I love the Wynken, Blynken, and Nod poem - so beautiful and soothing for bedtime. Bedtime routines haven't been very peaceful and soothing around here lately though... when my husband is on the night shift, I need to put both girls to bed by myself. As I'm trying to read a few books with my 5 year old, my 17 month old now likes to try to sit on the book we're reading, grab it and turn the pages, fight with her sister over my lap, etc. So then I try to get her interested in some toys to distract her... but then the 5 year old wants to play with the toys too! We've been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss books lately as 5 year old is about to become a 6 year old and we're having a Seuss birthday party this coming weekend.
This video is introduced by Walt Disney, talking about the author of 'Wynken, Blynken, and Nod', Eugene Field.
Remember "Silly Symphonies"? So fun! This next video is Disney's "Silly Symphonies" version of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.
I would like to start occasionally posting about retro TV shows and toys that I enjoyed as a child or that I am sharing with my kids now. These posts will be just a quick diversion from all my posts about my first love- vintage children's books! :)
So the first Retro TV and Toys for the Very Young post will be about the Super Friends since my almost-6-year-old has been watching these episodes lately, thanks to our public library. My husband was and is a big fan of comic books and superheroes, etc. He bought the Batman Lego game for X-box for Keira and I think that is how she has started to be interested in superheroes. Then we bought
an early-reader type of book of a collection of Super Friends stories and she really liked that. So I then decided to see if I could find the Super Friends dvd at our library - fun! I did not watch this show myself as a child - I guess it was not aired on the limited channels we had growing up in Northern Ontario in the 70's and 80's. We had 4 channels back then - one of them pretty much always had a hockey game on , one was TV Ontario which was a limited amount of children's shows and a lot of documentaries, another channel was French, and the last channel was a 'normal' one but pretty much all adult shows, the news, etc.
Super Friends ran from 1973-1986 on Saturday mornings - remember when Saturday morning cartoons actually existed? Not so much nowadays - I guess because there are sooo many kids shows on basically all the time now. Super Friends featured characters such as Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, Green Lantern, the Wonder Twins, and more. ("Wonder Twin powers, ACTIVATE!!") The Wonder Twins make me laugh - especially every time that Jayna transforms into an eagle and Zan transforms into water which Gleek the space monkey carries in a bucket while riding on Jayna-as-an-eagle's back... That sounds like the weirdest sentence I have ever written!
We also bought these Super Friends Little People for our 1-year-old daughter Tegan a while ago - way too cute!!
Here's a clip! Have a great Thanksgiving weekend, fellow Canadians!!
This book by Virginia Lee Burton was first published in 1939. I found this awesome deal on sale at our local Great Canadian Superstore a few months ago for $5- it includes the book- Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, an audio cd, stickers, postcards, and a little activity book. Score!! Oh just look at this page of Mike and Mary Anne being VERY SAD and Mary Anne weeping big steam shovel tears! Aren't you just indignant at the NO STEAM SHOVELS WANTED sign?? :)
These are some pics from Eric Carle's 'Animals Animals'. Such a cool book full of poems and artwork. Look at the first poem - butterflies in the snow - yes that would be a wonderful sight! We also have Lewis Carroll's 'How Doth the Little Crocodile', and I love this Giraffe poem - 'Because. Because, because, that's why!' The last picture here is of some pages from The Very Hungry Caterpillar that I mod-podged onto a canvas to put on the walls of my daughter's room. I love this cheery sun and peaceful moon.
Enjoy this video of Eric Carle discussing his most famous book and his illustration style.
It is a dream of mine to go to this place - The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. It opened 10 years ago. The Museum has a collection of more than 10,000 picture book illustrations, 3 art galleries, an art studio, a theatre, educational programs, etc. It hosts storytimes, art classes, classes for educators, lectures, musicals, and rotating exhibits about different illustrators and book characters - right now there are some about Ezra Jack Keats and Maisy Mouse. HOW COOL IS THIS PLACE???!! If I lived in Massachusetts I would totally go there all the time with my kids and if I was still teaching you know I would totally be rocking the class field trips there every year! Linking to Cozy Book Hop at Reading List and Kid Lit Blog Hop #2
It's been a long time in between posts! My poor baby has a yucky cold - she is waking up all night screaming because she can't breathe properly. Anyway here is the fabulous Eric Carle!!! He has illustrated more than 70 books. His most famous, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, was first published in 1969. Here's a couple pics of some of his books that we have - will include some more scans in the next post. I was excited to find this little board book collection - I am a sucker for mini board books! Which Eric Carle book is your favourite? So many to choose from! I am also posting here some pictures of my daughter Tegan's first birthday party in May. My local public library was kind enough to let me borrow their Very Hungry Caterpillar big food shapes that they use for storytelling - score!! They were such a cool way to decorate to go with the theme! As you can see I just stuck them on the walls with duct tape. I cut out small food shapes to stick on the loot bags. And Pinterest came in handy for making Tegan's caterpillar with pictures of each month of her life and for making the caterpillar cake/cupcake combo. Oh and did you notice her outfit? Found it on Etsy!! In case you can't see it very well it's a '1' with a caterpillar on it. More about Eric Carle in the next post...
Beautiful words from A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young (yep, some inspiration for my blog title there) and When We Were Six. My daughter will be turning 6 soon...can't believe it. A sweet Golden Shape book of Winnie the Pooh here too. I'm also including a video of Robin the Frog from the Muppet Show singing 'Halfway Down the Stairs', from When We Were Very Young.
Rambling story for you -So this summer my 5-year-old had the idea that she wanted to have a Book Club/Reading Club with her friends. So funny because I had actually had the same idea a couple weeks before, but had not mentioned it to her. So we had 4 of her friends over - we read all of the Mo Willems books out loud, did some Pigeon activity pages, made Pigeon hats, had a special snack, and just played for a while. Very fun, we'll try to do it a few times through the year with different authors or themes I think. Anyway part of the Book Club playdate was also that we asked her friends to bring some books that they were done with, and my daughter Keira and I would gather them all together and take them somewhere to donate. I did some research and found a wonderful charity set up by 2 young teenagers - they decided to start asking for donations of children's books to fly up to a First Nations reserve where they just don't have very many resources. Amazing that they are doing this! Anyhoo, all this to say that we drove to the mall where there is a special drop-off spot to donate these books - but then we found a used bookstore in the same mall- sooo we ended up quickly re-filling our bookshelf space with more books to replace the ones that we gave away! LOL. I was excited to see a big pile of Little Golden Books at this store and these were a few of the ones we bought. Garth Williams' drawings are so sweet - he illustrated about 97 books, and about a dozen were Golden Books. Here we have Animals' ABC and Home for a Bunny.
