom Elf on the Shelf. So I recently introduced them to Camilla, the Christmas Chicken (also known as the stuffed chicken I already had so I didn't need to spend $16.00 on an Elf.) The kids love her!
She has been entertaining us with her antics all month long. She's decorated the classroom with Christmas lights, left books for the classroom library, told us awful dad jokes (chicken themed, of course), pecked in hilarious YouTube videos to watch, and even left us birdseed to munch on. It's been a bright spot in the kids' day to come in and see what she's left for them...
Much to my husband's dismay, I have always enjoyed Stephanie Meyer's Twilight saga. This summer the newest book in the series came out, so of course, I had to get it. It was quite interesting. It's the same story told in Twilight except this version is told from Edward's perspective rather than Bella's.
UPS travels to the Island on the freight boat in the standard brown UPS truck. Once on the dock, the packages are taken out of the truck and loaded onto a dray to be delivered around the Island. In the winter the packages come to the island via airplane.
A couple days ago I was walking down Main Street and a box on the UPS dray caught my eye. Do you see it? Nestled between goodies from Amazon and Target is a box labeled "extreme caution! LIVE SCORPIONS."
Here, take a closer look:
At first I was a little surprised, I mean who on Mackinac would be ordering live scorpions? Other than the Butterfly House, but my son works there and I think he would have told me if they were adding new scorpions to their display. I did a double take and saw the box was actually a box of Michigan Chillers books, by Jonathan Rand, headed to the Island Bookstore. I certainly appreciated Mr. Rand's sense of humor; he had me giggling all the way home.
My daughter loves to draw. She often does it after dinner, when the screens have been shut off and everyone is settling down for the evening. She also loves to read. Recently she has started free-hand drawing some of her favorite book covers. I may be a little bit biased, but I think she's pretty darn good...
I can't remember when I first read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, but over the years I've read it four or five times. If you're not familiar with the story, it revolves around a woman living in a not too distant future. A future in which the US has been replaced by a Christian theocracy which forces the few remaining fertile women to bear children for the ruling class. It's challenging for the main character to embrace this new life because she remembers the life she use to have with her husband and daughter before the regime change. Plus, her new life kinds of sucks...
Thursday I stopped at the library so I could read it again and I found the original checkout record in the front of the book.
The Island's copy was first checked out in May of 1986 (the year the American edition was first published) and had only been checked out 18 times until I picked it up last week. The last time it was checked out was in May of 1995 - 22 years ago. I suppose I should be thankful the library decided to hold onto it.
I thought it was time to reread The Handmaid's Tale since we started watching the Hulu series based on the book:
I must admit, the series is good, and quite well done. Without giving anything away, I feel it stays true to the voice Margaret Atwood gave her main character (in the book, we never learn her real name.) And while Hulu did make changes, I think they work. If you have access to the show, I highly recommend it. Though, given the nature of the subject matter, you'll want to watch it after the kids have gone to bed...
Ten years have passed since the last book in A Series Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket (also known as Daniel Handler) was published. The tale contained within the 13 volume series is, at times, so heart wrenching, one must take a break from reading, lest he or she fall in to a pit of despair - the word "despair," as you well know, means a complete absence of hope.
If you have yet to read these books, plan a quick junket - which here means "a pleasurable excursion" - to your local library and check out all of them. Yes,all 13 books; if the librarian will allow it. (There are actually 14 books if you include the Unauthorized Biography of Lemony Snicket which was published between The Hostile Hospital and The Carnivorous Carnival.
These books chronicle the woeful tale of the three Baudelaire Orphans (Violet, Klaus and Sunny) as the abominable, (which in this context means "completely awful,") Count Olaf attempts to steal their inheritance and dispatch, or kill, them. And while the books are extremely unpleasant and may bring a reader to tears, I highly recommend them all, the whole kit and caboodle.
Avoid the film at all costs. While Jim Carrey does a top-notch job of bringing the treacherous Count Olaf to life on screen, the screen writer encapsulated, or mashed together with complete disregard of chronological order, the events of the first three books. (For shame Robert Gordon, for shame.)
However, Netflix has recently added The Series of Unfortunate Events to their library. The show is the complete antitheses of the film. The use of the word "antitheses" here indicates the Netflix show is as incredibly good as the 2004 film is awful. In other words, the series is very, very well done.
If you haven't watched it yet, take a moment to view the trailer:
But, don't say I didn't warn you. The life of the Baudelaire orphans is, quite literally, a series of unfortunate events. But on the bright side you will learn the meanings of numerous interesting words including ersatz, penultimate, austere and feign. Which may be of some assistance if you happen to be a member of a secret organization.
Oh yes, and after you do read the books, go back and rewatch the series to see just how many Easter Eggs you can find.
I've been rereading this series because it's all kinds of wonderful - especially if you like stories that are on the usual side.
The author, Ransom Riggs, took odd antique photographs and used them to inspire his interesting tale about Jacob,
a 16 year-old boy, who sums up his life like this, "I use to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was."
I just finished the third, and last book, and I must say I am pleased with how the story wrapped up. If you're looking for an interesting read, I highly recommend Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
With all the Harry Potter love we've had around here, I decided to try making a treacle tart. Treacle tart is Harry's favorite desert, so it had to be good, right?
