Photos from Phones - January 2022 Round Up

Welcome to the round up of uncategorizable photos (a vast majority bookish) we took with our phones (aka all the photos we take these days, but the name has stuck for years and I like the alliteration so I'm not going to change it ;) in January. Yes, it's April and I'm just getting these posted. I don't know what has happened to my posting habit, but my photo-taking habit hasn't slowed proportionately, so I have a huge backlog of things to share. Eventually. One at a time. Better late than never. ;) Here we go!

1.3.22
(These are Gregg’s latest reads (one finished last week and the other finished today). He really liked both and kept telling me tidbits that he was learning along the way.)

1.3.22
(I will read anything by Kate DiCamillo (though I haven’t read everything yet) and when I saw she had a new book out, I added it to my holds right away, even though it was about a girl and a goat and a monk and a boy and a king. I definitely wouldn’t have picked it up for the cover or the title. (Don’t be like me and judge a book by its cover!) But I really loved it! I love her spare and beautiful writing that somehow tells such a rich story, and in less than 300 pages. I also love Sophie Blackall’s illustrations, so this was a great combo!)

1.4.22
(A little late for January 1st, but still worth noting: these are some fun books about the holiday and about the many ways (and many times during the year) that cultures and countries celebrate the New Year. We especially liked Every Month, which is formatted sort of like a calendar and goes all over the world and all through the year to teach about different customs through poetry (with plenty of backmatter at the end). And Shante Keys made us want to try Hoppin’ John (and has a recipe in the back for that!), so we’ll probably try that soon. :))

1.4.22
(I spotted this at the grocery store and had to chuckle (?)
that it was out on the shelf thirteen days
before she actually (would have) turned 100
and five days after she died.)

1.4.22
(the lighting of the New Years sparklers . . .
three days late!)

1.4.22

1.4.22

1.4.22

1.4.22
(I just liked how the snow-covered Christmas lights on the 
deck railing reflected off his face.)

1.6.22
(icky slush snow!)

1.6.22
(I was shoveling water . . . 1.52 inches of it!!)

1.6.22
(I had a pile of Wise Men related picture books ready to use when we read Tomie dePaola’s The Story of the Three Wise Kings (whoops, not pictured here, but great!) for Christmas School in Dec, but we had so many other great books and activities we never actually got to them before Christmas. And then I remembered hearing about Epiphany, which in some Christian cultures is the celebration of the arrival of the wise men twelve days after Christmas on January 6th. So then I saved the books for a few more days, intending to have a little Epiphany celebration of our own. (I don’t know if we did it “right” but we enjoyed these stories, and sang We Three Kings (accompanied by Cal on the piano!), and sang With Wondering Awe, and watched the new Shawna Edwards song from last year called When We Seek Him on YouTube (look it up if you haven’t heard it yet-really sweet). It was a lovely way to spend the morning, and extend those good Christmasy feelings and messages for just a little bit longer!))

1.7.22
(bird watching and IDing (and drawing) today for science!)

1.7.22
(We had a focus on birds and bird-lovers this week in school. We didn’t read every one of these, but did enjoy the picture book bios of Audubon and Peterson and learning about different beaks and other bird facts. We even used the field guides to help us identify our backyard birds and recording our numbers online on ebird.org. Fun week!)

1.7.22
(And since we were on a bird kick AND had just started Mr. Popper’s Penguins for a writing unit, I stocked up on all the penguin fiction and nonfiction that I could snag from the library shelves. Here are the penguin-specific bird books we’ve been enjoying this week. I think the color scheme here is interesting ... all blues and whites and blacks (with a couple outlier orange/red ones). :))

1.7.22
(When I was searching for all those bird books on the library website, this graphic novel from the adult natural history (not biography, interestingly) section came up so I put it on hold and read it last night. It says in the beginning Audubon was an embellished of his adventures and that this book is more of a romanticized version of what really probably happened to him. It was interesting, and the art was great!)

bonus videos!

"bone shaker snow saucering"

1.7.22

(while Cal was inside the church for activity days, Sam and I tromped around

the field and parking lot looking for a good spot to try out the new saucer. These pushed-up

piles of ice-hard snow from the parking lot plowing worked (?!) but sure didn't look like

a fun ride to me!)

1.8.22
(somebody give this boy a haircut, quick!)

1.8.22
(talk about a transformation!)

1.8.22
(a bit of hair on the ground there!)

1.8.22
(sheesh!)

1.9.22
(we played a game for our home church lesson
and I just had to record Sam's cute handwriting and spelling!)

1.11.22
(Back to the bird book stack . . . I just had to highlight this one on its own because I was really impressed! I had no idea there were so many beak adaptations on birds! I loved the size of this book (nice and big) as well as its white background that made each bird (and beak) pop. Really nice looking book and full of cool info!)

1.11.22
(This was a fun book flight (this is Anne Bogel’s (from What Should I Read Next podcast) term and she borrowed it from wine flights, which apparently is when you pair two wines carefully based on their properties or how they complement each other). ANYWAY . . . on the surface these two books don’t seem like they’d have a ton in common (besides winter/snow); red sled is nearly wordless, ten ways has more going on than just a fun wintertime story, but reading them together was really fun because of all the onomatopoeia and it got us thinking about a perhaps underused sense (hearing) to enjoy winter. I recommend both, and even better together!)

