New Child's Play Books!

I love seeing Child's Play's big brown box of books show up on my porch every few months. The kids and I get to test drive new titles and see what we think. Child's Play is an independent publisher, specializing in whole child development, learning through play, life skills, and values. Their stuff is so pretty and fun. The latest additions to their collections got a thumbs up from us! Check it out.


The What's That board book series encourages guessing, prediction, and memory skills. Four titles in the series include CHOO! CHOO!, SNAP! SNAP!, TAP! TAP!, and TOOT! TOOT!. What's that noise? Lift the flap and find out! Lift the flap books are my go-to's with little ones. Always a hit! Familiar themes and vibrant illustrations will mean many, repeated, and fun-filled readings.

The Seasons board book series has a separate charm all its own (Titles include Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter). Each season has something special about it, and in these books you get to explore each one. You will follow these whimsically illustrated  children as they spend time discovering the joys of indoor and outdoor play. And the durability of these board books means you can tote them around with you in each season and read them indoors or out!

We also read a couple new Child's Play picture books and they were adorable! Crunch! by Carolyn Rabei features the cutest little guinea pig named Crunch. He loves to eat and is shocked when a mouse named Cheddar asks to share his food. Trade for a hug? Nope. But Crunch ends up regretting his decision and sets out to find the hungry little mouse.

The last book was Ailsa Burrow's The Jar of Happiness. In this sweet book, Meg shares her "jar of happiness" with friends when they are down and need a little lift. Then one day the jar goes missing. Can she ever be happy again? But Meg's friends help her find new ways to be happy. We loved the super-cute cat in this story; he made us smile and giggle!

All books that are definitely worth your time and great additions to your library!

Hungry Caterpillars

Better late than never, right?

This week in Literacy Launchpad we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle). This book is usually a great confidence boost in students, because they are almost always familiar with it already, and so you can praise them a lot for their excellent "reading" as they read along with you.

I brought in a very cute caterpillar sock puppet that we used as I read the story a second time during class. The kids got to feed it all its yummy treats from the book and they LOVED it! They were all giggling and just having the best time. And that makes my little heart so happy.

I didn't get photos of the caterpillar puppet during class. Can I just tell you how tricky it is to get photos during class. It's very tough. And getting decent photos is even tougher! Some days I just want to enjoy myself and not fuss with the photos. This week was one of those times. There was just no way to take photos during our puppet activity without it hindering the fun. I'm going to let my son play with it later next week though, and attempt some kind of photos at that time. So stay tuned. It really is a cute little puppet.

We made beautiful butterflies after being inspired by our story! Check out the photos.

This is one of my favorite lessons by far! I know, I know; I say that all the time...

Tall, Tall Grass!

What a week it was in Literacy Launchpad this week! The school where I teach had been closed Monday and Tuesday due to flooding. They finally were able to re-open on Wednesday, and boy, were those kids excited to be there! And excited to talk about the flooding! They told me all about it (like it was news to me)! :)

Class was a bit of a challenge, because there were fans and dehumidifiers running all over the school. There were three going in the classroom we were using. But no fear, I can read loudly! So we pulled through. I was just glad to see some things getting back to normal around here!

We read In the Tall, Tall Grass (Denise Fleming). Hearing about tall, tall grass was a welcome distraction to hearing all the tall, tall waters around here.

When I asked the students what kinds of things they have seen in their own grass, I got funny responses. "A strange dog," was what student told me. Hee. Gotta love these kids!

Literacy Launchpad For Parents

Now that My Little Reader, Isaac, is getting a little bit bigger (he's still not 2 yet), I have decided to begin doing some of my Literacy Launchpad activities at home with him. I will also be working on coming up with some literacy activities designed especially with him in mind, that correlate with some of his favorite books at home (that I don't necessarily use in class).

I'm really excited about this. And it's good motivation to push me out of my normal play routine with him.

Today I pulled out some Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! stuff to play with. He loves this story! I actually checked out the audio version from the library a few weeks ago and he wore that CD out! We listened to it at every meal. And, man, it made my life a lot easier on many days. One particular day, that audio book was what got him to eat his dinner after a very stubborn, drawn-out refusal. "Let's listen to Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! while you eat some bites," I suggested. Once we turned the book on for him, he cleaned his plate without us having to say another word about it to him.

So when I pulled out the stuff for us to play with today, Isaac was thrilled! We used the glue to assemble a couple bunnies. He was all about the glue! I did have to use the stapler too though, since he didn't have the patience to let the glue dry (and neither did I).

Happily gluing away... and snacking. Notice his crackers sitting there next to him in this shot.

Isaac played with the vegetable pieces a little bit, but I was having a hard time getting him as excited about, and as engaged in, that part of the fun. He got kind of stuck on the glue. What's great about doing these activities at home though is that I could leave the pieces out all day and let him play when it struck his fancy.

When we ran out of T.P. rolls, he glued bunny heads onto plain paper. Then he had the bunnies talk to one another... while his kitty looked on.

The whole goal behind this activity (at home and at school) was to retell the story told in the book in a meaningful and engaging manner. I wanted them to really get into the story, focus on the various parts of the story and the structure of it as we retold it.

