Lessons in Rhyming and Predicting

We spent November of Literacy Launchpad having all kinds of rhyming fun. And December was spent predicting, predicting, predicting!

I've been revamping my lesson plans as I go this year to give them a new twist, and try to help my students understand the skill we're practicing each month even better. These activities mentioned briefly in this post would be perfect to be incorporated into your preschool classroom curriculum, or even to be used at home with your own kiddos.

November had us reading Rhyming Dust Bunnies (Jan Thomas), I'm Your Bus (Marilyn Singer), and Each Peach Pear Plum (Allan and Janet Ahlberg). How much do I love Rhyming Dust Bunnies? A better question would be "How much do my students love it?" The answer: A LOT! We couldn't get enough of this one and its sequel Here Comes the Big, Mean Dust Bunny!.  I'm Your Bus was another great one for allowing my students to predict and fill-in the rhyme that would end each page's text.

 We brainstormed rhyming words, made rhyming buses, hunted for hidden rhymes in a drawing, and made rhyming signs that were fun to hold up proudly each time we heard rhyming words in our stories.

Then in December we moved on to predicting and read some more fab books. We read If You Take a Mouse to Movies (Laura Numeroff), Mr. Willoby's Christmas Tree (Robert Barry), and Snowmen at Christmas (Caralyn Buehner). It worked out great to choose some rhyming books in December to help continue giving us practice with that skill w had just recently been focusing on the previous month. Is there anything better at Christmas time than some great Christmas books to hunker down with? So cozy. So fun. 

We did most of our predicting practice as we read our stories each week, and then we had crafty fun to follow-up our stories. I love how these fun crafts and activities with literature help my students to forever remember these great books that we read in class each week. We recycled like Mr. Willowby and made some awesome Christmas tree ornaments out of egg cartons that would have otherwise been thrown out. We also got creative making adorable snowmen ornaments after being inspired by all the cute snowmen in Caralyn Buehner's book. And we did some drawings to do our predicting with If You Take a Mouse to the Movies! There were a couple rhyming games thrown in there too! What a full and exciting month we had!

Writing Fun as Christmas Gifts

If you don't have any ideas for some fun, literacy-inspired Christmas gifts yet, it's not my fault. Ha! I know I've been loading you up with gift posts this month. Sorry, I guess I was just inspired.

Today I'm sharing a little fun gift I made for four of my nieces. They all enjoy writing, and "doing work", and sending and receiving mail. So I ordered some cute little mailboxes from Joanne's and then loaded them up with some neat office and writing supplies. I would have loved something like this as a kid!

I painted the girls' names in the side of their mailboxes, and bundled up all the various supplies. My kids have been watching me put these together and now asking for little mailboxes and stationary for themselves.

Photo by Polka Dot Chair

I think something like this one pictured above would be perfect outside my kids' bedrooms. I love the idea of stuffing all their junk in it that they leave around the house too! Hee. Check out more info on this idea HERE.

I hope my nieces have as much fun using their mailboxes and supplies as I had in putting them all together. Maybe I'll get some mail from them too! Ooo, I should have included some self addressed envelopes! Might have to go throw a few of those in!

Our Favorites At Christmas

We all know there are about a zillion Christmas picture books out there. Some are wonderful, and some... not so much. But every family has a stack that stays in regular rotation year after in their family; maybe because it's an awesome books, or maybe because it holds some special meaning for their family.  So today I'm sharing my family's favorite Christmas books, and why we like them so much.

If you have kids that love Legos, than you need to check out the Brick Bible series. My boys and I both love the cool Lego illustrations that bring a fun freshness to these Bible stories. And the text comes straight from scripture, so my kids aren't just getting some cutesy little re-telling.

This one is such a sweet story of friendship, and of giving a gift that truly has a lot of thought behind it. My kids love it, and it give me the warm fuzzies every time I read it... without being cheesy.

This is one of the more cutesy Christmas stories, but I like the way it talks about what the creche/nativity set is all about. It's a good discussion starter, and fun to read right next to the nativity set where you can play and discuss as you read. I like the message of it, but it's light and fun too.

