Lauren+Churley

=** Family-What is a Family? **=

Tompkins, Crystal. (2009). **Oh the Things Mommies can do!: What could be better than Having Two**?.Oh the Things Mommies can do. 30 pages. Amazon.com __ Oh the Things Mommies can do!: What could be better than Having Two? __ is a colorful picture book that discusses the family life. In this picture book, the life of a child who has two mommies is the focus. The book is written with rhyming that easily gives a flow to the book, while maintaining the children’s attention. Tompkins highlights everyday tasks that families do, and the illustrations show that it is two mommies. This book supplies ample opportunity to integrate a curriculum. Because we are reading, this would relate to Language and Literacy Standards. Because this is a preschool environment, students should be able to recognize print concepts, knowing that each written word has a meaning, as well as have book handling skills. The students should be able to label the cover, spine, and pages of the book. Students should also be able to understand what the title author and/or illustrator is. This also highlights the Social Studies standard. Particularly, it works the best with the Family strand. Many of the indicators under this strand are easily discussed within the classroom such as identifying family members, understands family roles and responsibilities. Finally, this book works well with the Fine Arts standard. Students should be able to draw a portrait or a family picture and have the opportunity to label it. This would also allow for creativity where they would be able to tell a story about what they drew.
 * I. Fiction **

Combs, Bobbie. (2001). **ABC A Family Alphabet Book.** Two Lives Pub. 32 pages. Mesa Public Library. This ABC book highlights an alternative family unit at its finest. Each page is a different letter with a description of how it applies to the families seen within the book. The illustrations are bright, colorful, and capture the moment within the story. __ABC A Family Alphabet Book__ is a great way to not only teach the alphabet, but the similarities between all families. The Standard: Approaches to Learning can easily be integrated with the Social Studies and Language and Literacy standards using this book. Creativity can be applied to every book, but in this particular book, you can give each student a letter, and have them use their imagination to create a page in a class book using __ABC A Family Alphabet Book.__ As always, you can hit on the Language and Literacy standard in multiple areas. Specifically, print concepts, book handling skills, and Alphabet Knowledge. At this point in their schooling careers, preschoolers should be able to recognize up to 10 letters. This is also a good opportunity to incorporate math into the lesson. While this book focuses on alternative family units, many of the pages can be relatable to every family. Graph the students who wake up first in their family, who wakes up last, etc.

Brown, Laurene Krasny, Brown, Marc. (1988). **Dinosaurs Divorce.** Little Brown Books. 32 pages. Scottsdale Civics Center. __ Dinosaurs Divorce __ is a book that helps children understand what divorce is, and why it is happening particularly to their family. It highlights the fact that it is not the child’s fault that their parents are getting divorced. It also discusses the emotions a child might feel and their reactions to said emotions. The book is filled with factual information that is addressed in a way that young children would be able to understand it. __ Dinosaurs Divorce __ is a great book to have within the classroom. It is always important to celebrate the differences in families, but it is important to stay conscious to the emotions and feelings of your students. For some students this could be their current situation, and therefore I do not feel that this would be a good book to integrate into multiple activities. While it is important to address these areas of a family unit, this is a sensitive topic to address to a classroom as a whole group. As always, you can tie this book into language and literacy by labeling parts of a book, as well as print concepts.

Park, Barbara. (2013). **Ma! There’s Nothing to do Here!**. Random House Books. 32 pages. Scottsdale Civics Center. Park created a book that children of all ages will enjoy, but it is geared more toward children who are in the 2-5 age range. It highlights things that children get to do on a regular basis, and how babies are unable to do those things while they are still in the womb. This is a great book to address children who are about to become an older brother/sister. This book would be a great way to integrate mathematics into the theme of Family. Not only could the students complete a class graph showing how many students have siblings, but it would also be a good way to introduce patterns. Students could tell whether they have brothers or sisters, and how many siblings they have, and you could create an AB pattern depending on the family. For example, I have four siblings, 3 brothers and 1 sister; together there are five of us. The pattern for our family would be ABABA. This would also be a great way to explore addition. __Ma! There’s Nothing to do Here!__ would also be a great book to encourage creativity. Students could draw, or complete any art method to create a page for a class book of something a baby still in the womb could not do, that they enjoy doing as a young child.

Reagan, Jean. (2014). **How to Babysit a Grandma**. Knopf Books for young readers. 32 pages. Scottsdale Civics Center __ How to Babysit a Grandma __ is a wonderful book that discusses the various things that can be done when you visit a grandparent. It is worded in a way that makes the child feel as though they have responsibility to take care of their grandmother, but at the same time is enjoyable. This book is a valuable source for looking at a family unit in a larger sense. For some students they may not see their grandparents frequently, __How to Babysit a Grandma__ allows students the opportunity to see that a family does not always consist of mom(s), dad(s), and siblings, but of grandparents as well. The activities completed in __How to Babysit a Grandma__ are easily translated to the classroom. Mathematics can be incorporated by baking cookies of your own, or even making playdough in a way that is similar to the cookies made in the book. Students would have to count the ingredients needed. They would be able to explore the materials, as seen in the Science portion of the standards. As always, literacy and social studies are relevant.

