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Did you know that the seasons change in the oceans as they do on land? Ocean Seasons by Ron Hirschi and illustrated by Kirsten Carlson, explores seasonal changes in the Pacific Ocean. Like on land, spring brings new plants and baby animals. Plankton lights up the ocean in the summer. Autumn winds blow across the sea, and humpback whales swim to warmer waters in winter.

The “Creative Minds” section - a feature of all Sylvan Dell Publishing books - explores the ocean’s food web and its plants and animals. Creative Minds and the Sylvan Dell website are great resources for teachers and homeschoolers. The website features an Ocean Seasons teaching activities PDF that further explores the book, vocubulary, animal classification, and humpback whale migrations. The website also has a page of learning links about kelp, sea creatures from the book, the ocean food web, and whale migration.

So what food to pair with Ocean Seasons? Let’s try an update on the tuna fish sandwich from the U.S. Tuna Foundation. They recommend this back-to-school recipe as a healthy alternative to mayo rich tuna salad sandwiches on white bread. Plus, it’s a easy way to get fish and some Omega 3s into your kid’s diet.

Scoop-It-Up Tuna Salad
Makes 2 Servings

Ingredients:

1. One 6-ounce can solid white or light tuna in water, drained and flaked
2. 1 small carrot, shredded (about 1/2 cup)
3. 3 tbsp. light canola mayonnaise
4. Salt and pepper
5. Scoopers: Baked tortilla chips, cucumber wheels, mini whole wheat pitas, celery sticks, and whole grain crackers

Directions:

1. Combine the tuna, carrot, mayonnaise, and salt and pepper to taste in a medium bowl and mix well.
2. To pack for a school lunch, place the tuna salad in a plastic container with a tight-fitting lid. Keep it in an insulated lunch bag with a ice pack.
3. Pack “scoopers” in separate containers or baggies.

The title of Helen Cooper’s beautifully illustrated book Delicious! A Pumpkin Soup Story is somewhat misleading. While it is about a group of animal friends who have a ripe pumpkin for pumpkin soup, they end up making several different soups - fish, mushroom, beet and finally yellow/orange/red veggie soup - for their fussy friend Duck.

(Honestly, if it was me I would have given duck a couple of dollars and told him to go to the feed store.)

If you have a fussy eater at home in the four to eight-year-old age range, I’m sure Delicious! A Pumpkin Soup Story will be a popular children’s book at your home. All summer we’ve been struggling with Nathan being picky. I’m thinking of sharing Delicious! A Pumpkin Soup Story with him to inspire him to prepare a meal with me. 

Now that he’s such a good reader, I could have him pick an item like a soup to research in my large collection of cookbooks. If he finds a recipe he thinks sounds yummy, I will try making it for him as long as he helps write up a list, go shopping with me, and cut, chop and measure ingredients. After all, if he has more say in the planning and preparation, maybe he’ll actually eat what I cook up.

Since I know Nathan loves beets, we’ll be making the recipe included in Delicious! A Pumpkin Soup Story.

Pink Soup!

Ingredients:

1. 3 medium-size beets
2. 3 – 4 tablespoons of olive oil
3. 1 chopped onion
4. 5 cups of water
5. 1 or 2 cups of milk
6. salt and pepper to taste
7. yogurt or sour cream

Directions:

1. Put the beets in a medium-size saucepan. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes.
2. Drain the beets and let them cool. The skins will then be easy to peel. Chop up the beets.
3. In a large saucepan, heat the oil and sauté the onion on very low heat until it is translucent. This will take about 5 minutes.
4. Now add the beets and cook them for 5 minutes.
5. Next, pour in the water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 20 minutes.
6. Let the mixture cool and then mash it, or, better still, puree it in a blender.
7. Pour it back into the saucepan and stir in the milk and seasonings.
8. Slowly bring the mixture to a boil and let simmer for 5 minutes more, then pour into bowls.
9. Plop in a large dollop of yogurt or sour cream, and stir.

My husband and I finally had a chance to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night. Fantastic! I love a movie I can’t find one thing wrong with, but boy am I glad we didn’t take the kids along. The movie is way too intense and dark for them. Maybe in a few years we can’t rent it and show it to them at home. (For more on HP see Stephen King’s J.K. Rowling’s Ministry of Magic article in Entertainment Weekly.)

But I was excited about a preview of a movie I may be able to take the kids to this November - The Golden Compass - based on Phillip Pullman’s novel. This movie blows away Narnia and I’m just hoping they’ll keep it PG-enough to take Lucie and Nathan to (I’m keeping my fingers crossed - it’s a pretty dark book). I love His Dark Materials Trilogy and can’t wait to see this one with or without the kids.

If you want a sneak preview, check out the beautiful Gold Compass website. (The trailer I saw last night said the movie would be released November 21. However, the website and Entertainment Weekly state that it will be out December 7.)

In My Backyard by Valarie Giogas and illustrated by Katherine Zecca is a wonderful counting and rhyming book for ages four to eight. Familiar wild backyard animals from foxes to squirrels are featured. If your child is like my daughter Lucie, baby animals are the coolest thing around. So I liked how each animal is shown by baby as well as family group name.

Each stanza gives readers information on the animals including including what they eat, where they live, or what kind of noise they make. So not only are you getting an entertaining story, but your children are learning about wildlife that’s all around us.

As with all Sylvan Dell Publishing children’s books, there’s also a “For Creative Minds” section. It includes animal facts, how to watch for signs of wildlife, and what to do if you find an injured animal.

So what kind of animals are in your backyard?

We have our neighborhood cat, the occasional rattlesnake under the deck, birds, and a zillion grasshoppers, flies, and mosquitos. Nearby we have foxes, prairie dogs, and frogs in the pond at the golf course. Some folks even have toads living in their window wells. Our neighbors had a garter snake living in theirs.

We also have lots of wasps that we have to watch out for when we pick blackberries. The challenging thing about berries is that you have to part the bushes, which are full of thorns, to get at all the berries. But we managed to pick enough to make a blackberry cobbler.

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We’ve read reports in the newspapers (like I did in the Denver Post) that watching educational videos like Baby Einstein is bad for babies’ language development.

But that isn’t the whole story. To learn more see my post, The Real Scoop on Watching Baby Einstein (just because you have a Dr. in front of your name doesn’t mean you’re right). In it there are links to the articles, the research studies, and the interviews Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis has given.

The study is very preliminary and doesn’t test Baby Einstein videos at all, but looks at TV viewing as a whole (as does their previous study). No wonder Disney is asking for a full retraction from the University of Washington.