Saffrontree's April flowers Bring a Bloomwatch bouquet for Children's Booklovers!
Tulip blossoms, green grass, daffodil blooms.... When everything grows and grows in Spring, so do the flowers on Saffron Tree!
Spring is a perfect time to plant bright new beginnings in celebration of the season. We, at Saffron Tree, plan to bring to you a newsletter of events called "Bloomwatch" centering around children's books and diversity each month on the first Sunday. Together, let's grow our little bookworms and sprout their tastebuds by reading an eclectic variety of books!
As always any thoughts/suggestions for improvement are always welcome. Here's the first newsletter giving you a list of special days and events for the month of April.
Bloomwatch: Issue # 1
1) Author Highlight/Birthday: Danish poet and children's book author, Hans Christian Andersen (also refered to as H.C. Andersen) was born on April 2nd 1805. He is most well-known for his fairy tales. "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling" are some of the most popular stories written by him that have been translated into many different languages, and have sold millions of copies all over the world. International Children's Book Day is celebrated on Andersen's Birthday. According to the International Board on Books for Young People, the day is celebrated "To inspire a love of reading and to call attention to children's books." Let's come together this April to share the stories of H.C. Andersen with our children.
2) Earth Day: Every year many countries around the world celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd to raise awareness about the planet and earth's environment. This is a great time to share with your children do-you-own special arts/crafts using recycled materials, play games and read books on reducing, reusing and recycling. Take the time and the opportunity to talk about our planet, its fragile ecosystems and the natural environment. Plant a tree or sprout a seed! There are also many Earth Day topical books that you can bring to your children's attention - here's one book that was reviewed on Saffron Tree for last year's Earth Day - http://www.saffrontree.org/2007/04/this-book-is-not-trash_21.html. Let's join hands and save our planet for our children's future.
3) National Poetry Month: World Poetry Day was celebrated on the 21st of March this year all over the world. It's National Poetry Month in the U.S every April. Spring Blossoms can definitely inspire reading and writing of poetry. To honor the season and the poetic mood it offers, let's look for resources online and play rhyme-time games with our children to encourage the love of poetry starting at a very early age... A for Acrostics, C for Couplets, H for Haiku, L for Limericks are a few words you can introduce to your children's growing vocabulary. Let's grow their linguistic skills and get them to be budding poets early on. We all have read nursery rhymes of some sort or the other to our children during their early childhood stages. And we know little ones love rhyme/meter. Let's keep their interest in rhymes/poems alive. You may want to look for teacher guides offered by publishing companies and other online language arts resources - Here's one you may want to look into and there are tons like these - http://teacher.scholastic.com/lessonrepro/k_2theme/poetry.htm
4) Holiday Highlight: Passover The Jewish Holiday of Passover, one of the three pilgrim festivals, is celebrated every Spring. Let's open our children's minds to pilgrim and immigrant stories from other cultures that celebrate freedom.
Thanks, and see you on our next edition of Bloomwatch!
1 comment:
Lovely initiative Saffrontree. Lots of good info. Thanks!
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