(upbeat guitar music) - Okay, and then the sleeping bags and fishing poles and, hey, hey campers.

Welcome to Camp-Read-A-Lot.

I'm Mrs. Hammack and I am so glad you're here with me at camp.

It's a great place for reading and learning and talking and singing and doing all kinds of activities to help you grow to be a strong, ooh, strong reader.

Did you see that?

It almost jumped right off my lap.

And parents, I had a fun idea.

Well, I hope you think it's a fun idea that you can use for the remainder of summer and maybe even into the school year, make reading into a fun family Bingo game.

Let me kind of tell you what I mean.

So I've made a bingo card here and you could make one together with your family and in each of the boxes, I've written things like read a mystery book or read in your pajamas, read at the park, read with a flashlight, read with a family member, read while you're eating ice cream, read under a table.

You can talk and brainstorm some ideas with your family and put different ideas in your boxes.

And then each day that your family or your kids do one of these activities, they get to mark it off.

And when they get a Bingo, you could come up with some kind of a little prize.

It doesn't have to be a prize from the store.

It could be maybe they get to choose what is for dinner that night, or maybe they get to stay up 10 minutes longer for the evening, or maybe there's something special that they want to see on television.

You could also do little treats.

Maybe there's a candy bar they enjoy.

I know there's a lot of kids that like talkies.

Hey, maybe that's the price.

You can decide whatever works for you and your family.

This might be a fun way to engage your kids in reading every day.

And especially the kids that struggle and maybe reading isn't the choice that they would make.

This might be a fun way to encourage them to try reading.

And I hope that it helps you think of ways to get your kids actively reading each day.

And I think it would be a fun way for you to work as a family, to achieve some reading goals.

And I know that you'll see the benefits when you get something like this in place.

So hope that helps you.

Are you ready campers, for our hello song?

Let's do it.

♪ Hello readers ♪ ♪ Hello writers ♪ ♪ Hello campers ♪ ♪ I'm glad you're here today ♪ ♪ Hello readers ♪ ♪ Hello writers ♪ ♪ Hello campers ♪ ♪ I'm glad you're here today ♪ You know, I am so glad you're here today.

This is our last week here at Camp-Read-A-Lot, and then we've got to get ready for the new school year and that's gonna be just as exciting, but we've got a few things left to do here at camp to help us be ready so that we can be strong readers and ready for that school year.

One of the things that we're going to do, oh, you're right.

We have to say our pledge, but one of the things we're gonna do after that is we're gonna train our ears for sound.

And that always helps us when we're reading and writing.

All right, so before I forget again, are you ready to do our pledge?

All right, let me stand up.

Let's get our salute ready.

On my honor, I will try my best to be kind to everyone, to have a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

Great job.

All right.

So now it's time for us to train our ears for sound.

And we are going to do the onset and rhyme game.

And we're gonna blend the onset and then the rhyme.

Now remember, this rhyme is related to rhyming words because the rhyme means the ending part of the word.

And that's exactly how words rhyme is because they have the same ending.

But I need my friend Scooter to help me.

Will you help me find him?

Let's call him.

Scooter.

Scooter, where are you, buddy?

Hey scooter.

Oh, I just remembered something.

It's the last week of camp.

I bet he's in his favorite tree.

Should we go look?

All right, let's go.

I knew it.

I knew I'd find you over here in your tree.

I know, you're gonna miss climbing those trees.

I know.

Let's get you out of the tree.

You can come back to the tree later.

Are you ready?

Yes.

Oh, fantastic.

All right.

Did you have fun in the tree?

Oh, good.

All right.

Look, the campers are here.

They're ready to play our onset and rhyme game.

Are you ready?

Excellent.

Okay.

All right, so our onset and rhyme, I'm going to tell you the onset or the beginning sound and then the rhyme, which is the ending part.

Are you ready to try it?

And then you're gonna put those together and tell me what my word is.

Here we go.

Ll and.

Can you stick those together?

What word is it?

Land.

Great.

All right.

Ready for the next one?

