50 Cents A Cap!

I always love reading Caps for Sale! It's definitely one of my favorites, especially when it comes to a read-aloud. It's always an engaging crowd pleaser. Children are mesmerized by it. It's like magic really. And I think there is a lesson to be learned in that. Because it is the simplest of stories, with simple illustrations. It's a traditional tale, re-told in a book that was published decades ago. There's nothing gimicky, or flashy about it. No rhymes or predictable repeating texts (not that there's anything wrong with that). No familiar characters or borderline offensive humor. It's just a good story. And there's power in that. It's appeal probably lies somewhat in the fact that it's a bit refreshing!

So anyway, we read it and all enjoyed it!

When I asked my students what they would do if monkeys stole their hats (or anything else), most of them responded with violent solutions. Yikes! Where does that come from? Is that just a kids thing, or is this generation just exposed to more of that (violence, that is)? I don't want to sound like a farty, old person here... Were we like that when we were little too?

You can get back to me on that. In the meantime, check out what we did after reading our story:

Week One Reflection

Please forgive my scatteredness (that's not a word, is it?) this week. It will most likely continue into next week. We (my husband and I) closed on our new house this week, and will be moving next week, so everything in my life is in transit pretty much... including my internet (I'm blogging from a school right now)! The internet at my old place is gone, and it is not yet working at the new place. :-( So thank you for your patience with me.

This was a fantastic first week of Literacy Launchpad classes! The first week is always a little rough for me, because my kids have moved up into new classrooms, and I have newly enrolled children, and I spend a lot time trying to hunt down my class of kids. But I found them all!

The kids all responded to Caps For Sale (our story this week) with such enthusiasm. Our read-alouds were nice and long because we were discussing and predicting as we were reading. And none of it was forced! Most of the dialog was initiated by the children. I love how observant they are.

We talked about how the peddler got the tall stack of caps on his head. We talked about what a "peddler" is. We talked about what "wares" are. We debated what color the peddler's caps actually were (they didn't look like the colors that the author identified them as). We wondered what happened to the peddler's caps when they were gone after his nap. We wondered why the monkeys took the peddler's caps. We laughed at the silly way the monkeys acted. We wondered if the monkeys were going to give the peddler back his cap. We discussed what we might say to the monkeys if we were the peddler. We made angry faces like the peddler. We wondered if the peddler was ever going to sell any of his caps. We wondered why the monkeys didn't buy the caps from the peddler.

A couple of my favorite things that the kids said this week:
- One little boy concluded that the peddler "must be nocturnal" because he was sleeping during the day. How many four-year-olds use the word "nocturnal"?!
- Another little boy told me that the monkeys could not have bought the caps from the peddler because monkeys don't have money. I was pretty impressed that he could reason that out on his own. ...And then he told me that the monkeys would have money when they grew up. So there was something in the story that made this little boy decide that the monkeys were not adult monkeys. I wonder what that was? I wish I would have dug a little deeper with him on that one. I had never given much thought to the age of the monkeys in the book.

I'll end my post here for now. I've gotta run. But I will hopefully be posting again this weekend!

Monkey Business

Today was the first official day of Literacy Launchpad for the year! Hooray! And this week we're reading Caps For Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina. This is one of my favorite stories of all time. I remember the librarian at my elementary school reading it to my class when I was young, and I find myself mimicking the gestures and inflections she used when I read the story.

I met with two great groups of kids today(2 yr. olds through 4 yr. olds). They all did so great. It amazed me how well they all jumped into the swing of things on our first day of class! Especially since many of them are new students that weren't with me last year.

There were a few kids that came in with the wiggles, but isn't it amazing how a good book can calm even the most outrageous cases of the wiggles?

The kids laughed at the monkeys in the book, shook their fingers and stomped their feet like the peddler, showed me their angry faces, made monkey noises, and began making unprompted predictions! I was so proud of them!

After our story and discussion, we made monkeys out of construction paper. And decorated our own caps to put on their heads. The kids were excited about telling me what kind of monkey they made: mean, sad, nice, etc. I love their creativity. One little girl even gave her monkey sharp, scary teeth! Yikes! Don't mess with that monkey!

It was so fun to be back at school, and to hear the kids saying, "Hi, Ms. Amy" in the hallway. It's going to be a great year! More news to come later in the week!