Fun Books and Activities for October

Need some quick ideas to make October a cool month of reading? Look no further! I've got a few for you right here!

Monster fun with Go Away, Big Green Monster! 

Make your own books and story pieces of The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything.

Enjoy the beautiful weather with some autumn reading adventures and Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf.

Spider fun with The Itsy Bitsy Spider at home... or in the classroom.

Cool Stuff to do with Spooky Carrots.

Beautiful creations with Leafman.

New, Fabulous Halloween Book and Activity!

Charlotte Gunnufson sent us a copy of her new book Halloween Hustle and the kids and I have been enjoying it immensely. I have actually had to get onto my kids a bit about them dragging the book all over the house (and out to the car on errand trips), before I got a chance to post a review while the book still looked nice and new!

I planned to sit down and read and play with the book today with My Little Reader since it's aimed at kids around his age (he's in kindergarten). But my older son (9) couldn't resist the fun and wanted to join us too! 

I thought it would be fun to make our own little skeletons that could do the Halloween Hustle as we read the story, and fall down just like the skeleton in the book. My Little Reader decided he wanted to make a mummy like the one in the book. After some hard work, and a couple revisions, he had it the way he wanted. We each attached our creations to popsicle sticks for marionette-style puppets. 

I used simple white yarn (because that's what I had in my craft cabinet) to attach the mummy and skeleton to the popsicle stick handles. We punched holes and used twisty ties (again, using what I had handy) to make the puppets' joints move so they could hustle. 

Isn't that an adorable mummy? I think so!

The story is full of fun and whimsical Halloween-type characters that are headed to a party on Halloween night (warning: there is a zombie in the story that is a little on the gross side). While observing the cover, My Little Reader wondered how the skeleton would be able to dance without falling apart since he has no skin or muscles, and he was right on the money with his wonderings. Turns out the skeleton has quite the trouble staying put together as he dances through this tale. 

The rhyming text makes it lots of fun. And we love that it has a happy ending for the skeleton. 

And it really says something when my nine year old thinks a picture book is cool enough to sit and listen to mom read it. 

The skeleton would be easy enough to use even without the string and popsicle sticks attached. You could make the jointed skeleton out of card stock and simply let your child hold him with his hands and make him dance. Be sure you use card stock - I don't think regular paper, or even construction paper, would be heavy enough to work very well. 

I have included a pattern for the skeleton that I made (below). I do not have a pattern for the mummy My Little Reader made. But your little reader could make their own mummy, or could create a puppet based on another character in the book. You could make all the characters and do a puppet show of the story!

Check out the book trailer here!

And learn how to do the "Halloween Hustle" here!



Have fun! And I would love to see some pics of your puppets you make!

SPIDERS!

October is a month of spiders at Literacy Launchpad. I've been doing my best to freak the kids out (in a preschooler-friendly, G-rated way) with these creepy crawlers. My favorite is my friend Harry that I bring along each week. He's a furry little fake spider, with a long tube attached to him, with a bulb at the end that you use to pump air through the tube that makes him jump and wiggle. I try to wear something that allows me to wind the tube through my sleeve and really freak them out when I make him move. But the first week in October I had on short sleeves and I still startled quite a few of my students. Then those very same students were startled the following week when Harry came back, even though they knew how he worked at that point. I love preschoolers! One little boy said, "It's a necklace! It's a necklace. It's a necklace... Right?" Hee.

We read The Itsy Bitsy Spider and The Roly Poly Spider to start off October. The Itsy Bitsy Spider lends itself well to some predicting practice. The kids like to see if they can guess what's going to send the spider flying. And The Roly Poly Spider is all kinds of fun, because it's kind of gross. So we have all kinds of fun ewwwing and ickking at each page turn. The kids all pointed out that this spider was "not a good friend." Indeed! Smart kids!

We reviewed and practiced the sequence of The Itsy Bitsy Spider with a fun activity in which we sent plastic spiders down a piece of a real water spout. This also helps connect this story to real life and make the story concept more concrete for the kids. Most of them ended up saying, "Oh! I have a water spout on my house too!" And then they could actually see just how a big gush of water might wash a spider out of a water spout.