Wah ate.

Wait.

Good job.

Ss eat.

Seat.

Terrific.

Very nicely done.

Let's take a look here at our pocket chart and let's look at some of these pictures and see if we can figure out what the onset and rhyme would be for these pictures.

Here is the word bell.

So what would the beginning of it be?

Bah.

Good.

And the rhyme would be el, so we'd say bah el.

Bell.

Good job.

All right.

How about this picture?

It's a pie.

So what is the onset for that word?

Pah.

Good job.

And the rhyme is eye.

Pah eye, pie.

Terrific.

All right, one last one.

Here is such a cute picture of a goat.

Look how cute.

Lookit, he's so cute.

Goat.

Gah oat.

Goat.

Very nice.

Hey campers, if you practice separating words by their onset and rhyme, that will help you when you're breaking apart words that you are trying to learn as you read, and it will also help you as you're writing.

So that's a great thing to practice.

It's kind of fun to talk that way too.

You can say ha eye mom or ha eye, hi, mm om, mom.

It'll probably drive her a little crazy, but that's sometimes fun isn't it?

(chuckles) All right I have a joke for you.

How do you organize a space party?

How do you organize a space party?

Do you know?

You plan it.

(laughs) Get it?

Space and planet.

(laughs) Oh that was a good one.

You want, yes, I know you want to have a party.

You're always up for a party.

Are you ready to do our catch of the day?

Yes.

All right.

This is a really lovely story that I think you're going to enjoy.

So I want you to sit in your spot.

Excellent.

And here we have our catch of the day.

Our first word is response.

Response.

A response is how you act or what you do when something happens.

So what was my response yesterday when I caught scooter in the marshmallows?

Right, I kind of had to scold him didn't I?

And I had to pull the marshmallow up.

That was my response.

So it's what you do or how you act when something happens.

This is ashes, ashes.

Ashes are what's left after a fire when something burns up and it's this, this little powdery stuff that's left behind.

That's ashes.

And then bargain.

A bargain, oh I love a good bargain.

A bargain is something you get for less money than it usually is.

Like when you find something on sale, it's a bargain.

That's what bargain means.

Now, I want you to be listening and see if you hear those catch of the day words in our story today.

All right.

Today, let me get my reading tools on.

Our story is a story of hope.

Hope is a tricky thing to think about.

It's something that you you want or that you wish for.

That's probably the best way that I could explain it.

And this story is definitely a story of hope.

It's called "A Chair For My Mother" by Vera Williams.

Yeah.

So what do you notice about the picture?

Yep.

I see her.

She, there's a little girl looking in some windows.

Okay.

Here's our front cover and our back cover.

And let's jump in and see where our story takes us.

Here's our title page, "A Chair For My Mother".

Oh, what do you notice there?

Let's take a look at that.

What do you see?

Do you see a jar?

Right?

It looks like it has some money in it.

Why would, why do you think they'd have a jar with money in it?

I wonder what that has to do with our story?

I wonder what they're gonna use the money for?

Hmm.

Okay.

Hey, let's see if we can find out.

Oh, look at this dedication page.

To the memory of my mother, Rebecca Poringer Baker.

That's very nice.

All right, here we go.

The blue tile diner.

My mother works as a waitress in the blue tile diner.

After school, sometimes I go to meet her there.

Then her boss Josephine gives me a job too.

I wash the salts and peppers and fill up the ketchups.

One time I peeled all the onions for the onion soup.

When I finish, Josephine says "Good work, honey" and she pays me.

And every time I put half my money into the jar.

Oh, she's already talked about the jar.

It takes a long time to fill a jar this big.

Every day, when my mother comes home from work, I take down the jar.

My mama empties all her change from her tips out of her purse for me to count.

And then we push all the coins into the jar.

Sometimes my mama is laughing when she comes home from work.

Sometimes she's so tired she falls asleep while I count the money into piles.

Some days she has lots of tips.

Some days she only has a little, then she looks worried.

But each evening, every single shiny coin goes into the jar.

So that's kind of like her piggy bank, right?

