It's Good to Share

In the book It's Sharing Day! by Kirsten Larsen, Dora is going to have a Sharing Day Lunch at her Abuela's house, and as she and Boots make their way to Abuela's, they meet their friends who not only join them, but help them along the way.

The Spanish vocabulary in the story isn't too overwhelming for me. Hola, empanadas, and Abuela are words I feel rather comfortable pronouncing without feeling like a complete WASP. However, I needed to get some help with arroz con leche and Mira. I asked my sister-in-law, who is fluent in Spanish, to help me with the pronunciation. She kindly obliged.

Sometimes Hadley listens to the story as I read it, but sometimes she'd rather look at the pictures and figure out the plot that way. In this book, Hadley was most interested in the pictures, probably because she recognizes the characters from TV. In the story, each character brings something to the Sharing Day Lunch (seems appropriate), and Hadley's favorite item is the cowboy cookies that Benny brings. Not the empanadas or the arroz con leche. The cowboy cookies. There is one picture where Benny is holding the plate of cookies and his mom is behind him sort of helping him carry the cookies. This concerns Hadley. She wants Benny to hold the cookies; not his mom. On the next page, Benny's mom is holding the cookies and Hadley is quite annoyed by this. I told her that Benny's mom is holding the cookies so that Benny can keep up with Dora. I think this was mildly satisfying to Hadley. However, every time we read the story we have to stop on this page and have a lengthy discussion about the cowboy cookies. No, Benny's mom did not take the cookies from Benny. Yes, she is helping to carry them so Benny can walk with Dora. Yes, I think everyone will get a cookie (after all, this is a sharing lunch).

Throughout the book, Boots, Benny, Tico, and Isa all help Dora get to her Sharing Day Lunch. There is even a scene where all 5 of them plus Benny's mom get into a plane to fly off to pick up some rice for the arroz con leche, on their way to Abuela's. At the end, Dora recaps what each character shared in the story, and then asks, "What did you share today?" When we finish the story, I ask Hadley what she shared today and she isn't quite sure what to say. She looks at the last picture and then at me and asks, "Did I share a banana today?" I tell her no, but we talk about how she shared some of her toys with Harper and that is a good thing.

The other day I took the girls to Smoothie King and ordered a smoothie for myself and for Hadley. While we were sitting at the table drinking our smoothies, Hadley wanted to know what kind of smoothie I got. I told her I had a raspberry one. She asked me if it was good, and I said yes. I said, "Hey! I have an idea! We can share our smoothies, just like in the Dora book!" I had her at "Dora." Hadley thought this was a great idea, so we traded smoothies for a bit. Hadley said, "We're just like Dora." And I agreed.