Manga Review: Komomo Confiserie vol. 1 by Maki Minami

"As a little girl, Komomo Ninomiya delighted in picking on Natsu Azumi, the son of her family's pastry chef. Ten years later, when  the family fortune is lost and she has no place to live, Komomo encounters Natsu again in her hour of need. Now that Natsu is a master pastry chef in his own right, he'll help Komomo-- but only if she works for him at his new confiserie." (back of book summary)

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Okay, first of all, I am not someone who reads a lot of manga. This book, Komomo Confiserie vol 1 is the first manga I've actually read. The description on the back of the book was promising. I loved the idea of people meeting up again 10 years later. I was intrigued. The book itself ended up being really disappointing. Komomo's treatment of Natsu as children was appalling. She was a spoiled little rich girl who always got what she wanted, including Natsu's sweets (who lets a 5 year old bake by himself?!) which would fill her with warmth and MAKE HER CRY. Seriously? His sweets could make her cry?!

Fast forward 10 years and Komomo is being forced to work part time jobs (all of which she fails at and is fired from, sometimes multiple jobs in the same day) because her family has lost their wealth, she's renting a room at someone's home (her family has abandoned her) and she's just as awful as she was at 5. Natsu is returning from France as the youngest pastry chef ever and running a confiserie. Television interviews reveal that he can't wait to see Komomo again to repay her for the way she treated him as a child, introducing a weird revenge plot through out the book. Oh! There is also the introduction of a mysterious man telling Komomo to learn not to show emotion for some reason I can only guess will be explained in a further volume.

Seriously, Natsu made me so angry throughout most of the rest of the book. I wanted to slap his arrogant attitude from his face and make him start acting like an actual human being with compassion toward Komomo and I wanted to tell her to run away from his abusive behavior. From the time the two meet up again at 15, Natsu tells others the he was the only one allowed to abuse bully Komomo. He tells her not to befriend another pastry chef (6 years older) who is coming to work the shop when Natsu and Komomo have to go to school, he constantly belittles her and treats her poorly.

I spent so much time wishing for redeeming qualities for either of them that when they finally happened, I was so annoyed I didn't care. There are at least 4 more volumes to this series and I can safely say I will NOT be picking them up off the library shelves.

Love from Library Land,
Amber

Kiddie Kardio

Kiddie Kardio is probably one of my favorite parts of the week. For 30 minutes every Thursday, I get to dance with toddlers and preschoolers. Some days, the kids just kind of stand there and stare at me, but there are days when those little ones will dance with wild abandon and it is hilarious. Most of the songs we use are from the Fresh Beat Band and the Imagination Movers(because they don't make me want to shove pencils through my eyeballs like some children's musicians).

During Kiddie Kardio, not only do we exercise through dancing, we also work on life skills like cleaning up our toys and waiting our turn. Each song where the kids get a handheld object (scarves, shaker eggs, lummi sticks, bean bags or hand bells) the kids have to come get them (learning to wait their turn) and put them back in the proper bins (cleaning up).

Our typical routine:

D.J. Get the Party Started (scarves)
Spin Around
Dance with Me
Here we Go (lummi sticks)
Tap it Out (lummi sticks)
A Friend Like You (shaker eggs)
Freeze Dance
Wiggle Song (Dragon Tales)
Mover Music (Imagination Movers)
Jump Up (Imagination Movers)
Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah (Aly and AJ) (Parachute time)
We're Unstoppable (parachute time)

Parachute time may be the best thing about Kiddie Kardio. During Aly and AJ song, the parents and I work the parachute and the kids dance underneath it as it goes up and down. The happy squeals of the kids is infectious. The kids love the parachute, the parents and I love the cool breeze that comes from moving it. The second parachute song We're Unstoppable by the Fresh Beat Band is the invitation for the kids to handle the parachute if they want . If the kids are the ones holding the parachute, I kneel down to their height to help out. The parachute tends to move quicker and not as high as when the adults do it, but the kids love it just the same.

Kiddie Kardio is a 30 minute class for ages 2-5 held every Thursday during our Story Time Sessions.


With Love from Library Land,
Amber

Early Learning Kits

 

 


Early Literacy/ Early Childhood Learning is something we are really trying to focus on this year. Each of these little boxes on the shelf ($1 at Dollar Tree) contains some sort of Early Learning Game- most of which I have purchased from Teachers Pay Teachers. My favorite creator on TPT is Lavinia Pop and you can find her TPT site here.

 

I hand stitched the felt letters in about a week and they are quickly becoming one of our biggest hits. The little ones love to play with them and the parents love having a more physical way to introduce the alphabet to them.

Our current themes are:
Alpha-Art
Counting Turtles
Ocean
Ice Cream Alphabet and Math
Fall
Apples and Pumpkins

I have been showcasing a new kit each week and the parents have enjoyed sharing them with their little ones. I have more to make. I would like to be able to rotate the kits each season.

Love from Library Land,
Amber

STEAM Travels: Ancient Greece: Edible Parthenons

One of my goals with the new Where in Time is Ms. Amber?  program I'm doing, is I want to extend the lesson beyond one class. I wanted to find a way to teach about history and not still have a lecture. So I decided that this year, we would do a cross curriculum approach and I would pair history with STEAM.