The kids struggled to find the patience to wait until it was cool enough to eat and then raced to the table to tuck in and take their first bite...
Blech! It was awful. Like walk-over-to-the-trash-and-spit-it-out-and-go-get-a-drink-of-something-to-wash-the-taste-away-awful. I was so bummed.
I started thinking about the recipe I'd used. First of all it called for imitation golden syrup, because, of course, where I am going to find golden syrup in Northern Michigan? Meijer says they carry it, but I have yet to find it in stock. The recipe said to make imitation syrup by mixing corn syrup and molasses, but it was was way too molassesy - to the point of being bitter. (Molassey is a word, right?) Plus all the lemon juice made it very very tart. It just didn't taste like a delicious desert; I mean it has to taste good if Harry loves it so much, right? We just had to give it another try, so I broke down and ordered golden syrup from Amazon and using the recipe from Lyle's, we tried again.
I'm glad we gave it another go because it ended up being delicious; like mom-will-you-make-this-again-next-weekend delicious. We all loved it. I really liked the short crust, but my favorite part was listening to my children talk as they slurped giant spoonfuls of whipped cream. They had a very in-depth discussion of why they thought Harry liked treacle tart so much. It was amazing how one desert helped them make a much more personal connection to their favorite books.
See that belly? It's the result of the 16 pounds (about 7.25 kg) of candy my son and daughter brought home Halloween night. OK, her belly isn't really stuffed with chocolate, but the kids did bring home 16 pounds of candy - and we only trick-or-treated through a small part of our neighborhood. Believe it or not, one of my students managed to haul home 30 pounds (about 13.5 kg.) (I asked the kids to collect data on their candy so we could work on mean, median, mode and range. Averages are more meaningful to kids when they use data that is important to them. But I digress...)
While the Captain Underpants books may not be among my favorites, my daughter adores them. She's only in second grade, but she has read them all. When she told me she wanted to be Captain Underpants for Halloween, I honestly had no idea how I was going to pull it off. I mean, we live in Northern Michigan, so going out in undies or even a swim suit wasn't really an option. So, I started searching and managed to find this "skin suit" on line. It wasn't quite right, but after pricing materials at the fabric store, I realized it was my best bet so I broke down and bought it. Be aware that at the store I linked to above, the child size medium suit was large enough to fit me, which ended up being OK since we were enlarging her tummy, but otherwise it would have been way too big.
After removing the face piece, the gloves and the feet from the suit, I tightened up and shortened the legs and the arms. It fit fine and it was stretchy enough that even with the gigantic tummy K could wear long johns underneath to keep warm. (Luckily her rain gear also fit.) All Captain Underpants needed was new undies, a cape, a bald cape, stuffing for that belly, and she was good to go.
We knew we were onto something when strangers started coming up to us the day we trick-or-treated through town asking to take K's picture.
Of course she needed a treat bag, too. Just like I did for her brother, I found a graphic on line, reversed it, and ironed it on. The graphic is below just in case you might want to make a tote for your favorite little superhero. Now I'm hoping that we have "dress as a character from a book" day during March is Reading Month this year, because I'm certain K will want to wear this again.
Right click to download the full-size image.
Captain Underpants TM by Dav Pilkey. All rights reserved.
I knew I wanted to have autograph books for the kids to use at Disney, but I wanted them to be special. Certainly not the mass produced ones they sell at the parks for an arm and a leg. So I stalked Etsy and found this lovely little shop.
Jodi takes old Little Golden Books and rebinds them along with either blank or lined pages. They were prefect autograph books for the trip, and at only $12.00 each they were a bargain. Plus, we had stories to read when the lines in the parks were long, and pages to color when we were waiting for our meals. (Luckily, our longest wait for a ride was about 15 minutes.) We chose Disney books, but she has lots of other options. I bet she'd even be willing to use a book that you sent to her.
If you are planning to collect autographs while visiting Disney I highly recommend these books! Prince Naveen even commented on them. "These are really cool," he said in that delicious accent, "Did you make them? I've never seen anything like this before." It made my day people. Made my day...
I was not compensated for this post in any way. I really do loves these books.
It's no longer a good idea to hide things up high where I think my daughter can't get at them, because she can. And even if she can't, she's going to try.
And, despite the fact that we've read Officer Buckle and Glorianumerous times, she completely ignored all of Officer Buckle's safety tips and stacked up those chairs to get at an item I had stashed on top of the china cabinet. (Thank goodness she didn't use a swivel chair! If that makes no sense to you, go get O.B. & G. from the library.) Guess I need a new - more out of sight - hiding place. Any suggestions?
Now that St. Patrick's Day is behind us, it's time to start thinking about Easter. Are you familiar with this book? It was one of my favorite books as a child. So you can imagine how incredibly happy I was when I found a prefect copy at my favorite used book store recently for $3.00. I loved it as a little girl because the story made perfect sense to me. As a four year-old I knew there had to be more than one Easter Bunny. I mean c'mon, one bunny can't do all that in one night (even Santa has helpers,) and somehow I knew the best Easter Bunny just had to be a girl, it just had to be.
Have I peaked your curiosity? I hope so because this book is absolutely darling. If you have little ones you really should pick up a copy. You won't regret it.
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