Best, Cari. (2007). **What’s so Bad about being an Only Child?**. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 32 pages. Mesa Public Library. This book is a look at a family with only one child. It talks about a child who is learning to cope with being the only child. It shows a mother and father, as well as both sets of grandparents, an aunt and an uncle. Being the center of attention is not enjoyable to the main character, and because her parents don’t want another child, she begins to take in animals that need a home. __What’s so Bad about being an Only Child?__ is a great way to show children that not only do people count as family, but if you have a family pet they can also be considered family. This would be a great book to introduce classification. Students would be able to view pictures of the animals Rosemary brought home, and decide if they are a farm animal, a forest animal, etc. This would then be turned into a graph. You could also graph how many students have pets that are similar to the pets that she brought home. Emotions could be another good area to integrate with __What’s so Bad about being an Only Child?__ Children could be asked to identify the emotions Rosemary felt when she was an only child, and then at the end of the book when she has family pets to make her feel like she has siblings.

Pulver, Robin. (2013). **Saturday is Dadurday**. Walker Childrens. 32 pages. Mesa Public Library. This book talks about a young girl and her father finding a way to celebrate their day together. When their special day gets ruined by a new work schedule, the main character, a girl named Mimi figures out a way to make the day special with a new routine. This book celebrates the love between a daughter and her father figure. __ Saturday is Dadurday __ is a great book to talk about spatial reasoning. During the book Mimi goes up and down, in and out, etc. it is a good way to introduce what spatial reasoning is and how it is used in everyday life. This activity would also apply to physical development. Children would have to actually do the movements included in spatial reasoning such as come into the circle, step out of the circle, stand UP sit DOWN etc. It could also be applied to mathematics by using playdough to make “silly shaped pancakes” and have the students label the shape they are given. The fine motor skills of making the playdough as well as the exploration and science would also be beneficial to this read aloud.

Parr, Todd. 2010. **The Family Book.** Little Brown Books. 32 pages. Scottsdale Civics Center. This nonfiction book is ideal as a beginner book. This book discusses a wide variety of families, and the various ways a family could look like; for example, the book says “Some families are big. Some families are small.” The illustrations for __The Family Book__ also show a variety of families in a way that would teach children that family isn’t necessarily one specific definition. I particularly enjoyed this book because it is unique. It is a nonfiction book, with illustrations rather than photographs. I feel that the pictures made the book more inviting. As many of these books do, this book is a great book to begin print concepts as well has book handling skills. It is also a great book to encourage students to read. Under comprehension in the Early Learning Standards, reading awareness can be picking a book up and pretending to read it. Because this book has very basic sentences, and pictures that accurately depict what the sentence is, students would be able to accurately tell a story of what is happening within the pages of __The Family Book.__ This book would also be a great way to introduce graphs. Students could raise their hand if they have brothers and sisters, or raise their hand if they do not have siblings. This could establish a conversation on what a big family is, or what a small family is, and graphing it would help students to see where they fit within the classroom.
 * II. Nonfiction **

Schaefer, Lola M. (2008). **Uncles.** Capstone Press. 24 pages. Scottsdale Civic Center Library. Schaefer is the author of multiple books similar to this one that identify the various parts of a family unit. In this particular book, it discusses what an uncle is, and some of the roles an uncle plays. These books are ideal for young children, they are nonfiction and very informative. They are also short, so they easily hold the attention of the children. These books are perfect for an extended theme, each book has areas that would work with mathematics, graphing, again would be an easily established activity for this mini-series. The art of drawing a picture with all facial features of each family member being addressed would be easily integrated. Language and Literacy would be touched on by supplying children with other books with similar characters, encourage students to pretend read, and to correctly identify title, author, cover, spine and back.

Parr, Todd. (2011). **The Grandpa Book**. Little Brown Books. 24 pages. Scottsdale Civic Center Library. Similar to __The Family Book__ by Todd Parr, __The Grandpa Book__ is a fantastic nonfiction book that addresses who a grandpa is, and what grandfathers do. The book talks about where some grandpa’s live and what some grandpa’s like to do for fun. For example, in the book it says that some grandpa’s like to golf, as well as some grandpa’s living in a home with his friends. It is easy to relate to at least one page of the book and children will enjoy the pictures seen on every page. This book would be a great way to apply creativity and imagination. Have a day where each child dresses as an elderly person, and have a show and tell of what they would do if they were a grandpa/grandma. Creating a class book using their picture, and their sentences in a similar structure to Parr’s books would help relate back to the book. This activity would also allow some room for physical development/fine motor development. Students could enjoy going for a walk or golfing when they are grandparents etc. Having them draw a picture using a grandparent as a model for their picture will allow you to see if they are able to label body parts, and how their imagination is working.