As a child, did you like to dig up rocks in the backyard? Then you can relate to Julie the Rockhound by Gail Langer Karwoski and illustrated by Lisa Downey. When Julie moves to a new house and finds a piece of quartz crystal buried in the backyard, she turns into “Julie the Rockhound.” Soon her dad dad shows her how to dig for rocks and explains how crystals are formed.

Like other Syvlan Dell Publishing books, Julie the Rockhound comes with a “For Creative Minds” section. (Click here for a PDF version.) Your child will explore if items are plants, animals or minerals. They’ll learn what they need to become a rockhound, how rocks are formed, and how to classify minerals.

The “Food Rocks!” section shows how you can use cooking to understand how rocks are formed. The recipe they give for sedimentary rocks is making a sandwich. The layers of margarine, cheese, bread and meat represent layers of sedimentary rock. Great idea! But why just make a regular sandwich, when you can make a Quadruple-Decker Honolulu Hightower courtesy of the Denver Post and Tucker Shaw.

Quadruple-Decker Honolulu Hightower
Photo by Glenn Asakaw of the Denver Post

If macadamia butter and papaya jam is too weird for your child, try good old peanut butter and grape jelly along with the bananas, and substitute granola for the shredded coconut. You could also experiment with low-fat cream cheese, strawberry preserves, sliced strawberries, and crunchy cereal. A savory idea would be hummus, grated carrots and pepper strips and some baked potato chips for the crunch. Or try cashew butter, apple butter and thin apple slices along with granola, cereal or shredded rice cakes.

Your child could help cut out the bread (try wheat too), spreading the nut butters and jams, and stacking the layers.

Ingredients

1. Five slices white bread, cut into rounds with a cookie cutter (Make sure your slices will fit into a round plastic container as shown here. This sandwich is way too high for plastic wrap or a baggie.)
2. Macadamia butter
3. Papaya jam
4. Pineapple jam
5. A few slices dried banana
6. A few flakes dried coconut (unsweetened)

Directions

1. Spread two rounds bread with macadamia butter. Spread one round with papaya jam. Spread one round with pineapple preserves. Layer banana slices and dried coconut on final round.
2. Stack rounds, starting and finishing with macadamia-butter rounds. Put into container.

Lucie begins her first day of pre-K this afternoon, and is so excited to start! A wonderful book from Random House that captures this feeling is Kindergarten Countdown by Anna Jane Hays and illustrated by Lind Davick.

A little girl named Lucy counts off the days by naming what she’ll do in kindergarten, what she’ll wear, and what she’ll learn. The countdown is a great way to prepare kids for that exciting first day of school (if you have a preschooler or in my case a pre-K’er, then substitute the right grade when you’re reading it out loud).

Not only was I thrilled that the main character had the same name (though spelled differently) as my daughter, the book captured the excitement and all the things she had to look forward to - making friends, playing games, practicing writing, using your manners, and so on.

Activities
This would be a really fun book to use as a countdown to the days leading up to school. You could read Kindergarten Countdown and combine it with a calendar. Assign an activity like “buy school supplies” or “pick out school clothes” to the days before school starts. You could also make time to come up with snack and lunch box menus. Each time you do a countdown to school activity, you could discuss all the exciting things they will be doing, and answer any questions your son or daughter may have.

If your child is apprehensive about his or her first day, having a Kindergarten Countdown activity would be a good way to help them through their fears. You may even want to combine the calendar with a “dry run” by getting up early, getting dressed, getting their backpack ready, and pretending to wait for the school bus, or walking or driving to school. Many schools have open houses before the first official day, and that’s a great opportunity for your child to walk around the school, meet the teachers, and find out where the bathrooms are.

More Bento School Lunch Ideas
Are you tired of bento box lunches yet? I hope not because they’re so fun to look at even if you’d never take time to make them. Check out Laptop Lunches, a website featuring American-style bento boxes designed to help book, The Laptop Lunch User’s Guide: Fresh Ideas for Making Wholesome, Earth-friendly Lunches Your Kids Will Love. (A good pairing with this book is Ann Cooper’s Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children.)

Another site to check out is the Lunch in a Box blog. Blogger “Biggie” makes bento boxes for her preschooler, “Bug.” Read her Need for speed: A mommy’s lunch manifesto. I’m very inspired by this wonderful blog, though I’m not sure how much bento box creativity I can get out of PB&J and pudding - the only two things my son Nathan wants to eat for lunch these days.

(And thanks to The Common Room: Recipe Carnival - LUNCH for the bento links and other great lunch ideas.)

I’ve written about bento box lunches before. Japanese moms really go nuts with bento box edible art, and what they come up with is rather intimidating.

So when I came across Gentle Bento (thanks to The Attached Mother) I was relieved. Maybe I could actually try this! I love her examples of Kiddie Bento, too - it looks like something Lucie would come up with, though hers would have more princesses and kitties. (Wonder where she got that Hello Kitty bento box. I’ll have to look for something like it next time we go to the Asian market.)

For more bento box inspiration, check out Jennifer McCann’s book Vegan Lunch Box based on her blog of the same name.

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.