1.11.22
(And I’m still stuck on bird books apparently. ;) (There are just so many great ones!) These all get grouped together today because their common denominator is poetry. Yes, bird poetry is an entire category now! We didn’t read any of these from start to finish (yet), but they’re great to pair with our bird studies, and a lot of these have scientific notes either after the poem or in the back matter to bulk up our knowledge after enjoying the rhythm and rhyme.)

1.11.22
(And when the Bird poetry books inspire a page of bird poetry from Callie, I am all for it! 🙌🏼)

1.11.22
(Let’s go back in time to last week’s Poetry Teatime where we ate snowball themed treats and read about Robert Frost and enjoyed this beautifully illustrated version of one of his most famous poems. Practically perfect in every way. 😍)

1.14.22
(made a model of lungs from basic household supplies - and it actually worked!)

1.18.22
(this snow's no good for angel making! Too hard!)

1.18.22
(Same poem, two widely different illustrated interpretations of the nonsensical text. Fun to compare.)

1.19.22
(check out these cool ice crystals!)

1.20.22
(Nerd alert! Tuesday was National Thesaurus Day, and while I wasn’t ready to celebrate then, we partied hard today (ha!). A picture book bio about Roget, a cute story about a dino named Thesaurus, a pile of thesauruses for practice while writing “synonym rolls”, a quick game of Apples to Apples, and cinnamon rolls for a treat. 🤓 have I mentioned I love homeschool?)

1.20.22

1.20.22

1.20.22

1.20.22
(We had a fun family book club centered around Lita Judge’s nearly wordless picture book, Red Sled, this month. And then after “meeting” her on a writing workshop, we became even bigger fans. I checked out everything I could by her, and they’re all wonderful! (Not pictured: Red Sled, and the Hoot and Peep books, because they already went back.))

1.21.22
(for handwriting practice, Sam asked if he could write
a letter to his cousin Bradley (aka "Mr. B" ?) and of course I said yes!

1.22.22
(I’ve only read two novels and one other collection of essays by Ann Patchett but I really love her! This was my favorite book of hers yet, for sure. She has such a way of telling about real life- her real life, which is totally different than my real life, yet feels relatable and familiar too. Good, good stuff. Here are my five word reviews for this one (of course I can’t pick, so it’s really like 15 (16?) words of review ;): - Master storyteller of real life - Wise and witty; worth reading! - Weaver of warm, wise, witty words)

1.24.22
(more homeschool fun here: we made name snowflakes
and then wrote acrostic poems for our names)

1.24.22

1.24.22
(Sam wanted to leave his snowflake on the side with his
name visible, so you can kind of see how we made them)

1.26.22
(field trip to the dino park after dropping Dad
at the airport for his first business trip in two years!)

1.26.22
(it must have been homeschool day at the dino
park because the place was crawling and it was
mid-morning on a weekday during the school year!
We fit right in ;)

1.26.22

1.26.22

1.26.22
(New favorite series alert! She was so happy to collect all ten Baby-Sitters Club graphic novels from the library and read them all in order (she’s already read them multiple times in random order).)

1.26.22
(Gregg's view in Greenville, SC - not too shabby!)

1.26.22
(A reread/relisten for us, but the first in Sam’s memory. It was as delightful as ever, and always makes my mouth water with all the delicious food descriptions.)

1.29.22
(with no formal map instruction or practice, just staring
and studying her placemat at mealtime, Cal has mastered
the states and is working on capitals!)

1.29.22
(bluebird backyard views - ooowee it's spectacular out there!)

1.29.22
(these buried lawnmowers just made me smile)

1.29.22
(buds are getting ready for spring already!)

1.29.22
(hey did you see the sky today? talk about blue!)

1.29.22

1.29.22
(meanwhile, in Charlotte, NC . . . Gregg flew in and out of Charlotte
for his trip to Greenville, and made sure to tack on an
extra day to spend with Ryan and his fam while he was in town)

1.31.22
(You’re looking at the 2022 Caldecott Winner! I had put it on hold as soon as I heard it won, even though we had read it earlier in the year. (We’re big Jason Chin fans!) When I walked in the library last week, the librarian asked, “would you like to check out this year’s Caldecott?” and then she handed it to me. I got to skip the holds line! (Which I feel slightly guilty about, but oh well.) The art is, of course, fantastic, but the story is lovely and sad and real, and it also won a Newbery Honor, so you know it’s quality! Check it out soon!)

1.31.22
(my phone is so old it doesn't show the colors when we worlders share our stats,
so it's a bit of a puzzle/gussing game to figure out what the heck is going on)

1.31.22
(this is what should be going on, but no, it's not enough to convince me to get a new 
phone either! ;)

1.31.22
(Huntsville Town had a winter carnival at the park/ice rink over the weekend,
so when we visited on Monday we had fun checking out all the sculptures around the
outside of the rink)

1.31.22
(this one reminds me of Lyle the Crocodile. I think 
it was my fave)

1.31.22
(although these cairns of ice chunks was pretty clever, I must say!)

1.31.22
(You can read this one in a hour and you won’t be sorry. It’s a delightful (true) story told in (actual) letters spanning many years of correspondence between an American writer and a British bookseller. Just delightful.)

See what I mean by years-long tradition? Goodness gracious me!

Every other round up here (whew!):

2021: Dec | Nov | Sep | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan

2020: Dec | Nov | Sep | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar Quar + Mar | Feb | Jan
2019: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sep | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan
2018: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sept | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan
2017: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sept | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan

2016: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sept | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan

2015: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sept | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan

2014: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sept | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan

2013: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sept | Aug | July | June