Do you have a piggy bank?

It's good to save some of your money instead of spending it all.

You're gonna see why it, why it's good that she saved some money.

We sit in the kitchen to count the tips.

Usually grandma sits with us too.

While we count, she likes to hum.

Often she has money in her old leather wallet for us.

Whenever she gets a good bargain on tomatoes or bananas or something she buys, she puts the savings, she puts by the savings and goes, it goes right in the jar.

So everybody's saving in that jar.

That's kind of fun.

When we get a single other coin in, when we can't get a single other coin into the jar, we are going to take all the money and go and buy a chair.

Yep, a chair.

A wonderful, beautiful fat, soft armchair.

We will get one covered in velvet with roses all over it.

We're going to get the best chair in the whole world.

That is because our old chairs burned up.

There was a big fire in our house.

All of our chairs burned.

So did our sofa.

And so did everything else.

That wasn't such a long time ago.

My mother and I were coming home from buying new shoes.

I had new sandals.

She had new pumps.

We were walking to our house from the bus.

We were looking at everyone's tulips.

She was saying she liked red tulips and I was saying, I liked the yellow ones.

Then we came to our block.

Right outside our house stood two big fire engines.

I could see lots of smoke.

Tall orange flames came out of the roof.

All the neighbors stood in a bunch across the street.

Mama grabbed my hand and we ran.

My uncle Sandy saw us and ran to us.

Mama yelled "Where's mother?"

I yelled "Where's my grandma?"

My Aunt Ida waved and shouted "She's here, she's here.

She's okay.

Don't worry."

Oh, Grandma was all right.

Our cat was safe too, though it took a while to find her, but everything else and our whole house was spoiled.

What was left of the house was turned to charcoal and ashes.

We went to stay with my mother's sister Aunt Ida, and Uncle Sandy.

And then we were able to move into an apartment downstairs.

We painted the walls yellow.

The floors were all shiny, but the rooms were all empty.

The first day we moved in, the neighbors brought pizza and cake and ice cream, and they brought a lot of other things too.

The family across the street brought a table and three kitchen chairs.

The very old man next door gave us a bed from his, when his children were little.

My other grandpa bought us a beautiful rug.

My mother's other sister Sally had made us red and white curtains.

Mama's boss Josephine brought pots and pans and silverware and dishes.

My cousins brought me their own stuffed bear.

Everyone clapped when my grandma made a speech.

"You are the kindest people."

she said, "And we thank you very, very much.

It's lucky we're young and can start all over."

That was last year, but we still have no sofa and no big chair.

And when mama comes home, her feet hurt.

"There's no good place for me to take a load off my feet."

She says.

When grandma wants to sit back and hum, and cut up potatoes, she has to get as comfortable as she can on a hard kitchen chair.

So that is how come mama brought home the biggest jar could find at the diner and all the coins started going into the jar.

Now the jar is too heavy for me to lift down.

Uncle Sandy gave me a quarter.

He had to boost me up so I could put it in.

Look at that jar.

Wow.

After supper, mama and grandma and I stood in front of the jar.

"Well, I never would have believed it, but I guess it's full."

Mama said.

My mama brought home little paper wrappers for the nickels and dimes and the quarters.

I counted them all out and wrapped them all up.

On my mother's day off, we took all the coins to the bank.

The bank exchanged them for $10 bills.

Then we took the bus downtown to shop for our chair.

All right.

We shopped through our furniture, four furniture stores.

We tried out big chairs and small ones, high chairs and low chairs, soft chairs and hard ones.

Grandma said she felt like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" trying out all these chairs.

Finally, we found the chair we were all dreaming of.

And the money in the jar was enough to pay for it.

We called Aunt Ida and Uncle Sandy and they came right down in their pickup truck to drive the chair home for us.

They knew we couldn't wait for it to be delivered.

Do you see the chair?

Mm-hmm.

I tried out the chair in the back of the truck.

Mama wouldn't let me sit back there though while we drove, but they let me sit in it while they carried it up to the door.

