One Monday Morning - Picture Book & KID KANDY

One Monday Morning
Written & Illustrated by Uri Shulevitz
(Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing Company, 1967)

It's all about days of the week.

On one rainy Monday, the king, queen, and prince went to visit a certain young boy. But he wasn't home.

So they came back the next day. And the next. And the next. For an entire week. Until the boy was home. By then the king's group was quite large.

The boy and the king had a grand visit.

Or did they?

The last illustration makes the reader stop to think about whether the king really visited. Or was the boy making up a story?

You will have to read to find out. (If you can't find this old book, comment below and I will tell you about the illustration and you can make up your own mind.)


KID KANDY:

Days of the Week Hopscotch

One of the goals of preschool and kindergarten is that the students learn the days of the week, preferably in order. There are many wonderful songs that help children acquire this knowledge. But what about a game?

Use chalk to draw a hopscotch board on the sidewalk. It must have 7 squares. A fun hopscotch that keeps the days in the correct order would be a circle hopscotch, where the circle continues on and on and on - just like a real week!

Start at the first square (or anywhere in the circle, which should have spaces in multiples of 7, so the week days keep going in order without leaving any out) and write Sunday. Add the days of the week in order, one in each space.

Play Days of the Week Hopscotch by hopping the days of the week, calling out the days as they are landed on. Or sing the days of the week as your child hops on the squares. Play forever and ever (as my granddaughter loves to say). Eventually, the days of the week will be down pat in your child's memory.


Angie Quantrell loves childhood games. She remembers hopscotch, Chinese jump rope, chasing boys, jump rope, building with rocks, and monkey bars blisters.

More About Childhood and Nature

(Some children at heart claim the fort work of regular beach going children.)

Who can't remember spending hours, days even, outside running wild during summer vacation and on weekends, maybe even during after school hours? Who else besides me misses the unstructured, unscheduled, outdoorsy, free time of our childhood? I know I do, and I haven't been a child for many, many years (except in my mind).

Childhood and Nature, Design Principles for Educators by David Sobel hits all of those nails right on the proverbial head. For the health - mental, emotional, physical, spiritual - of each child, nature is the best medicine. Nature plus free time is even better.

See if you can think of a personal example for each of the following themes found in childhood play:

1. Adventure. I remember I was the horse AND rider on numerous robberies and explorations with my best friend. (She was also her own horse and rider.) We sometimes recruited our live horses to adopt a role and play along. I don't think they liked it.

2. Fantasy and Imagination. See number one. Since horses were of number one importance, they played dominant roles in our imaginary worlds. Depended on what color hat we each wore, but the color told the world who was the bad guy and who was the good guy.

3. Animal Allies. Either we were on a horse, pretending to ride a horse, or were a horse. How else could we know what a horse was unless we became a horse?

4. Maps and Paths. Maps? We created our own. It really helped when we found a REAL live Indian arrowhead. Our archeological discovery undergirded many subsequent adventures.

5. Special Places. Sometimes, horses were not involved. One particular fort was perfect. We carefully scraped it out from the center of an entire shrub system of crucifix thorns. Just try and break in, enemies. You will bleed!

6. Small Worlds. Barbies (accompanied by camper, horse, and tent) were custom made for small worlds. Or rocks became walls, twigs furniture, and miscellaneous bits and bobs transformed into miniature homes, complete with rules, regulations, and family members.

7. Hunting and Gathering. Girls need to eat, right? Or at least gather. We had to go out there and round 'em up. Mostly, I caught tadpoles. Didn't eat them. Did find out that they dry up in the hot desert sun and look like boogers stuck to the glass sides.

Now, who can't think of at least one nostalgic memory linked to any of the above principles?

Enjoy the little trip down nature's memory lane.