OMG, Olivia Marie! The Trouble with Unicorns is on sale

OMG, Olivia Marie! The Trouble with Unicorns will be 99 cents Dec 1-7, 2018.  It's the perfect time to pick up this cute little ebook for all the Unicorn-lovers in your life. Load it up on your tablet and phone so you always have some children's books on Kindle.

I've enjoyed working on this series so much and am planning the next few OMG adventures already. 

I've plowed through the learning curve on my Wacom Pro tablet and Krita. Who says you stop doing new things when you retire? NOT ME. Learning is forever.

4 Easy Ways to Boost Your Baby's Brain Power

Parents (and grandparents) can do so much to boost a baby's brain power in many simple ways. Here are some of my favorites.

1.  Work toward a passion for books. Read colorful picture books. Read them in different places. Make animal sounds. Read songs that you sing.  You can build a baby's RECEPTIVE language, for understanding, long before you can build a baby's EXPRESSIVE, or ability to speak. Believe me, they are listening! This can make a huge difference in a child's language development.

2.  Move things around. This is an important way to build baby's spatial reasoning.  Move the baby bed, the changing table, the high chair to a different side of the table. Move the furniture in the den. Do this every two or three months. When baby looks around and thinks', "Oh! Everything is different from here!" it develops their attention and focus.

3.  Do lots of supervised sensory, messy projects. This is not just about art, although art is crucial for creativity and problem-solving skills and emotional health. Children need to learn about the scientific properties of things like water, sand, mud, different types of paint and markers; they will love exploring textures. Some parents (and teachers) think this one is more trouble to clean up than it's worth, but the baby that you love so much needs these types of experiences.

4. Finger-Plays and songs are something I could go on for days about, and write extensive lists of examples. Large and small-motor movements, along with: rhythm, sounds, rhyme, and patterns in language; how many things can we learn all at once? Add to this rich layering the thought that you are singing them together, and making eye contact, and laughing? Priceless!  This idea can also connect well with number one on my list, if you begin a collection of picture books that are also finger-plays and songs, like:

Miss Mary Mack -  The hand-clapping and rhythms of this book are as much fun as the adventure!

The Eensy Weensy Spider - The finger play is just the beginning of the adventures.

Mary Wore Her Red Dress  -  The music is in the back of the book, so play it at the piano or keyboard. This birthday party adventure is a timeless classic and should be in your collection.

The Hokey Pokey  - Get up and "turn yourself around!" Toddlers love to put their right elbow in and take their right elbow out, and their head, and their whole self, too. 

Wheels on the Bus  -  It's hard to just pick one version of this song/book. 

The Fox Went out on a Chilly Night  -  If I had a dollar for every time I've sung this amazing song with my children, other people's children, music students, and grandchildren, I would be planning my next breathtaking vacation. I love this book.

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb  -  The monkeys in this book are hilarious. Get a drum, or turn a bucket upside-down and play along!

Baby's brain cell connections are more pliable than you might think, so make time in your life to enhance your baby's brain. Do it often and creatively.  Enjoy it!   It will positively affect their future!

Happy November!   This is the first year I'm seriously working on NaNoWriMo. 

 Since I'm working on marketing the OMG, Olivia Marie! ebooks, and starting work on my next children's ebook, I'm not going to track word counts.  I'm going to focus on working every day in November by Don't Break the Chain.  I have my calendar printed out and red highlighter ready to go.  I'm going to put a red x on each day in November that I work at least an hour a day, with Thursdays more like 4-6 hours.  That should cover some ground!

Also, I'd love to have you subscribe to my youtube channel now that I'm focusing on more videos for children.   

Dinah's youtube channel.

Check out the newest video there, where Barron helps me with reading a selection from OMG, Olivia Marie!

5 Mischievous Fictional Girls

When I was a little girl, I wasn't very mischievous - my mom wouldn't have dealt with that well, haha.  I did love to read about them.  While being a public school teacher with gifted and talented students, I was always on the lookout for strong, feisty, mischievous fictional girls. And, you know what? There aren't enough of them.  Little girls can learn a lot from reading about different personalities in different situations from their own, so, search for them, and read them. (and share them with me!)

Here are some of my favorite and I have to start with Junie B Jones because I actually used to read aloud over the elementary school intercom Junie B Jones books, with different voices and accents! Usually the second grade classes would study the book while I was going through one, and other classes could just turn it off, or listen, and laugh. 

5 Mischievous Fictional Girls

1.  Junie B Jones and Some Sneaky Peek Spying Girls and boys alike get a kick out of this children's literature icon.   I have a lot of favorites and there are 28 books in this series. This one cracks me up. Maybe it's because Junie is SO interested in her teacher's life, you know? I've had students a bit like that, too!  Runner up has to be:

Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! (P.S. So Does May)  or maybe Cheater Pants!