At Home with The Itsy Bitsy Spider

My Little Reader loves the Itsy Bitsy Spider. Both the story and the song. His interest in the song is what initially prompted me to pull the book off the shelf for our first reading... way back whenever that was. Now he sings the song with all the verses from the book mixed in. The "up jumped the cat," one seems to be his favorite.

He's been singing the song a lot lately, which reminded me of this activity I learned from my favorite preschool teacher... Jeanne Bell (note: she was not my preschool teacher, she's a preschool teacher who I simply think is brilliant). When she does this activity with her students, she dresses up like Mother Goose and has this elaborate ruse she pulls off on the kids, which is hysterical. I have a video recoding of it somewhere. I should dig it up and put it online... She would kill me!

I'm not as awesome as Mrs. Bell, so I have never dressed up like Mother Goose. But I knew Isaac would have fun with this one even if Mother Goose didn't make an appearance.

So here are some photos of Isaac and I doing the Itsy Bitsy Spider activity. You'll need a copy of the book, some plastic spider rings (at least one for each of your children or students), a curved section of rain gutter (Home Depot or Lowes), and a plastic bin for catching the water (or a bathtub in our case here).

I suspect you can see where I'm going with this based on the supply list. Check out the photos for the rest.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout.

Down came the rain...

and washed...

the spider out.

Allow the spider to climb back up the waterspout as many times as you wish... or can tolerate. Make sure every student gets a turn washing the spider down the spout. And of course, let them keep their spider rings to remember the reading fun!

Guaranteed fun, and helps solidify this classic rhyme in their little heads. My students could play this activity all day long, and My Little Reader would have too if I would have allowed... But I got really tired of holding the rain gutter. Wish I could come up with a solution for that. Got any suggestions?

Let me know if you try this one out with your kiddos, and how everybody likes it!

Do You Change Your Books with the Season?

I do my best to rotate the picture books that I have out for My Little Reader. (Sometimes "my best" is rotating them every three months.)

What I really enjoy though is rotating our books according to the seasons and the holidays. It's an easy (and educational) way to make your house more festive!

Autumn Adventures with My Little Reader!

It was such a beautiful day here today! Isaac and I went on a walk, and it turned into a bit of a nature hike.

We were crunching through the leaves, and then began finding some pretty ones!

We decided to take them home with us.

Isaac was particularly excited about this one.

We got home and found a book all about leaves to read (Lois Ehlert's Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf).

Isaac compared the leaves in the book to some we found on our walk.

He really like the leaf shaped holes in the illustrations.

Then we talked about how leaves fall from the trees. Here's Isaac being a tree and making some leaves fall.

And here he is comparing some leaves.

Then after dinner, we got out the felt board and played with some soft, colorful leaves.

Optimal Fall Time Reading

photo by atp_tyreseus

The weather is cooling off, the school-agers are back in school, those annoying inflatable ghost decorations are popping up in your neighbors' front yards again... Autumn is here! And I don't know about you, but something about autumn makes me want to curl up and indulge in some frivolous reading. Don't know why that urge comes on, but it does, every year at this time. And I always give into it! No biographies, nothing deeply insightful or informational... I want fluff!

Perhaps our kiddos are having reading cravings as well? And if they're not, maybe they should be! Let's facilitate some cozy reading - autumn style! Here are my suggestions. Add yours in the comments section.

- Let your school-agers unwind with a book after hopping off the bus in the afternoon. Have some warm apple cider or popcorn balls ready for them (you can buy these pre-made if your not the domestic type), and invite them to kick up their feet up with a comic book, a magazine, or some heavier reading if they desire. Be sure to join them in the fun and be a reading role model.

- Take a trip to the park and bring some books along to read under a beautiful autumn tree! Don't forget to bring some blankets to sit on, and to wrap around you!

