Something We Read: Rooster’s Off to See the World

Picture Book Month

November is Picture Book Month, a time to celebrate picture books for their importance in developing literacy, and the joy they bring us as readers. Bitsy and I enjoy picture books together every day. In celebration of Picture Book Month, I plan to do some extra posts about the children’s books we read. This week we read a book that is an excellent example of the great work that can be done by authors and illustrators in this format: Rooster’s Off to See the World, by Eric Carle.

Reading Together

This story is one adults can enjoy as much as children. Bitsy loves the different voices I do for all of the animal characters. The colorful illustrations are so appealing to little ones, and I love Eric Carle’s distinctive collage style.

The story is so clever. A rooster awakes one morning and forms the notion he would like to travel. “So, right then and there, he set out to see the world.” As he walks along on his journey, the rooster meets other animals who accept his invitation to travel the world. Cats, frogs, turtles, and even fish swimming in a brook form the travel party.

Cocksure as one would expect a rooster to be, he made no plans or preparations for his bold endeavor at world travel. The animals soon feel the deprivations of an ill-prepared trip, and one by one each group of animals abandons the trip and returns home. The rooster ends up alone again, finds himself hungry and homesick, and returns to the comforts of home as well. In the end, he falls asleep and has “a wonderful happy dream–all about a trip around the world!” This is a good place to ask your little one what you think the rooster will do next: will he be satisfied with dreaming about seeing the world, or will he make real travel plans and try again?

While the book is good for teaching counting, addition, and subtraction, it does so in a very subtle way–the main focus is the story. The illustrations include a visual in the top corners showing the growing, then declining number of animals on the trip as each group of animals joins or leaves the party.

One rooster is joined by two cats, then three frogs, four turtles, and five fish. The fish, then the turtles, followed by the frogs, and finally the cats take their leave of the rooster, until there is just one animal present again. The way this is done through illustrations shows just how important picture books are to early learning.

As you can see in several  other posts here, Bitsy and I love Eric Carle books. This is one of my favorites, though. I like the distinct personalities of the different animal characters, and the humorous tale. The rooster, with all of his colorful feathers, must have been a particularly fun animal for Carle to illustrate, and stands out to me as one of the most beautiful of his illustrations. I highly recommend this one for your child’s collection.

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Some Updates

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October is off to a nice start.

We’ve been using the Very Hungry Caterpillar shopping cart cover I bought after the shopping trip a couple weeks ago that taught me why we needed one. As you can see, Bitsy seems to be really happy in it. The cart is more comfortable for her now, and there are loops to attach some of her favorite toys. It’s great to have some things for her to play with that she can’t throw out of the cart. Since she has her butterfly and fox, she won’t need to try to play with the groceries! And I feel more confident that she is secure in the cart.

The toys don’t come with the cart cover. These were some fun developmental toys gifted to me from my baby registry. They’re soft and cuddly, and are good for sensory development. Different parts make crinkly sounds when touched, and they have different textures and colors. The butterfly has a mirror, and Bitsy is sooo into mirrors right now.

Baby Rosary

We go to a mothers and babies playgroup each week. The children play together while the mothers chat. The head of family outreach does a wonderful job with this ministry. She creates a handout each week with the upcoming Sunday’s gospel, her own reflection and discussion questions. We read these together and pray together while the children play. This week we did this wonderful baby rosary craft. It was very easy, and gave us moms something creative to do with our hands while we talked. We used string, a plastic crucifix, and beads. Tape on the end of the string made it easier to run the string through the beads. The babies will enjoy feeling the different textures of the beads, and as they grow can say very simple prayers, like “I love you, Jesus,” “I love you, Mary,” for each bead. Now Bitsy gets to have her own rosary like Mama.

Fall is Coming Slowly

Even though October is here, it’s still pretty hot. The mornings and evenings are a little cooler now, so family walks with Bitsy are much more pleasant now. Having her walk in shoes is going to be a process. They still feel awkward to her, and she prefers to be barefoot. She loves being outside and exploring. She chases her shadow, and stops to look at every little thing. She’s been reading The Poky Little Puppy a lot lately, so I tell her she’s like the Poky Little Puppy, stopping to learn about whatever she sees, hears, and smells. I tell her this is a good way to be: curious, and taking time to experience the little things.

I’m getting excited about Halloween. I don’t like to put up decorations too early. I’ll wait another week or two before I put up a Halloween wreath. I’ll make it in the next few days. Last year, Bitsy was adorable in her Wonder Woman costume. I’m really looking forward to taking her trick-or-treating this year, now that’s she’s so social.

