A Sweet Story to Read for Father’s Day

Always Carry Me with You isn’t necessarily a Father’s Day book, and it’s not even necessarily about just fathers and kids (though the illustrations look like a man). It’s about how a parent’s love covers their children and how they wish that the kids could always feel it.

The book, written by Hervé Éparvier and illustrated by Fred Benaglia, is a brief but sweet book with an extended metaphor about a stone. It talks about that stones are beautiful and lead many lives, and “a stone doesn’t need anything to be happy. It just is and that’s all.”

But stones can be used to build great buildings and make art. Sometimes pretty ones are kept on special shelves, and they can be used to play games or start fires.

Stones can be as big as mountains or as small as a grain of sand.

Or they can be small enough to fit in a child’s pocket as a reminder of a parent’s love.

A pebble to keep you company, to comfort you on days when you feel afraid, and to remind you that you are not alone.

This is one of those books that can definitely lead to tears on the part of the reader under the right circumstances. It would be super sweet to read this book with your kiddo (for Father’s Day or any other time) and then give them a little rock they can carry with them or keep on their bedside table.

The illustrations are colorful and look like ink drawings with color added. Kids will enjoy looking at all the details and how the images evoke emotions. It’s a lovely book and a quick but meaningful read for any time of year.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2024 by Ivy Kids Eco. Suggested retail price $19.99.

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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