- Plan a nature walk or a trip to the pumpkin patch, and read some appropriately corresponding books before you go. Then discuss the things you see and experience, and how it compares to what was in the book/story.

- Talk about Halloween coming up and tell some spooky stories (appropriate to the child's age). This is also a great activity to be done on Halloween, perhaps after trick-or-treating while they snack on some of their bounty!

- Check your paper for fall festivals going on. There's often storytelling or storytimes of some sort going on at these.

Field Tripping

Today was the big day - our first Literacy Launchpad field trip!! I would like to say a BIG THANKS to all the families who came out and joined me and Reid. I had a lot of fun. I hope everybody else did too. And the best part was getting to meet some of you, parents. That was really great for me, and I'm hoping that I'll get to see you guys some more in the future (the wheels are already turning for the next Literacy Launchpad field trip). I'm also hoping that I'll get to meet more parents. I know Saturdays are tough for many families because there's soccer and all sorts of things going on. Plus, our trip today was way up in Nashville, which is quite a haul for some families. Thank you especially to those of you who drove from far away to come today.

This whole idea of field tripping came from a friend, Bryn. I was telling her that I wished that I could meet more of the parents of my students, and she had the brilliant idea of planning periodic field trips. Thanks, Bryn!

Today's field trip was pretty brief. We met up, entered Cheekwood as a caravan, made a potty stop, then found Reid and read him a story. The parents and kids then had time to explore the gardens and the other scarecrows, which was nice. But I wish our time together had maybe been a little longer. Especially since some of the families drove so far to come.

Ideally I would like these field trips to be a chance for parents to do something fun and literary with their child, meet-up with me, and also meet each other. So hopefully the next field trip will allow us some more time to chat and make some new friends.

I have to say, story time at Cheekwood was a challenge today. being outdoors offers many distractions, and I worried I wasn't reading loud enough for my voice to carry to everyone. I also wished we had been able to discuss the story a little bit when I was finished reading (like we usually do in class), but we were all somewhat spread out and the kids were anxious to get up and go see the other scarecrows. So again, we'll see if we can work that out on the next field trip.

I was so glad to see some other, non-Literacy Launchpad families stop by as we were reading and listen too! They were honorary class members for the day! How fun!

Roughly 10% of my students were there today for the field trip. It was a good size group for my first venture of this sort, but I would love to see more families come out for our next trip. I'll try to plan our next field trip at a more central location, which will hopefully make it more convenient for people. So if you're reading this, and you weren't there today... We missed ya! Come on out for the next trip!

Here are some photos from today's trip! Man, I love my job!!

Leafman

This week we read Leafman by Lois Ehlert. I had somewhat mixed reactions to this story from the children. I thought the illustrations in this story would really intrigue all the children, and they did intrigue most of the children, just some more than others. There wasn't as strong of a general reaction as I had anticipated.

The group dynamic was a little different in some of my classes this week. We were in a different classroom than usual on Monday due to Columbus Day. And there were a lot of students absent this week, which makes the dynamic in class different.

The kids all did really well with interpreting the illustrations in this week's book. They understood what was being created with the leaves in the illustrations, and understood that the creatures in each illustration were in fact created with leaves. They thought that was pretty cool.

I wish I had brought a fan with me to class this week, so we could talk more about the wind and do some demonstrations with blowing the leaves across the room. Something to remember for next time...

Re-reading last week's story was great because the kids remembered the simple text and read along with me. The best was when one of the children said, "I hear a peacock yelling at me" (recalling from the text). And then another child corrected him and said, "it's not 'yelling' it's 'yelping'!" These kids don't miss a beat!

Another funny moment this week was when we were reading a page in Leafman that mentioned geese, and one little boy told me how he has seen "geeks" before. He told me there was a lot of "geek poop" in his yard from all the "geeks." Too funny!

Here are some photos of the leaf creations of a few of my students. A couple of them actually took my book and used it as a reference for their leafman pictures they made, and they did an amazing job of recreating the leafman from the book! Check it out!