Busy Bea

Temple Grandin

Ran into this great talk by Temple Grandin today:

HBO aired an movie about her last month starring Claire Danes. It's not out on DVD yet, but I was able to add it to my Netflix queue. Can't wait!

Stories-with-music? Musical stories?

Bea is having more and more frequent bouts of unbearable grown-up-ness lately. Here she is listening to Grandma Susie over the phone reading Frog and Toad Are Friends. Her appetite for books is unsatiable. I can't keep up and we've been getting more books on tape at the library. One of her favorites is The Wolves Are Back by Jean Craighead George. It's a great story about the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone and the resulting impact on the entire ecosystem. Fascinating! A great read and a great listen (howling wolves)!

It has recently occured to me that it would be great fun to make our own recordings of Bea's favorite books. Hopefully we won't rely too heavily on the recordings, but even Jim Trelease talks up their benefits in The Read Aloud Handbook. Bea asks for Peter and the Wolf quite a lot and knows the instruments by the characters they play. She likes to play scared when the wolf comes along and always jumps into my lap. We have Tubby the Tuba, too, but I wish we could find more scantily narrated recordings of 'musical stories' like Peter. Any suggestions?