We set the chair right beside the window with the red and white curtains.

Grandma and mama and I all sat in it a while while Aunt Ida took our picture.

Now grandma sits in it and talks with people going by in the daytime.

And mama sits down and watches the news on TV when she comes home from her job.

After supper, I sit with her and she can reach right up and turn out the light if I fall asleep in her lap.

Wow.

Isn't that a great story?

Do you see how that story had some hope in it?

What did that chair mean to them?

Right.

They had hope that they were gonna start their life over, right?

They lost all their things in a fire, but that chair was a symbol of hope.

It showed them that better times were coming.

Isn't that awesome?

I love it.

And there were some things too that I want to talk to you about.

There, we call them cause and effect.

The cause is why something happened and the effect is because it happened, what happened next?

So on my chart, I have some things here.

Here's the cause is empty and I want to see if you can help me figure out what the cause was.

Here's the effect.

We went to stay with my mother's sister Aunt Ida and Uncle Sandy.

Why did they have to go stay there?

Or why did they go stay?

Right.

The cause was their apartment burned down, right?

So because their fire burned, that fire burned their house and all their things, they went to live with their family.

All right.

So here I have the cause.

Grandma has to get as comfortable as she can on a hard kitchen chair.

So that's the why?

What?

So what was the effect?

The cause is she has to sit here.

The effect is, yeah, she can't, she can't get comfortable.

She doesn't have a good day soft place to sit.

Right?

She has to sit in the hard chair.

Excellent thinking.

Well, I want to get over to our craft, but before we do, I have a joke for you.

It's a good one.

Are you ready Scooter?

You're gonna like this one.

All right.

What kind of flower is on your face?

What kind of flowers on your face?

Here's my face.

Can you see a flower?

What do you think?

Tulips.

(laughs) Get it, two lips?

And I thought it was a perfect joke 'cause the story talked about tulips and how they liked 'em.

(laughs) Tulips.

Tulips are a flower and then you have two lips.

Pretty funny, huh?

(laughs) Let's go over to our craft table.

Today, I want you to think about a time when you, something that makes you feel hopeful.

So think about a symbol, which is a picture that represents hope for you.

Now, I had some help thinking, I was brainstorming with some friends because there were a lot of things I could think about to draw to give me hope.

But then this one I think you're going to agree with.

So I'm gonna draw it kind of quickly.

So I'm not going to make it super fancy and beautiful.

And then I'm gonna hold it up and see if you know what it is.

Okay?

All right.

So here's my symbol of hope.

Now my symbol of hope is for this year.

Okay?

So I'm thinking about this school year and I'm thinking about what would my symbol of hope be?

Okay.

Are you ready to see my symbol?

Okay.

Here's my symbol.

My symbol of hope is a school bus because I have hope that we're gonna get to go to school and be at school together and ride the school bus if we ride school buses.

But my hope, this is my symbol of hope that we're going to be able to stay in our classrooms face to face and enjoying and learning together.

Wouldn't that be awesome?

Right.

You can draw something that you hope for.

Think about something that you, that when you look at it, you think, oh yep.

I hope that happens.

And that will help you to have a fabulous start to the school year.

It doesn't have to be about school.

It can be about anything.

Mine is about school because that's coming up right around the corner.

♪ Skidamarink a dink a dink ♪ ♪ Skidamarink a doo ♪ ♪ I love you ♪ ♪ Skidamarink a dink a dink ♪ ♪ Skidamarink a doo ♪ ♪ I love you ♪ ♪ I love you in the morning ♪ ♪ And in the afternoon, ♪ ♪ I love you in the evening ♪ ♪ And underneath the moon ♪ ♪ Oh Skidamarink a dink a dink ♪ ♪ Skidamarink a doo ♪ ♪ I love you ♪ ♪ And you and you and you ♪ I hope you have a fabulous day today and think about something that you have hope for.

Maybe you can talk to your family about that.

Maybe you all have an idea of something you hope for.

That would be a great conversation.

Bye-bye.

(upbeat guitar music)