A fun fall book

This year all kindergarten students go to the gym for 45 minutes of "SMART" time. They are broken up into small groups, 8-10 students, upon their arrival and we start out with some spinning. After that each group takes off to a station to spend 3-5 minutes on an activity. This takes the place of their normal physical education, music, and library class for the week. Basically I get about 25 minutes with a class each week. I am trying my hardest to incorporate some type of reading, library, or book skill into that time. Luckily I have found some ways to sneak a book in but I do struggle with that weekly.

The kindergarten teachers gave me a calendar containing phonics, language/grammar, reading comprehension, sight words, and their thematic unit for each week so this helps guide me in my book and topic selection. I also make sight word flash cards and do them with the students. Yesterday I zipped through Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. I have always LOVED the illustrations in this book and thought about what a creative idea it is.

Our weather here has been quite odd for Fall. Yesterday's high was 80 so I grabbed my EA, Educational Assistant, and we went outside to gather materials. We grabbed colorful leaves from different trees, acorns, helicopter seeds, grass, feathers, twigs, and any other objects we could find. This morning I spread them across the lobby of the gym floor and challenged the kids to try to re-create Lois Ehlert's animal characters or to create their own leaf men and women.

 

Here are some of the cuties that were made today. I have seen a second grade teacher have her students glue one to a piece of construction paper. I am thinking about doing this activity with my Writer's Workshop group and then having them write a story about the leaf person's adventure. I will make a post if we do that.

Wishing you all a HAPPY and SAFE Halloween!

It's that time of year...Book Character Parade TIME!

Does your school have a book character parade? Are you looking for some new ideas? I was going to re-cycle my Cleopatra costume from Book Fair (Yes I like to dress up in a costume on Wish List Day and for the car dismissal line on the day of Family Night!) but the librarian across the street had a better idea...the Lunch Ladies from the graphic novels by Jarrett J. Krosoczka.

 

Easy costume! All you need is
- Apron
- Jeans, a white shirt, and sneakers
- Gloves
- Kitchen tool of some sort
- Copy of the book
- Hairnet if you are brave enough!

Here is a picture of our special area team dressed up and ready to go!

Other costumes I have been in the past.
- Word Wizard by Cathryn Falwell
I found a purple graduation gown and safety pinned words all over it. I had a sorcerer's hat and a wand.

- Waldo is another easy one. I shopped online at http://www.shopwaldo.com/

Some cute costumes I saw teacher's wear today...

- Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch

This first grade teacher made a jacket out of brown bags. She had a crown and borrowed my Library Dragon doll.

- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.

Wear brown pants and a shirt. Diecut letters or numbers all adhere them to your clothes.

Wild Discoveries, Wacky New Animals

You just never know if you are going to run into at a conference!

After our session was over it was lunch time and boy was I hungry. We did a quick pack up, abandoned it all in the room and headed to the lunch. We ended up sitting at a table with author Heather L. Montgomery. We started a conversation with her and she told us she was an author from Alabama and she began telling us about her book. Sarah immediately recognized it from last years book fair. It's called Wild Discoveries Wacky New Animals. How cool is that frog on the cover?

I went to Heather's website http://www.heatherlmontgomery.com/ and found a wealth of teacher resources to go with this book. On her website you can find

* A list of book pairs to go with Wild Discoveries

* A 40-page "Wild About Learning Unit"  (Word or .pdf files) that is aligned to the Common Core.

* Youtube video links to videos of some of the animals.

* "Which is the Wackiest?" survey and bar graph of results.

* Interview of Heather Montgomery talking about her this book.

All of this information is found on the homepage of her website...just scroll on down.

It turns out that the Scholastic Book Fair booth had the book on sale for $3.99 so I quickly snatched a copy. Looking it over I don't think it would be great for my young students. I would recommend it for grades 4 and up. I do see some things that I could adapt from the book. I particularly liked how the left side of each page gives the name of the animal in large bold print, the scientific name, the animals size, what it's role in nature is and where it was discovered. 

The animals role in nature as either a carnivore or herbivore are terms I can easily teach my students. It brings to mind Brod Bagert's "Food Cheer" poem which can be found in his book The Gooch Machine. My kids love learning that cheer!

Due to Fall Break plans I was unable to attend Heather's sessions on Saturday. I thought there were some really good sessions on Saturday so I was bummed to miss her presentation and others. I am passionate about science and I can only imagine her session would have been great to attend. I did visit her website and found her fees to visit a school aren't too costly so I am thinking about maybe having her visit.

TASL Conference

Some of you might be stopping by my blog after attending our "Cool Collaborations II and the Common Core" session at our recent TASL conference. Thanks so much for attending and stopping by my blog.

As you can see my blog posts aren't as frequent as I would like them to be but I hope to change that soon.

I picked up a couple more cool books at the Scholastic Book Fair booth so I hope to cover one a week. I'm beginning to think Scholastic may want to put us on their payroll after Sarah's idea sold out copies of the non-fiction Fly Guy books.
- Please follow my blog and you'll get updates when I make a post.