I've been reading this one at Literacy Launchpad for several years. All the fun of The Jolly Postman with a Christmas twist on it. It's an especially fun read with kids that are familiar with their fairy tales, but could also be a good way to introduce some - read this book, then read some of the fairy tales it talks about. Maybe write a letter to one of your favorite fairy tale characters when you're done reading!

The message of this book is sweet and subtle. A Christmas tree that is too big for Mr. Willoughby gets trimmed at the top to fit his home. But instead of the top being thrown out - it gets recycled and passed on to someone else that needs a tree. This continues all the way through the book till a mouse family ends up with the teeny tiny top of the tree at the very end. So sweet, and I like that it starts a good discussion about not wasting, and maybe even about reusing and recycling things at Christmas time. 

 

I think The Night Before Christmas can sometimes be a tough classic story for kids to get into and enjoy these days. But this pop-up version makes it so much more fun and interesting to read through, at least with my kids. It's beautiful, of course, and I like just having it out as part of our Christmas decor!

Santa Mouse is a cute little book that my mom read to me and my siblings growing up. And it's a fun little tradition you could start with your kids of Santa Mouse leaving a present on the tree each year. This is much more my speed than the time-consuming Elf on the Shelf tradition!

And of course, who doesn't love The Polar Express? I remember my dad reading this at my house growing up every Christmas Eve. I can still hear his voice every time I read it to my kids or students. And now we have the version with Liam Neeson reading it, which is really beautiful to listen to as well. I like to have it one when we're just sitting around Christmas-crafting or eating our lunch. 

Now tell me your favorites! I love to add new ones to our collection!

Ideas for a Reading Christmas

I'm always looking for ways to bring some reading fun to the holiday season. Things can get so busy, so working some ideas for encouraging reading into the holiday plan can make sure you don't get too busy for reading.

 Here are some ideas for a holly, jolly, reading Christmas:

 1. Check the events going on at your local library. Weekly story times often take a hiatus this time of year, but instead there's usually lots of holiday programs and activities going on.


 2. While attending a special holiday event at the library, go on a hunt for some great Christmas books. Some libraries will mark the spines of their books to make special titles (like holiday titles) easier to find.

3. Do a reading advent calendar, like this one here. Have you seen this idea? Wrap 25 Christmas picture books (they can be ones you already own), then allow your child to unwrap one each day and read it together as you countdown to Christmas.


4. Make books a part of your gift-giving tradition. Unwrapping a cool new book or two on Christmas morning attaches the right connotation to books - they are something to be enjoyed! Some families make gifting a new pair of pajamas a Christmas Eve tradition; perhaps pairing a new book with their snuggly pajamas could become part of the tradition as well. Think about subjects your child is especially interested in, or books in a series they might be specifically wanting. We might be gifting some fun magazine subscriptions in our house this year!


5. Start a tradition of adding a new Christmas book to your family library every season. Make a special trip to the bookstore together to pick it out. Maybe get some hot cocoa while you're at it, and make a whole date of it!


6. If you do Elf on the Shelf, incorporate some reading fun into your elf's repertoire of tricks. Perhaps he will get caught reading the kids' Christmas books? Or perhaps he will get caught reading to some of your kid's toys, like in this photo?


7. Gift some fun items to your child that help encourage reading. We're giving neat reading lights to our kids to encourage them to stay up late in bed with a book.
 


Another idea is the fun book timers for keeping track of their reading time (they are book marks that can be stored right in the book your child is reading).
 



How about a kit for creating their own books?


Or a fun bag for toting books to and from the library?


8. Give books as gifts to others with your child. How about for their teacher? Friends? Family? Ask for their input and help in selecting the right book for the people on your list this Christmas.

9. Make some festive sugar cookies with alphabet cookie cutters. Spell out festive words like "joy" and "merry" and then box them up and gift them to friends and family.  Isn't this pretty? You could also make fun alphabet ornaments and gift tags using a variety of different supplies and things. Get creative!

How do you encourage reading and literacy during the holidays?

