The Day the Crayons Quit

Last Thursday night I was grocery shopping late at night.  Typically when I do this kind of a grocery shopping trip it's a Friday night, I'm in my jammies and I'm listening to French radio & music...very fun and comfy for me!  But this time it was a spur of the moment thing and I started off by returning something at Customer Service.  As I was waiting in line, my eyes started to wander and I spied a random end cap of children's books.  Without thinking, I got out of line and went over and grabbed this book

I started reading it and was cracking up, out loud!  The premise of this book, by Drew Daywalt, is that Duncan's crayons go on strike and each one of them write him a letter to complain about something.  What a genius idea for a book!

So I immediately started thinking of ways to use this book the first week of school and created a little literature response pack for it, and it's FREE!

I found this treasure 2 days after completing this

  

and wasn't able to add it, so it's a FREEBIE!

One of my favorite things is stumbling upon really good books for my classroom!  You need to go find this book and read it and LOL like I did :-)

Now go on over and check out more FREEBIES at

Dandelions

Last year, when I was 36, I finally realized that yellow dandelions and those fluffy white dandelion-ish things that you can blow off ARE ONE IN THE SAME!

I had NO idea...I thought they were 2 separate weeds!  How embarrassingly funny :) 

Well yesterday we went down to the beach (a rocky one on the shores of Lake Superior) and had a picnic and some rock throwing time.  There were so many dandelions (yellow and white)!  My first thought was, "Ugh, dumb weeds everywhere." but then I thought, "They're actually an incredibly well designed little nuisance, concerning spreading their seeds."  Then I started thinking of a book in my classroom library

 that is about one remaining dandelion seed who doesn't want to let go but finally does and is glad.

courtesy of northshorekid.com

Then I kept on thinking and came up with a writing idea to extend this wonderful book and it's message.  The start of a new school year is always a bit scary for kids...and teachers.  Writing about a time when you were scared to do something but eventually got up the courage to do it and it was worth it could be a great icebreaker for the year.  Go grab this FREE literature response and check out other freebies!

Once I get going my ideas just snowball!  Now I'm thinking about writing a Readers' Theater play about the lifecycle of the Dandelion...