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.

Beginning, Middle, End and A Spooky Month of Reading

My Literacy Launchpad students love a good spooky story... or a not-too-spooky story in this case. This month we learned about story structure and beginning, middle, end as we read some stories that had a hint of spook to them.

The month started out with some Creepy Carrots (Aaron Reynolds). What happens when a greedy little rabbit takes too many carrots from Crackenhopper Field? The carrots from Crackenhopper Field start following him and creeping him out... or do they? Is it just Jasper Rabbit's imagination? This one was the favorite for the month by a lot of my students. I loved reading it aloud, which was great because they asked me to read it many times over the course of the month! It's fun to vary my tone, volume, and inflections for dramatic effect with a spooky story!

We did a lot of practice with arranging the parts of Creepy Carrots in order - beginning, middle, end. The kids seemed to catch on really quickly to this concept. We made a poster where we broke up the parts of the story into beginning, middle, end. Then we made our own creepy carrots to take home with us, and put the parts of the story in the correct order on the back.

The next week we read Go Away, Big Green Monster (Ed Emberley)! Another hit with the kiddos! We read this one many times too! We played a game called "Monster Stomp" and then after our game we turned our classroom into a monster making factory. BUT... we weren't scared of our monsters. We could make them go away whenever we wanted. Plus, some of them were nice, friendly, smiling monsters. 

We continued to talk about story structure as we read The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything as our last story of the month. This read-aloud was hysterical, because I got some big jumps out of the students when I read the "Boo!!" part of the story to them! Every time! I love that. 

We had to remember all the parts of our story as we played a game where we pieced together the scarecrow from the book. We had a lot of laughs with that game, and got our scarecrow put together all handsome... errr scary! Then we made our own books. We had to remember again all the parts of the story, but we had the words in our books to help us. And now we can take our books home and make our friends and family jump when we read the "Boo!" part to them!

 

Spooooky Story Time... Wuuhhaa Ha Ha!

I received a request for Halloween story time ideas, so hopefully this post will be somewhat helpful for anyone in need of some spooktacular inspiration.

My October favorites include The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything (Linda Williams), The Teeny Tiny Woman (Paul Galdone), Go Away Big Green Monster (Ed Emberley), and Too Many Pumpkins (Linda White) & Pumpkin Pumpkin (Jeanne Titherington). The latter two, not so scary, but great October reads nonetheless.

These have been my favorites for a while now. As I'm typing this, I'm thinking it's probably time to branch out and add some new titles to the repertoire. So please leave your suggestions in the comment sections. I need some!!

Check out the photos below to see the fun time we had with our Little Old Lady inspired rebus readers last week. They had a fun pocket on the front for the children to store all their scarecrow pieces in. They each got to take their "book" (rebus reader) home and share the spooky story with others!

And read here and here for more info and ideas to correlate with my books suggestions above.

A Spooky Week!

I love October! Want to spark the interest of a child? Tell them you've got some spooky stories to tell them! We heard two spooky stories this week: The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything Book and CD (Share a Story) AND The Teeny-Tiny Woman. I wish you could see the faces of my students when they heard these stories. There wasn't one wiggle or squirm the whole time!

Our first story, The Little Old Lady who Was not Afraid of Anything, I read aloud to them. I used extra dramatic pauses and inflections in my voice, and made a few of the children jump at parts of the story.

Sometimes I wish we could do spooky stories all year. It was a little sad this week, knowing that we will be starting a new unit in November, and will be saying good-bye to these extra fun October tales. That just means I need to get super creative with my lessons next month so they will be just as engaging as October's lessons. That's good though. Keeps me on my game!

After we did some activities, I finished off the lesson by telling the class the story of "The Teeny Tiny Woman." Storytelling is one of my favorite things to do in class. This was the first time I did storytelling for the year, and it always surprises the kids the first time. A few of my classes of kids asked to see the "pictures" when I was done telling the story. Now, usually when they ask this, I have to explain that the pictures are in your head when you hear storytelling. I did have a copy of the storybook version of this tale with me today though. So I went ahead and showed the children the illustrations when they asked. It offered a good opportunity for us to review the story.

I feel great about this week's lesson. Progress reports went home this week. I have to admit, I often dread progress report months because it takes so much time to fill them all out. But it's worth it if it's helpful to the parents (and kids)!

One sad note, I let one of my students take last week's story , Go Away, Big Green Monster!, back to class with her to look at for a few minutes at the beginning of this week (I told you that book was going to be a favorite!). Then I forgot to get it back from her before I left. Sooo... I didn't have the book with me to review with the rest of my classes this week. Sad day! I'm hoping to pick it up next week, and I'll bring it with me sometime in November.

No class next week. We start our Rhyming Unit the first full week of November!

No Class This Week

Literacy Launchpad meets three weeks each month, and there is no class this week. Awww! I know, I know, the week isn't the same without a good story from Ms. Amy, huh? Hee. Hee.

I went to bring some flyers to one of my schools today, and of course my kids wanted to know if I was coming to get them for class. It's these kinds of moments that tempt my to give my best Sally Fields impression, "You like me! You really like me!" But, I think the reference would go over the heads of three-year-olds, so I tell them instead that we will be having class next week.

This week I'm preparing my lessons for October, which are always some of my favorites! I just LOVE books about autumn. I'm introducing Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert next week, and I'm eager to see how the students react to it. I think they're all going to have a lot of fun with it.

I'm not a fan of cold weather, but I do wish it would cool down just a little for our autumn lessons. Books about pumpkins and leaves should be read on cool, windy days, not on days when it's sunny and a high near ninety degrees!