2.  Fancy Nancy and the Wedding of the Century There are a ton of books in this series, too, and no wonder. Fancy Nancy is quite a creative little character!  If you haven't read this one with your little girls, especially if you have a wedding coming up in the family, you should put this one your list! 

3. OMG, Olivia Marie!  "OMG, Olivia Marie!" Lots of people in Olivia Marie's family say this to her. Sometimes she even says it to herself. She wonders why people say her initials so often!  Jump in to this story and also enjoy a song and a quiz. Your child's imagination will want to add to the adventure! (Olivia is a real girl and her mom calls her a firecracker)

4.  Ramona the Pest Ramona Quimby has quite a time starting kindergarten. I never tire of this book - what a classic character. There's so much for children to enjoy and learn here, without being preachy. 

5.  Matilda    Matilda is a higher-level vocabulary book than many people expect but it has such a captivating prankster as a main character, children tend to READ UP to this level. It's a great chapter book to read aloud with your child, a chapter a night from your iPad or Kindle, or iPhone. Many different types of children connect with Matilda - bookworms, pranksters, brainiacs, and children with a big heart emotionally. It's also fun to watch the movie afterwards, and compare/contrast the movie with the book.

So, who else do you think should be on this list of Mischievous Fictional Girls?  From picture books like "OMG, Olivia Marie" to Matilda's higher reading level, feisty is lots of fun!

5 of the Best Unicorn Books for Children

Most kids love the thought of magical and rare unicorns. Unicorns are everywhere. My grand baby, Kyler,  had a unicorn bib on last night and Olivia had on a Unicorn dress at Bob Evans today. 

Look around - so much merchandise and lots of movies and books, too.

Here's a list of some the best Unicorn stories, in case you know a unicorn lover. (and, who doesn't love unicorns?)

1. Razzle Dazzle Unicorn   There are several of these books in a series of Phoebe and Marigold and this one is my favorite. It reinforces the important idea that it's perfectly ok to be weird and different.

2.  Uni the Unicorn   This one is a bit expensive but if you don't know this story, you should. It turns everything around since Uni has been told that there's no such thing as little girls! ( but Uni believes)

3. OMG, Olivia Marie! The Trouble with Unicorns   Olivia Marie loves everything unicorn and wants to go to the wild, where unicorns exist. Adventure awaits! 

4.  Goodnight Unicorn Yes, it's like Goodnight Moon, and it's so smart!

5.  Fancy Nancy and the Quest for the Unicorn  How hard can it be to find a unicorn? Fancy Nancy (and all her shenanigans) just follows the trail of glitter. 

Also:

Unicorn Coloring Book  You will want to take some time to color with your favorite little unicorn-loving girls since these coloring book choices are SO gorgeous. 

What's your favorite? Have I missed yours?

OMG, Olivia Marie! The Trouble with Unicorns

Smart moms with smart kids look for interesting and funny ebooks. We can't just let them game on their devices, right?

Please share this new Olivia Marie adventure with all the unicorn lovers you know!

I would so dearly love to have some Amazon reviews from the KIDS, too!  It's a great thing to do with your child - read the ebook and then leave a review!

OMG, Olivia Marie! The Trouble with Unicorns

OMG Olivia Marie! The Trouble with Unicorns

OMG, Olivia Marie! The Trouble with Unicorns will be on Amazon for Kindle this weekend.

Cat Themed Classroom Shower Curtain Ideas

This is a beautiful shower curtain that I found on Amazon. It was about $30. I bought two of them for Jessica's classroom. We put one on the wall near the group time carpet. It's colorful and showcases the names of different cat breeds. 

The yellow curtains that I got her last year never were really long enough to block all the playground action out the windows, so I had a plan for the other cat shower curtain, as you can see. I cut off the top row and the bottom row and sewed it on to the yellow curtains, to brighten up the room, AND to lengthen the curtains.  Our black silhouette cats still peek playfully out behind them. Don't they look AWESOME? 

That left the middle two rows of the second cat shower curtain, ( two groups of 4 cats) so I had Jessica pick her favorite section and I sewed a quick hem edge around 3 edges of the banner. (one side edge was already hemmed) 

See below? We hung the "cat banner" outside the classroom door, just over the desk that holds popsicle sticks with their names. They put their name in the cup that ways "school lunch" or the one that says "packed lunch."  I especially love this section because the Norwegian Forest cat looks like Jessica's cat, Mac, and my sister, Annette, has two Ragdolls, Slate and Cocoa.

This still leaves me with 4 more cat faces, and I think they are each going on a floor cushion cover. It's on my very long to-do list. Ha!

Magnetic Student Job Cards

We bought a booklet of animal print large index cards at Hobby Lobby, choose some our favorites, and added student jobs that we'd printed out earlier.
Next, we hard laminated them.
The last thing we did was to put magnets on the back of the Student Job Cards with a hot glue gun.

We put them on the front of the teacher desk, which is turned toward the student desk area.

Each student had the same kind of magnetic card with their name on it, and would put their name under the job they wanted.  Choice is so important for children and many times a student would earn the right to choose first for the next week.

How do you do your Job Cards?

OMG, Olivia Marie! on Sale this week on Amazon

Jack and I visited Olivia Marie recently and I took an iPad so we could read OMG, Olivia Marie! together and have some laughs. It was interesting to see her reactions as we read a book about HER.  She also has a sweet little singing voice - we had fun singing the song and taking the 2-question quiz when we were finished with the story.

Garrett got in on the fun also, as you can see, above. I think he only likes the page that HE is on, and no wonder. It is a book about a girl. I did get a chance to show him where he shows up in the second OMG, Olivia Marie book and he liked the illustration and the storyline  - he is trying to cheer his unicorn-loving sister up by finding her a unicorn movie!

Back to Olivia Marie - I talked with her about her love of unicorns and ran through the basic storyline of the book I'm working on now.  She immediately ran out of the room and came back with a stuffed unicorn that she didn't think I'd seen yet. (She was right) She said this was her favorite unicorn at least for the next few days!

Then she decided that I should draw this unicorn and that she would color it - for the book, for the book!  That turned out pretty sweet, don't you think?

OMG, Olivia Marie! is on sale this week on Amazon for Kindle. I'd be thrilled if you downloaded it and talked about initials and choosing to do the right thing when you would rather do something wasteful or annoying.  You both might have a good laugh together.  You might also find yourself saying OMG, Olivia Marie at opportune times in your lives!

Remember, reviews and shares are SO appreciated by authors. Thank you!

The Frog Prince, A Children's Play (Annotated)

Actors, backstage, waiting for their entrance.

Teachers, do you have a favorite play that you use with your students? Does it encourage good reading skills, listening skills, teamwork, and Humanities core content? 

It's a lot to ask, I know.

When I was a gifted and talented teacher, NBCT, and jack-of-all-trades, I loved to do a good play with good students - sometimes within the classroom schedule, and sometimes as an after school workshop.  Either way, students need an authentic audience, which could be parents, or another classroom, or a big school wide event.

I have The Frog Prince, A Children's Play (Annotated) on Amazon for Kindle.  It's a humorous rendition of the old standard and is geared toward learning about drama vocabulary and our state Humanities core content.  

The play explains how to perform with 9 characters, or a whole classroom of students. (adaptability is  important)

It has great ideas for the production on a practically nonexistent public school budget, which is very helpful for any elementary school production. 

After the script comes the quizzes and practice pages and ideas for working with drama vocabulary in fun ways that help students to retain what they are learning, to be creative, and to enjoy putting on a great play. It's a bargain, ha!

See how much fun they had? I hope I can find photos from the other productions, too. 

Any questions, please email me at dinahgt@roadrunner.com.

Cat Themed Classroom Ideas

When I talked my daughter into decorating her 2nd grade classroom with a Domestic Cat theme, I didn't realize how little there is out there in "teacher-land" to buy, so I just started making decorations. I did several black cat silhouettes. I drew this cat, on his back paws, for the window. I liked him, so I drew a pattern before I taped him to the window. 

Here he is, looking out at the playground above the yellow ruffled cafe curtain. (from Amazon) He's no longer alone in that window- this cat is raising his hand, or at least that's what the students say...

Here are the two cat silhouettes in the other window. The students love them. They have a bigger purpose than decoration - they help to block what's going on out on the playground without blocking all of the natural light. (The short curtain blocks most of what the students would actually be able to see out the window)

These black cat silhouettes don't have to just be in the windows though. There was a perfect space above the doorway for this little beauty!  ( and do you see a little one on the sign on the left?)

This grey cat is made with grey poster board and a black Sharpie. She is part of the classroom rules section.   

The calico cats here brighten things up above the corners of the whiteboard at the front of the room.  I drew one pattern, then flipped it to make another. This gave me mirror images.  I drew in cat features and used yellow, brown, and rusty orange for the calico spots.  

I drew in some wise and calm features for this fat cat on a light grey poster board. He is the guardian of the weekly learning objectives for each subject.

My daughter found these cute cats to print out for student cubbies and center designations, so I made this poster for just outside her door.  Ms Sasser's cool cats love it. 

She also has placed some cute items around the shelves from her Cat Lady box items.  The kids love the big beach towel with a cat photo on it that reigns behind her desk.  I'll get a photo when I'm out there next.  

Here is the other cat silhouette from the window - the kids said it looks like he is raising his hand in class to answer a question!

If you would like to purchase these cat patterns for $25 through PayPal,  email me at dinahgt@roadrunner.com.  You can easily tweak them to match your ideas for your unique classroom.