September Songs and Poems

Here are some familiar poems and songs I plan to use the first few weeks of school. I plan to make them into charts to use during Shared Reading. 

click here to download 

Ten for Ten

If you could choose 10 picture books, what would they be?

This wonderful event is hosted by Enjoy and Embrace Learning and Reflect and Refine Learning Building a Learning Community. 

(Thank you~ Cathy and Mandy!) Here is my list of"must-have" picture books.

Superhero ABC by Bob McLeod

Think Big! By Nancy Carlson

Counting in The Garden by Kim Parker

Feathers for Lunch by Lois Ehlert

Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! By Candace Fleming

Tippy-Tippy-Tippy, Hide! by Candace Fleming

Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt

Everybody Needs a Rock by Byrd Baylor

Jangles a Big Fish Story by David Shannon

Ralph Tells a Story by Abby Hanlon

How To Books

I am always on the lookout for picture books that connect to procedural writing. This summer I have come across two picture books to add to my list.The first one is called How To Teach a Slug to Read by Susan Pearson. 

 This book has advice and steps on how to teach a slug to read. 

I think this is an excellent book to read in the fall when kicking off reading workshop and returning to when teaching procedural writing. I plan to have my class write a book innovation.

HOW TO TEACH A KINDERGARTENER HOW TO READ.

The second book is Everyone Can Learn To Ride A Bicycle by Chris Raschka. This book is about learning to ride a bike. 

I know in my classroom I have many students who try to write books about bike riding. The illustrations are beautiful and very expressive. I plan to add this book to my illustration study too.  

                                     

Happy Reading! 

Special Person of The Week

I have made some updates to my Special Person book. 

I changed the font thank you to Jessica Stanford.
I added this cute frame from Loopty Loo Doodly.

I added some more questions/pages. 

Special Person Book
Click here for questions in Pages
Click here for questions in PDF 

I have blogged about how I do the Special Person of the Week. You can read about it here. 

Sunflowers and Summer

Shared Reading~September
Sunflower Children

Poem for Pocket Chart 

 

Click here for Pocket chart and Poem  

Students can investigate sunflowers.

Draw sunflowers in their science notebooks.

After reading and exploring sunflowers draw facts they learned.
.

The class could take photographs like Kate does in her book Sunflower. Have

students glue the photographs in their science notebooks and label the parts. 

I made this on Skitch. I plan to do a lot of labeling with this app. 

Students can create a Bubble Thinking Map describing a sunflower.

Students can paint sunflowers.
Make sunflowers out of clay.

My friend Amy created a sunflower poster with all of her students' hands.  She had it hanging in the center of her classroom. 
{Thanks for sharing Amy.}

 Summer Books For Writing Time

Jangles is the perfect book to kick off storytelling.  

It is a little scary but full of suspense. (My son Owen was scared because of Jangle's fishhooks). I love David Shannon books...this is my FAVORITE!

I came across this book and quickly added it to my Amazon wish list. There are many things I love about this book. Beachcombing by Jim Arnosky is an informational picture book about the beach.  When I read this book to my two boys, it quickly brought us back to our memories this summer on the beach. You can see the beautiful layout below.

~Where writers get their ideas~

 I love that Jim has a wonderful author's note about how he visited twenty-six different beaches along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. He and his wife Deanna walked the shorelines looking for things that made each beach special. He tells how he made lots of little sketches in his notebook and took pictures of everything. He used his drawings and photographs to make Beachcombing.  

This book is a treasure!