Meaningful Literacy Experiences - Winter Style!

Jan Brett's The Hat

This horse is wishing for a "hat" like Hedgie's.

He can find one on the clothesline!

Hedgie laughs and says, "Don't they know that animals should never wear clothes?"

Denise Fleming's The First Day of Winter

Predicting (our focus during the month of January) what snowman accessories are hidden under the sheet.

... Then dressing up like silly snowmen!

Other Fun

Writing a letter for The Jolly Christmas Postman (Allen and Janet Ahlberg) to deliver!

Enjoying some good books by the fire during the month of December.

I can read with my rebus reader!

Digging for the alphabet!

Getting Cozy In December

December is all about print awareness. We are learning about the purpose print serves and practicing our hand at "reading" and "writing" our own print!

Last week we read The Jolly Christmas Postman by Allan and Janet Ahlberg. I let the kids play with all the fun pieces in the pockets within the book. We played a game of Bingo (our version was called "MAIL") that had the finding each word on their game cards (with the assistance of pictures). After the game we "wrote" our own letter to be mailed or delivered ourselves. The kids adored getting to mess around with my notepads and fancy pens and envelopes.

This week we read The Three Bears' Christmas by Kathy Duval. The kids got a kick out of this fun twist on the classic fairy tale. After I read it to them, then they got their own rebus reader version to read with me. They all did fantastic with it! Better than I imagined. What really impressed me was how they all wanted to read it with me. I worried that it might be an activity that wouldn't really hold their interest, but they loved it and really took ownership of it. I sent them home with the assignment of reading it to someone at their house. They all seemed to take that very seriously, and so I can't wait to hear how their reading went when I see them again next week.

I had a blast making this fun little faux fireplace to take to class with me this month. The idea behind it was that I wanted to use this as a spring board for talking up the idea of curling up with a good book, in a cozy place, during the winter months. I brought in a bunch of Christmas books and laid them around the fireplace, and as they finished their work and headed over to have a look, I chatted with them about where they like to read at home. It kind of took a funny turn when I heard about some of the places their mommies and daddies like to read too (the bathroom). I love that my students have great reading role models at home! I will bring my fireplace again next week and see if I can entice a few more students to curl up with a book in front of it!

We had our last lesson for December this past week. Boy, did I over plan for this one! We were only able to do ONE of my two planned activities because it took so long. Good problem to have though. We had a lot of fun with the one activity we did.

Our story was Christmas Counting, by Lynn Reiser. I'm not usually one for concept books when it comes to Literacy Launchpad lessons, but this book is one exception. We counted while we decorated our tree... like the one in the book! (See above photo.) Well, the tree in the book grew and grew each year, and our tree stayed the same size. AND ours was a fake tree... So it wasn't just like the one in the book, I guess. :) But it was still cool.

We counted ornaments as we adorned the tree with them. The students each had their favorite set of ornaments, and there was some bickering over who got to put what ornaments on the tree. I don't know why this activity took so long, but it did. Lots of chatting. That's a good thing!

Oh, and we predicted again, of course! We predicted how the family would grow each year, and what they would put on their tree. I was really happy to see the students using cues from the text and illustrations to guide their predictions.

I'll be taking a blogging break till next week. Till then, thought I would share a few Christmas photos of me and my Little Reader.

Let the Christmas Reading Fun Begin!

It's all about predicting this month! And we're doing it Christmas style! Well, the story I read last week wasn't specifically a Christmas story, but it was a version of "The Gingerbread Man." Christmas-ish, right? I think so. (Oh, and we also read Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree.)

My students were so into the predicting stuff. Each one of them insisted on taking a turn making a prediction before each story. And they would state their predictions like this, "My prediction is..." I loved that they were using a new vocab word, but I swear, I didn't tell them to phrase their predictions like that, though it was awfully cute!

I think this unit's off to a jolly start! I'm really happy with the effort all my students put in last week. And we had so much predicting fun that both my group times ran over by about 15 minutes (thank goodness for understanding classroom teachers).

See below for a glimpse at our take home activity to help remind us of our gingerbread fun!