Isaac did pick up the bunnies and the garden pieces on his own after dinner and as I watched from a far, I could hear him telling the story aloud to himself (his own version of the story). He had the bunnies eating the veggies and then falling asleep in the garden (with snoring sound effects and all).

It made me so happy to see him coming up with his own little narratives. What an important step on the road to literacy! I'm excited to see this skill mature and develop more fully. It has really only begun to bud at this point. But with the way Isaac likes to talk... I think there are many more narratives I'll be hearing in the future! Can't wait!

And I can't wait to share more of these activities with you. I think I will change to a simpler formatting in future posts of this kind, but thanks for bearing with me on this one!

It's Not A Box!

This week our especially playful unit wrapped up with Not A Box by Antoinette Portis. We had a lot of fun with this one. Can you tell?

Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!

Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! (Candace Fleming). One of my favorite stories to read! Another guaranteed hit with kids. Always. And the activity I pair with this story always puts the fun over the top.

Last time I did this lesson, I showed up at one of my schools without the toilet paper rolls, which are a pretty crucial item needed for the activity. But I improvised and it worked. This year, I reworked the activity a little, and added to it a bit... and remembered to bring the toilet paper rolls! It turned out even better than last time!

We've been focusing on dramatizing each story ourselves during the month of March. Last week we got to let our stuff blow away in the wind (The Wind Blew). This week we used puppets to retell this week's story in a playful way.

Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! is a story that my students can't get enough of (neither can my son), and when they get to jump into the story and act it out themselves with their self-made puppets, they go bananas with excitement. My students were bouncing like the bunnies in the story on their way back to class. It's this kind of thing that makes my little teacher heart happy.

My next lesson better be good!

Books vs. Spring

Started off our March unit a little rough this week. It's the first week in a long time that we've had GREAT weather around here, and Literacy Launchpad had a tough time competing with that.

Honestly, I have never had this problem in any of my previous years of Literacy Launchpad. I can usually just walk out onto the playground and my students (and others) come running to line up. But I've got one rowdy group of boys this year, and they have a tough time giving up 30 minutes of their playtime for reading... whether they're outside or inside.

What's funny though is that once they get to class, they have so much fun!

So next week I guess I need to plan Literacy Launchpad around playground time a little better than I did this week. :)

We read The Wind Blew (Pat Hutchins) and did some playful experiments with the "wind" (a fan) after reading our windy tale. We then discussed how the wind outside is usually much stronger than the little fan that I brought to class (we could only get the really light stuff to "blow" in the "wind"). Hee.

We created our own little windy storybook to take home with us as well. This was (what I thought was) a simple project, that ended up taking longer than I anticipated. They had a good time though. Check out the photos.

Learning Something New

Nonfiction is the theme for this month, and we are discovering all that we can learn from books. Our focus with this unit is specifically on spring (and mostly gardening). This week we learned how to grow vegetable soup from Lois Ehlert's book Growing Vegetable Soup. 

A few fun notes:

• While re-telling last week's "The Tortoise and the Hare" I had one student ask me, "How do you remember that story?" What a great question. When I finished the story, I gave a quick explanation of how I do storytelling without a book.

• I love that my students took notice during our activities of how yummy the vegetables smelled, especially the green pepper. (O.K. those are really fruit, huh?)

• Note to self: buy potting soil, not top soil next time. Top soil smells like poop! So gross!

Improvising

Ever leave your house for work and have that nagging feeling that you've forgotten something? I get that feeling almost everyday, and I'm always forced to go through a mental checklist of everything I'll need for the day before I walk out the door. When I left the house today though, I had a stronger-than-usual nagging feeling that I didn't have everything I needed. I had done my mental checklist though, and so I ignored the feeling. When I got to my school this morning, nothing seemed awry. I began my lesson confidently with my first group of students. Then I got about halfway through today's lesson, and reached into my big bag to get out my supplies for our toilet paper bunny craft... That's when I realized that I had forgotten to bring my toilet paper rolls!!! I had put them in separate bag, and didn't put the bag in my car! Panic immediately set in. I now had no project for my kiddos to make, and they were all waiting... starring at me with their cute little faces and asking, "Can we make bunnies like in the story?" Think, think, think I was telling myself. And that's when I decided I could improvise.

The original plan was to glue the bunny parts onto a toilet paper roll. Then I had popsicle sticks that I would help them stick through the bottom of the toilet paper rolls so they could make their bunnies hop around and say "Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!" like in our story! But I quickly realized that I could let them glue all the bunny parts onto the popsicle sticks themselves, and they would still be able to make them hop around. It worked! The kids loved them! And they turned out cute... not as cute as I would have liked, but cute enough!



So we had bunnies on sticks hopping around, pretending to climb over fences, under walls, and through water to get to Mr. McGreeley's veggie garden (I was Mr. McGreeley in the puppet play). The lesson lost none of it's purpose or charm through my improvisation. Hooray!

There was only one other time I have ever forgotten something I needed for a lesson, and it was the BOOK (this was a couple years ago)! There was no way of improvising my way around that one! Thank goodness that wasn't the case today!

P.S. Check out our book list in the side bar for more info about this week's story: Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming.