Caldecott Medal Monday, 1968: Drummer Hoff

Drummer Hoff, Adapted by Barbara Emberley, Illustrations by Ed Emberley

A chicken in the oven and sweet potatoes needing peeling means this will be a fast one, literary friends. But not devoid of fun, by any means!

Ed Emberley won the 1968 Caldecott Medal for the illustrations in Drummer Hoff--Barbara Emberley's adaption of a cumulative folk song featuring seven soldiers building a fancy cannon. The illustrations are bold and colorful and very unique. This artist would never be featured on my walls, but I can surely appreciate his work in a picture book.

The folk song itself is entertaining and fun and useful. Grab lots of repetitive rhyming books if you have babies, preschoolers or early readers in your home. These books help students learn to rhyme--a crucial pre-reading, auditory-discrimination skill that's more mysterious than we parents think. I've had many children over the years ask me if bat and ball rhyme--maybe not this exact example, but this general misconception, that rhyme refers to things that go together, not things that sound the same at the end.

Learning rhyme is as easy as hearing tons of rhyming books and nursery rhymes. It isn't something you actually teach; you expose them to it consistently during early-childhood years, and they get it--usually by early to late kindergarten, depending on how much exposure they've had. I taught in a low-income neighborhood, and it was never a given that my first graders would have this mastered. Poverty means, sometimes, no car to get to the library, and no value placed on books as a family experience.

Cumulative (Drummer Hoff), repetitive (The Little Red Hen, The Gingerbread Man), and rhyming books also help motivate preschoolers and early readers. Language learning should never be a chore. It should be a loving, fun-filled part of every childhood.

Your kids will recite Drummer Hoff for days after a reading, and you'll never tire of it. It will just make you smile.

Since it's a folk song that's been generating for years, I can type it for you here.

Drummer Hoff fired it off.


Private Parriage brought the carriage, 
but Drummer Hoff fired it off.


Corporal Farrell brought the barrel.
but Drummer Hoff fired it off.

And on and on until it looks like this at the end:

General Border 
gave the order,
Major Scott
brought the shot,
Captain Bammer
brought the rammer,
Sergeant Chowder
brought the powder,
Corporal Farrell
brought the barrel,
Private Parriage
brought the carriage,
but Drummer Hoff fired it off.


Hint for you homeschoolers: There are great sound-family spelling lessons hidden in here for older students.




We also have this Ed Emberely book, Go Away Big Green Monster, (teaches colors) which my kids all love. As you turn each page, more and more of a silly monster is revealed. Then, as you keep turning them, all his features go away, one by one. Great fun!




I haven't seen this one yet, but I'm sure it's silly-nilly good!

Only God Changes Hearts

Reading between the lines, some of you may have guessed my husband to be the less enthusiastic Compassion supporter. You would be correct. 


When months of underemployment turn to years, it becomes harder for a man to have hope and faith, especially while negotiating two to three different part-time jobs, which make for long, stressful days. My observation is that no one works harder than the underemployed; they scramble for a living, often seven days a week. Only recently has my husband had a full day off (Sunday). Come snow time though, he will be responsible for salting & snow removal for a church parking lot on Sunday mornings; his 30-hour part-time position is with a church.


So for these many months, I think he's been more frustrated by my Compassion passion, then anything else. Our being unable to sponsor anyone, in his mind, seemed like just another failure. Driving old cars we could barely keep going, praying for our meals and gas money....all the details made our circumstances seem desperate at times--though that was just our flesh, not reality. God has always been there. Faithful.


Several times I've come close to sponsoring a child without my husband's consent. Shameful, yes. 


I never even asked him if we could sponsor. The conversation never came up, because I've known his state of mind too well. Divya and Raphael, as I've mentioned, are both correspondent children; we are not their sponsors.


Thankfully, each time I felt tempted to click on a "sponsor me" button, the Holy Spirit stopped me. It wasn't out of defiance I felt these urges to click, but out of a desperate desire to help those whose circumstances are far worse than ours. For the first time in my life, I knew something of what they felt. 


Hopeless, marked, not good enough.


Yesterday, reading the post about the number of children who've waited so long, my desperation returned. My boys were over my shoulder as I checked the Compassion page featuring all the children--86 when we first looked at it--who'd waited six months or longer for a sponsor. I could see the compassion pouring from my boys' young hearts. How they wanted to click those "sponsor me" buttons as well.


We thought of all the groceries we could give up that would amount to $38. Money saved is money earned, I told them. It wasn't easy and some negotiation ensued, but Peter, Paul, Mary, and Momma each thought of one grocery item we could give up twice a month.


My husband works half day on Saturdays, so he wasn't around for these negotiations.


We continued to check the Compassion website every half hour, watching the number of children go up and down. Peter and Paul watched the children's pictures change position. I explained that as more children qualify for the longest-waiting list, the number goes up. As people sponsor them, the number goes down. It fluctuated, but we rejoiced each time it went down. Peter marveled at the Christians who obeyed God and sponsored.


I began to feel guilty. What right had we to even think about sponsoring? Was my husband going to be mad at me? Should I just tell the children to pray for others to keep sponsoring? Convicted, I decided to say nothing to my husband about our negotiated and reduced grocery bill.


We continued to watch the website though, and when Daddy returned, Peter, ever the talker, told him all about our day. Daddy listened, saying nothing.


We all went to a park for a couple hours, to help Beth with her physical therapy goals. Later, chores and a grocery run.


The busiest hours of the day having arrived, we stopped checking the list.


Until bedtime. One last check.


Peter said something about Nelson, whose picture he'd been watching. I clicked on the "learn more" button at the bottom of Nelson's picture. El Salvador. Seven years old. Loves soccer. Single mom--a laborer. Two children in the home. No father mentioned. 


It was the no father that got me the most. My boys too. My hand wanted to click. The boys' hands wanted to click. 


I picked up the phone, calling the automated phone teller to check our balance. I knew it was low. 


Meanwhile, Daddy asked why everyone abandoned him. We had gone to brush teeth initially, and then planned to return to the playroom for another bedtime story.


We just wanted to check the list one more time. Quickly.


Peter responded to Daddy. "Mommy's doing something. We'll be right there."


In a lower voice, to me, Peter said, "I didn't tell him what you're doing." 


Oh, the guilt at that comment! Was I teaching them to go behind their Daddy's back? Shame on me.  How conflicted I was...pulled in two powerful positions.


I got off the phone, dejected. $68 dollars to last for gas and miscellaneous for the next four days. 


No way, I told the kids. Daddy needs gas money.


Peter returned to the playroom, telling Daddy we wanted to sponsor a boy, but we couldn't because we only have $68.


I expected anger and resentment. After all, this wasn't exactly the proper way to decide these things. I felt convicted.


"I need about $50 for gas", husband said. "We'll do it on faith."


Rejoicing, we ran back to the computer, wondering if Nelson's picture was still there. It shifted positions, but we found it easily. Five minutes later, Nelson joined our family, leaving some of us in tears over Daddy's tender, faith-filled heart. 





And we couldn't be happier. For Nelson...for Daddy. They needed each other desperately.


Bitterness, once rampant in my man's heart, turned to compassion, through the power of God. I've never loved my husband more, nor my Savior.


Only God changes hearts.

How Are You At Waiting?

Do you wait well?

Have you ever been the longest one waiting, like when the gym teacher lined up all the students and allowed the captains to pick their teams?

Waiting is hardest on young children. There are 86 children registered with Compassion who have been waiting six months or longer for a sponsor. As you peruse these photos of the 86, you'll notice most of them are very young....too young to wait longer than six months for hope and a future. Please pray about sponsoring one today? Buying one less bag of chips and one less case of soda per week would give you the money needed to sponsor one child. Who needs chips and soda anyway?

A Compassion blog post aired today which may help these children, but I believe we all need to do our part to help them. If you can't sponsor, can you post the longest waiting list on your blog, or on other social media?

A child will be blessed if you do! Thank you!

Deut. 15:7. If there is a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any of the towns of the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.


Edited to add: Since posting this less than 30 minutes ago, four more children have been sponsored from this list! Praise God! Of course, children are added to this list every day too, so the number goes up and down all the time.


photo credit

AVKO Sequential Spelling: It Works!

I picked up AVKO Sequential Spelling (used $10 on Homeschool Classifieds.com) on the advice of a parent who also has a challenged speller. Developed by the AVKO Dyslexia Research Foundation, the program uses an Audio-Visual-Kinesthetic-Oral teaching approach (thus the acronym AVKO).

The AVKO Sequential Spelling Tests were developed to utilize the word family approach sequentially and to apply the very simple flesh-and-blood teaching machine techniques of having children correct their own mistakes when they make them--not hours, days, or even weeks later.
Perhaps the most important difference between the traditional approach to spelling and the AVKO approach is that we use tests as a learning device and not as a method of evaluation. We believe that the natural method of learning is learning from mistakes, and that is why we want children to correct their own mistakes when they make them--so they can learn from them.

(from AVKO Sequential Spelling 1, page 4) 

Each day I dictate 25 words to Peter, using a different list each time. After each word he looks at the correct spelling and corrects his attempt, if necessary, before we move on to another word. A couple different word families are recycled for about eight days--with different suffixes and prefixes added to make longer, varied words--before the program moves on to introduce a few more families. It teaches homophones as well.

Peter and I love it, finding it painless and sensible. And it works!  I highly recommend this program even if your student is in traditional school and has no particular spelling difficulty. Your child will simply learn more from this. Peter doesn't have dyslexia, but he does have a poor visual memory (struggles to attend to visual details).

Only taking a short time each day, it helps all students transfer their word-family learning to their daily writing. With traditional spelling programs most students memorize a group of words each week--forgetting them by Monday in most cases.

I'm not sure why these photos turned sideways, but I decided not to drive myself nuts trying to shift them. Been there, done that, and never succeeded in the past.

There you have it!  A spelling program that works! Here is the website, http://www.avko.org/sequentialspelling.html, where you will find seven different levels designed to teach all the word families in seven years of schooling. The levels are not based on grade level.

They have other products as well. Here is there about us page: http://www.avko.org/aboutus.html

Caldecott Medal Mania, 1980: Ox-Cart Man

Fall is the perfect season for introducing Ox-Cart Man, (1130 Lexile) written in 1979 by Donald Hall. The exquisite pictures were done by Barbara Cooney, for which she won a Caldecott in 1980.

In October he backed his ox into his cart and he and his family filled it up with everything they made or grew all year long that was left over.

This sentence graces the first page of a beautiful, lyrical glimpse back at 19th century New England farm life. We read how the ox-cart man and his family lived entirely off their land, selling their products every October in a marketplace located a ten-days walk away.

Fall finds the ox-cart filled up with wool from their sheep, mother's handmade shawl, mittens knitted by a daughter, linen they wove, birch brooms a son carved, maple syrup tapped from their trees, candles, shingles, potatoes from their garden, a barrel of apples, honey and honeycombs, turnips and cabbages, and a bag of goose feathers from the barnyard geese.

When his cart was full, he waved good-bye to his wife, his daughter, his son, and he walked at his ox's head ten days over hills, through valleys, by streams, past farms and villages until he came to Portsmouth and Portsmouth Market.

After he sells all his goods, including the wooden box he carried the maple syrup in, the barrel he carried the apples in, the bag he carried the potatoes in, along with his ox cart, his ox, and his yoke and harness, he buys some items for the family--an iron kettle, an embroidery needle, a Barlow knife for carving, and two pounds of wintergreen peppermint candies.

Next, the reader takes a journey through their gorgeous farm year, as they faithfully produce the same things all over again.

Peter and I, both farm-life lovers, swooned our way through every page of this exquisitely illustrated story. Mary, almost 5, and Beth, almost 3, both stay engaged with the pictures and content.

Barbara Cooney, one of my favorite illustrators, also illustrated and won a Caldecott for Miss Rumphius.




Here are some Barbara Cooney (1917-2000) quotes, taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Cooney

• On her grandmother and mother: "She gave me all the materials I could wish for and then left me alone, didn’t smother me with instruction. Not that I ever took instruction very easily. My favorite days were when I had a cold and could stay home from school and draw all day long.... She was an enthusiastic painter of oils and watercolors. She was also very generous. I could mess with her paints and brushes all I wanted. On one condition: that I kept my brushes clean. The only art lesson my mother gave me was how to wash my brushes. Otherwise, she left me alone."

• On her graduation from Smith College: "I have felt way behind technically; and what I’ve learned I have had to teach myself. To this day, I don’t consider myself a very skillful artist."

• On her travels: “It was not until I was in my forties, in the fifth decade of my life, that the sense of place, the spirit of place, became of paramount importance to me. It was then that I began my travels, that I discovered, through photography, the quality of light, and that I gradually became able to paint the mood of place.”

• On her receiving the Caldecott Medal in 1959: "I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting.... It does not hurt them to read about good and evil, love and hate, life and death. Nor do I think they should read only about things that they understand.... a man’s reach should exceed his grasp. So should a child’s. For myself, I will never talk down to—or draw down to—children."

• On her most favorite works: "Of all the books I have done, Miss Rumphius, Island Boy, and Hattie and the Wild Waves, are the closest to my heart. These three are as near as I ever will come to an autobiography".

Here are some teaching resources and other links for Ox-Cart Man:

Literature Unit from www.homeschoolshare.com Ox-Cart Man

Teaching Economics with children's literature:  Ox-Cart Man

Ox-Cart Man Discussion Guide From Scholastic.com

As-You-Read Activities: http://www.exodusbooks.com/samples/pp/2435Sample.pdf

Ox-Cart Man Progeny Press Study Guide