Things are pretty busy with school right now, but I’ll get a little break between big assignments in a couple weeks. I’m taking Collection Development this semester. I’m working on a weeding assignment in which I choose items from a particular section of the library to weed. Weeding is one of the things I miss the most about working in the library, so this is like a dream assignment for me.

I hope you’ll all have a happy October. Even though I’m so busy, I will be slowing down and taking time to enjoy this fun season, and I hope to have plenty to share with you here.

 

 

Bitsy’s Very Hungry Caterpillar First Birthday Party,Part II (Theme, Food, and CAKE!)

Planning Bitsy’s first birthday was exciting and enjoyable. Selecting a theme is the best place to start, and so fun for me because I love themed events! Once I selected the theme I came up with so many ideas, some from others and some of my own. One of the hardest parts of planning, especially for me, is narrowing down big visions and choosing which ideas to leave out to make room for what will work best. Here’s what worked for us:

Theme

As I started thinking about Bitsy’s then-approaching first birthday party a couple months before the date, I considered a couple other themes, like Alice in Wonderland (“One”derland) and some cute trendy ones like unicorns and flamingos. Once I thought of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, my mind was made up! I knew it would be the perfect theme for Bitsy.  I stream for her on Netflix The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Other Stories, a half-hour program from 1993 featuring animated versions of classic Eric Carle books. She really focuses and interacts with it. The music and animation are beautiful. It’s calm, quiet, and soothing, unlike a lot of new cartoons. While we don’t want to encourage too much screen time for babies and toddlers, this is a short and educational program I highly recommend and my own little one really loves. If you don’t have Netflix, the dvd is available at Amazon. I read to her every day, and Eric Carle’s books are some of our favorites. We have the board book editions of several of them, including The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Since so many kids enjoy this story (read about its popularity and a delightful interview with the author here), Bitsy’s guests could all appreciate the theme. I think it fits so well with a first birthday, too, because it celebrates someone very small growing up.

Food

One of the most fun things about this theme is the food. The menu creates itself!  Party guests eat the foods the eponymous caterpillar eats. Label the foods with the lines from the story, and guests essentially read the story as they help their plates. Of course, the caterpillar eats lots of foods, many of them sweets. You have to make decisions about how to serve the foods from the book without serving way too much and having more sweet than sustenance. The party started at 10 am, so heavy hors d’oeuvres were appropriate (and so were the super-popular mimosas for the adults!). I had deviled eggs plated on Romaine lettuce to represent the little egg on a leaf at the beginning of the story. For cherry pie, I made a no-bake cherry cheese cake and cut it into petits fours. Instead of full slices of chocolate cake, I served mini-brownies. You could also make the birthday cake chocolate or change the language on the label to “one slice of birthday cake” instead of chocolate cake. Even though I love baking from scratch, I used boxed mixes and packaged snacks in this instance to free up my time for decorating and setting up party activities. The slices of Swiss cheese and salami were plated together with butterfly-shaped crackers. The best thing about this menu is it includes a lot of fruit!

The Cake 

So, I love baking cakes and don’t mind trying out elaborate recipes, but I don’t have the skills or tools for the kind of cake decorating I wanted. There are some really cute, easy-to-execute ideas for this theme which I considered and may work well for you. For instance, a caterpillar can be made from the smash cake and cupcakes, with the smash cake as the caterpillar’s head in red icing and green cupcakes for the guests make up the caterpillar’s body. Some great examples can be found here.

I allowed myself to splurge a little on the cake after browsing some of the beautiful creations made on the theme. I chose the same local bakery that made my delicious wedding cake. You only have your first birthday once and–I’m not ashamed to say–I teared up a little bit at first sight of this beautiful cake when I picked it up from the bakery. I saved in other areas of the party and don’t regret this splurge at all.

One mistake I made: turning on the light above the dessert table too soon, which caused the caterpillar’s head and one of the sun rays to wilt a little bit, as you can see in the picture. But, hey, the cake was still beautiful and Bitsy had a great time digging into her smash cake.

Smash cakes are a pretty new tradition, which you may not feel the need to include in your baby’s first birthday party. I’m glad I had one for Bitsy, though. Bitsy enjoyed digging into her cake, it provided a few minutes of entertainment for the guests, and made a great video to share with family who couldn’t attend the party. Bitsy’s approach to her smash cake was a little confused and hesitant at first, but she finally leaned in and took a bite. She bit straight off the cake a few times before getting her spoon and hands in there. It was so cute and made such a happy memory!

This post contains a few links to items I used and/or recommend from Amazon. As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases. In the next post, I’ll talk a little about decorations and wrap up the topic of the first birthday party.