Our first STEAM Travels class focused on creating Edible Parthenons. I picked up icing tubs from the dollar tree ( 10 oz for $1 at the Dollar Tree) graham crackers (family pack about $5), mini marshmallows, mini York Peppermint patties and peppermints. I paired the kids up into 3 teams and gave each  team a picture of the Parthenon and then I allowed them to get creative in trying to build it. Two of the teams were pretty successful, one team. . . well, they tried.

   

The kids had a blast "building" these things, and by building, I mean eating the construction supplies. I still maintain that the sugar highs they left with are were not my fault.

With Love from Library Land,

Amber

Resources

This is where you will find links to some of my favorite resources: books, websites, and even videos that have helped me during my career.


Babies and Toddlers:

Totally Tots









Preschool/ Early Literacy

Countdown to Kindergarten

Reading with Red

Lavinia Pop a great resource for printables

Teachers Pay Teachers a great resource for printables and other educational materials. There are some resources that are free, but most you do pay for. Some are as little as $1.00





School Age and Tweens:





Teens:


Librarians:

Abby the Librarian

Where in Time is Ms. Amber? : Ancient Greece

As a woman who grew up in the 80s and 90s I LOVED to watch PBS and some of my favorite shows were Where in the World and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?. So for the past few years I've been doing a geography club at the library. The first 2.5 years were dedicated to traveling the United States and then we spent 1.5 years traveling the world. Now that the geography club is over (for now) we are traveling through time in a class I call Where in Time is Ms. Amber?. 


Since this class is a new venture for me, I decided to change it up a bit. In the past, the Geography club was primarily lecture with a craft thrown in at the end. I would make study guides for the kids and there would be a big Geography Club versus the Librarians Geography Bee. I had been using that format for 4 years and the kids were getting bored with it. (Several of the kids have been with me since we started 4 years ago.) This new class will have stations around the room for the kids to interact with. After a brief overview of Ancient Greece (which included a clip from Disney's Hercules), I unleashed my 2 students to the stations in the room.

Station 1
God and Goddess Match Game (I found some really cool ancient Greek flash cards at Research Parent) I took the god/goddess descriptions, laminated them and glued them to a large sheet of Art paper. Then I laminated the god/goddess names and let the kids match the god/goddess to their description. The kids had a little difficulty matching a couple of them, but quickly fixed their mistake.

Station 2
Decorate a Grecian Urn
We found an old Oriental Trading paper vase craft in our craft drawers and I thought it would be perfect for Ancient Greece. I think we originally bought them for a Percy Jackson party and had several left over. Sadly, I ca no longer find the craft on Oriental Trading.

Station 3
Build a Lego Parthenon
This was probably the biggest hit in the class. By the time the kids were ready to work on the Parthenon, D's little brother C came in to build with us. I gave each of the kids a Lego building board and let them dig through the boxes of Lego to find the pieces they needed. We ended up with two partially built Parthenons by the time class ended, but they loved it!

Websites:

I chose to use the Greek Gods and Goddesses card to create a match game that my students really enjoyed.
Layerd Soul should us a really cool Lego Parthenon that I had kids attempt to build.
Statue of Colossus at Rhodes came from Ancient Awe.


Helpful Books:

Ancient Greece by Peter Ackroyd
Ancient Greek Women by Hadyn Middleton
Cultural Atlas for Young People: Ancient Greece by Dr. Anton Powell
Ancient Greece: 40 Hands-On Activities by Avery Hart and Paul Mantell


The new format of the class seemed to be a huge success. The kids who were able to make it had a blast and I'm not upset that it was a really small class. I'm pretty sure that had we not been closed for Hurricane Irma for almost a week the class would have been a bit bigger. (We ended up re-opening on the same day as the 1st Where in Time class.) Next week, we will have our first STEAM Travels class and that will be a nice little tie in to our Ancient Greece studies. We will be building edible Parthenons!

Love from Library Land,
Amber

Secret Coders Series by Gene Luen Yang

"Hopper hates her new school. The kids are mean, the principal is scary, and there's something creepy about the building itself. For instance: why are the walls of Stately Academy covered in the number 9?

Hopper and her friend Eni are determined to get to the bottom of it. but the mystery of Stately Academy has been programmed into its very stones, and it'll take two persistent programmers to figure it out!

Hopper and Eni are about to become secret coders." (back cover of the book)


I want to start this with letting you know, I am not a big fan of graphic novels. I've never really understood the point. I always preferred to imagine the illustrations instead of looking at them in a book. That being said, I loved Secret Coders. Hopper is new to school and all she really wants to do is join the girl's basketball team and not anger her foreign language teacher. She discovers something odd with her school and with Eni she sets out to uncover the odd things about her school.

One thing I absolutely loved about the book is Gene Luen Yang asks the reader to try to figure out the puzzles alongside Hopper and Eni. The way the author explains coding is easy to follow and he makes it fun. Secret Coders has a really fun interactive website that even includes coding tutorials. I can't wait to see how far this series goes and an eagerly waiting for the 3rd book to show up at my library.