Thursday, June 12, 2014

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Returning library books. Here are my favorites this week:
Between Heaven and Texas by Marie Bostwick Strong, independent mommy of a Special Needs child, and she quilts!  My kind of story :)

Devotion and Defiance by Humaira Awais Shahid Another strong, independent mommy. Stands up for the women of Pakistan.

I love learning new words. My best helpers:
Verbal Advantage by Charles Harrington Elser. During the summer, I'll read a few chapters. It's full of articles and quizzes. I ordered it from paperbackswap a while back.

My big red dictionary. Mom bought it at a yard sale when I was little. I used to read it like a novel. Colton and I used it during his 4th grade year to write vocabulary definitions.

thefreedictionary Go check it out! Besides being a fabulous online dictionary, there's a word of the day, hangman game, spelling bee and vocabulary quiz. Perfect for word nerds, like me.

Anyway, even though my favorite reads this week were totally different genres, I was surprised to find the same new-to-me word in both!

New word: sycophant A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people. A kiss-up.  I've always taught my first-graders to use context clues to figure out the meaning of new words, but Verbal Advantage suggests looking up new words. Started doing this a few years ago- so glad I did.
Yay Reading!

2 comments:

Cassandra said...

Great variety of books! That first one sounds intriguing.

Kate said...

Looks like fun summer reads. I've tried to get DT to look up new words, mainly for pronunciation, she mangles new words she's never heard horribly.