Pssst!

We read the funniest story the other week! No, it's not a big secret. This is the title of one of our recent Literacy Launchpad reads, Pssst! by Adam Rex. 

This story is Pixar-ish in that it is completely enjoyable by young-ins, but can also be throughly  entertaining for adults. When I bought this book, I actually bought a copy to use with my students, and a copy for my older sister, Rebecca! And she loves it!

Pssst! was part of our unit of summer adventures. Rex's story took us on a hilarious visit to a zoo full of talking animals that are full of character, and not at all shy about asking for some favors! Can you imagine... turkeys requesting corn to turn into clean burning fuel!?! 

Oh! This book is so full of awesomeness! The detail in the illustrations. All the hidden little funnies. I never get sick of this one. And it's SO much fun to read aloud. I found out after a recent phone call with my sister that we both have our own funny little ways we like to do each character voice. 

Literally all of my students had an opinion about whether or not they would help out the zoo animals and gather their various requested items. They're getting better and better about forming their own opinions and not just copying everyone else's answers, which makes for such wonderful discussions. Great connections were made between our story and our own lives. 

And check it out, we got to chat with the animals ourselves!! On our own zoo visit... In class!! We laughed a lot. 

We made a list so we wouldn't forget what each animal wanted...

Read this book before your next visit to the zoo!

The Hat - Lesson Reflection

The Hat, by Jan Brett, was a hit... as anticipated (See Tuesday's post for a review of the book). Here are some thoughts about yesterday's predicting lesson:

•  My first group session was a little crazy. The students just got so excited during our activity we did during the read-aloud. They had a difficult time staying seated and staying quiet long enough for me to read each page. I mean, I love that they're so engrossed in the story and our activity, but I don't enjoy having to say, "On your bottom, please," over and over... and over.

• I gave the students complete creative freedom with their "hats" and puppet. No regrets there.
  

• Keeping the order during a unit on predicting proves to be quite tricky, because each child is eager to get their prediction out first as we go through each story. I hate to enforce strict rules about raising hands and what-not too much, because I want them to feel free to chime in and say what they're thinking, and I want it to be fun. But perhaps I need to put more focus on this?

• Conversations between the puppets were a riot!
  

• Yesterday we used some paper puppets to do predicting during The Hat. The students each couldn't wait for it to be their turn to predict with their animal puppet. After one student's turn had passed, he immediately said, "Can we read the story again?" I said, "We still are reading the story!" I love when they are so blantantly excited about our story and what we're doing. Motivating and Empowering readers?? Check!

• The clothesline activity I came up with added the perfect element of fun, and helped with comprehension. I loved it. 

• This lesson would be so much fun with even one child. Oh, the possibilities! I can't wait till Isaac is old enough to play around with these activities!
  

• Yes, he purposely put the stocking over the hen's eyes.

Again, detailed instructions for this read-aloud and activities will be available soon!

Old Ladies

We've been reading an awful lot of stories about old ladies lately, haven't we? They've been such fun stories though!

This week we read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (Caldecott Honor Book). This story kicked off our new rhyming unit! And the children did SO great with this concept!

We explored the rhyming words as we read the story; then we did an activity where we stuffed the old lady's belly full of the animals from the book. The children had to complete the rhyme I gave them (I don't know why she swallowed the...) before they got to stuff that animal into her belly. I think every class got stumped on the last rhyme (the horse one). They had to think hard on some of the other rhymes too, but overall did really well.

I feel really good about this week's start to our rhyming unit. I feel it's going to ease us into the rest of the unit very nicely. Next week will be a little trickier, as we come up with our own rhymes. I'm eager to see how they do with it!


Oh! Almost forgot! I have a cute story to share!

We were re-reading the story The Teeny-Tiny Woman at the beginning of one of our classes, and I read the part about how the teeny tiny woman left her cottage to go for a teeny tiny walk...

Then, later in the story, it says something about the teeny tiny woman walking back to her home. After I read that line, one of the children said, "yeah, back to her home at college."

I stopped for a second when he said this, trying to figure out why he thought the teeny tiny woman lived at a college. Then it dawned on me that he thought I said "college" when I read the word "cottage" earlier in the story! Makes sense. I mean, "cottage" is definitely not a word we use much these days. I can understand how their brains might hear the word "college" instead.

This created a great teachable moment, and we talked about what a cottage is.

First Month Success

Our new story for this week, Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?, didn't have the same intrigue as last week's story (The Incredible Book Eating Boy),which they're still talking about this week. The simple, repeating text was great for encouraging "reading" along and interaction though.

We played a listening game where I played real recordings of animal sounds on a CD and they had to match the sound to the correct animal from our story. It was interesting (even for me) to hear these animal sounds. Ever heard the sound a zebra makes? Very unusual. It sounds like a dog barking! That one really stumped the kids.

I'm having fun hearing the kids recap our story from last week every time we meet. One little girl came in today and saw last week's book and said, "Look! It's the incredible boy!" I was so excited that she remembered, and used, the word "incredible."

This first month of class has been an opportunity for us all to get into the swing of class, introduce the kids to some basic concepts, and get them pumped about "reading" class. I think I've been pretty successful with all those things. They all seem to be having a lot of fun, which is the most important thing. I love coming to get them for class and hearing them say, "I love 'reading' class!" There are a few that actually refer to class by it's official title - Literacy Launchpad. It's even cuter when they say that!

Reid is now at Cheekwood! He's all settled in, and hopefully enjoying himself. I saw some GREAT scarecrows out there, and I didn't even get a chance to look at very many of them. One of the scarecrows near Reid even has a bike! It's all so much fun; I can't wait for our field trip!

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!