Read-A-Thon Kick-off!!

In honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday (3/2) and Read Across America going on this week, I am hosting a read-a-thon fundraiser at several schools and kicking them all off this week! Today was my first kick-off event. I did a brief read-aloud session with a large group of preschoolers and explained to them how the read-a-thon works (I'm hoping their parents will take the time to read the letter I sent home explaining it as well).

I am SO excited about this fundraiser! SO excited! My new friend, Elise, with Usborne/Kane Miller books helped me plan it. The reason it's so awesome is that

1. It encourages reading
2. The participating children are rewarded for their reading with new books of their choosing
3. The schools all get new books for their classrooms (also of their choosing)
4. We get money to put into our adoption fund!

The kids all seemed excited about the event at the kick-off today. Although, it was disappointing to only see a few children raise their hands when I asked how many of them read with their parents everyday. :( Perhaps this read-a-thon will help change all that. That's the goal at least!

I really think I'm going to try to make this an annual thing. It's so much fun. I'm hoping the families all take part in it and take the time to read and collect pledges. How fun for all the kiddos!

I'll keep you posted on how it goes. I have 3 more schools to kick it off at this week! Yahoo!!

What's A Rhyming Unit WIthout Some Dr. Seuss?

... Not much of a rhyming unit at all, if you ask me! So we finished out the month with There's A Wocket in My Pocket. Again, and easy reader, but one of my favorite read alouds! Seriously! I think I like this one even more than Put Me In the Zoo. The silly words are so much fun (for me), and they draw each and every student in like magic.

My favorite part about reading this one is when I get to stop and ask the students very seriously if they've ever had a "yink in their sink," or a "nooth grush on their tooth brush." You would be amazed how many of them have!

I never know what to expect with each group when we get to the "vug under the rug." I like to lower my voice to a kind of spooky whisper when I read this page. They love it! And they assume I know what that vug under the rug looks like (it remains concealed in the illustrations), like I've got some in with Dr. Seuss and he let me take a peek at it.

You can tell Christmas is in full swing when one of my students insisted that the vug under the rug really was just Santa. She wouldn't let it go.

We had to make some silly creatures of our own to take home! We got to mix and match heads, legs, and bodies of our choosing to make 'em. How fun! They were each unique. One of my students chose to make his creature entirely out of feet pieces!

I let the students come up with rhyming names for their creatures too. That was a little tricky... they came up with some interesting names and rhymes...

Here are some photos:

What's In Your Pocket?

There's a Wocket in mine! ...Well, O.K. not in my pocket, but the little boy in this week's story had a Wocket in his pocket! We read Dr. Seuss' tale There's a Wocket in My Pocket!this week. This is a story FULL of rhymes, and all the kids did an awesome job figuring those rhyming words out!

What surprised me a little bit this week was our discussions we had following our read-aloud of There's a Wocket in My Pocket!. There's not much (if any) plot to this story, just lots of rhymes and fun. And discussing a book that doesn't have much plot is a bit difficult. But the kids were all very opinionated about the creatures in the book. They told me all about which ones they liked, if they had any of these kinds of creatures at their own house (some told me they did), what they would do is there was a "Zower in their shower", etc.

Everybody was excited about hearing last week's story again too! They all demanded that I read it again (that was the plan anyway). They were pros with all the rhymes in it. They pretty much read the story to me. I had to slow some of them down because they were "reading" too far ahead, too quickly!

After we read both of our stories, we made silly creatures like the ones in There's a Wocket in My Pocket!. The children got to create their own unique creature by mixing and matching heads, bodies, and feet of different sorts.

Once the creatures were done, we decided what kind of creatures they were ("A Bofa on the sofa?" "A Ghair under the chair?"). This was a tricky task, so with most of the kids I started a phrase for them and let them figure out the rhyming word to complete it. For example: Is your creature a Muss on a ________? (Answer: bus). This worked well, and once they got the hang of it, many of the kids were coming up with their own rhymes. They were often using made-up words, which was great because most of the words in our book were made-up too!

So we glued, and colored, and rhymed, rhymed, rhymed this week! It was great!

No class next week, but we will wrap up our rhyming unit the week of the 26th!