Skip to main content

Storytime Bilingüe featuring “Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn”

With a day off from school on Monday, I really wanted to take the kids to do something fun in the morning. But since we are in COVID-19 times, there is not a plethora of activities to choose from like there used to be. It made me so nostalgic for this time last year, when my year-long maternity leave had just begun, and we filled each day with story times, playgroups, and had so many options of toddler programming! Community Kangaroo is glaringly vacant nowadays, but there was one activity posted for today. A story walk put together by the Franklin Public Library through the DelCarte Conservation Area. So that is where we went, and we had the best time!

It was the perfect fall day to read Kenard Pak's "Goodbye Summer Hello Autumn" in the woods. This is a beautifully illustrated story of a young girl as she watches the world around her prepare for a new season, from the animals to the trees, to the wind and the air! 

The whole walk took us about an hour, because I stopped to record each page and we took many, many photos. Mateo was beyond himself with excitement, because usually he is relegated to the stroller or I wear him on my back when we go out. But this time his stroller didn't fit in the narrow and root-filled walking path, and I had left his backpack in the car and it was just too far to go back. So instead he got to walk, run, and explore on his own two feet.

I was worried that it would be crowded, but we were easily able to social distance from the few other families we encountered on the trail. The woods were tranquil and it was such a special way to say goodbye to summer and hello to autumn. 

View our story time below to watch our adventure unfold, and if you are local, I strongly recommend you check out for yourself!





Here a few photos of our adventures in the woods





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is 5 Little Monkeys Racist?

I’ve seen a lot of Tik Toks debunking children’s nursery rhymes lately. I have two toddlers, so now whenever I hear one of those rhymes, I think about their unsavory origins. But my son loves, loves Five Little Monkeys. He’s just learning to talk, and can almost say it by himself. I’ve thought about telling him to stop singing it since I learned in the original lyrics it’s not monkeys jumping on the bed, but he just gets so much joy from singing it as he jumps up and falls down, I thought... no harm, no foul, right? As long as he thinks the song is about monkeys, it’s ok.  Until my niece came over one day, and the three toddlers were playing on an old mattress we have on the living room floor for them to jump around on. My son asked me to sing 5 Little Monkeys. At first it was cute, because they literally were jumping on the bed, but then I took a good look at the three of them.  My kids are half-Guatemalan but very fair, like I am. Whereas my niece is half-black, and her ski...

Why You Should Travel with Little Kids

I took my first cross-country road trip when I was six-weeks-old. My parents loaded me up in an old Ford Wagoneer and drove me home from my dad's hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, to my hometown of Ojai, CA. After that, we traveled back and forth between the East Coast and the West Coast every summer of my life. A few times we flew, but most years we loaded up the car with the suitcases, the dogs, and the children and drove 3,000 miles across the country. This early exposure to travel instilled within me a joy of seeing the world, and since that first trip I have visited 34 states and 14 countries. And I hope to share that same joy with my own little ones. Traveling with children can be hard--it disrupts their nap schedules, may involve crossing timelines, and definitely pushes everyone beyond their comfort zones. But seeing different countries and different parts of our country as children gives them a greater appreciation for cultural and regional differences, and it widens their exper...

Toddler Morning Schedule in Spanish

Do you struggle to get your toddlers ready and out of the house on time in the morning? The past few morning in the Barrios house have been absolutely terrible. Maya usually wakes up early with me, but I let Mateo sleep until the last possible moment before we need to wake him up to get to school and work on time. This worked for a while, but this week we have left the house in tears.  Since this is the kids' first year apart during the day, they miss each other so much. They want to play with each other in the mornings instead of getting ready, so I tried to think of a way to keep all of us on track.  In order to help build their independence and organizational skills, I came up with a morning schedule for us to follow, with words and images. Then I placed a Maya copy and a Mateo copy in a clear dry-erase pocket and hung it in a central place by the kitchen. Now the kids know exactly what they need to do  in order to get time to play with each other before school each mo...