Rocks!

I love rocks!  I love to collect rocks, throw rocks, play with rocks and climb on rocks.  My two favorite places to go exploring and climbing on rocks are the North Shore of Minnesota and La Cote de Granite Rose in France.

~

My husband and I just celebrated 10 years of marriage by having a night away at our favorite little resort on the shore of Lake Superior, sans children.

We first went up to a beautiful state park to explore and climb on rocks.  Looking around in the gift shop afterwards, I again stumbled upon a wonderful book that I just HAD to have.

written by Peggy Christian and illustrated by Barbara Hirsch Lember

On each page of the book, a type of rock is described (i.e. skipping rock, resting rock, wishing rock, etc.).  I love the simplicity yet complexity of the text and, as usual, thought of a writing extension to go with it.

I collected a bunch of interesting rocks (the ones you see surrounding the book in the first picture above) on our evening exploration and plan on letting students either choose their own rock or blindly choose a rock and then write about what kind of a rock it is.  All of these pages will become a class book!

And last night my daughter and I went for yogurt at a build-your-own place and guess what I sprinkled on top of mine?  Chocolate rocks!  Okay, I'm a nerd...

Book Talk Linky

I'm republishing this post from last week because I just stumbled upon a neat linky party where teachers share great books.  This linky party is being hosted by Mrs. Jump!

I was in a local bookstore last week, perusing the shelves hoping something would jump out at me when I found this beautifully illustrated gem:

This book has very simple text but beautifully striking illustrations.  When I finished the book I immediately thought of a writing extension for Kinders, 1st graders and 2nd graders.

Take a look at this example book I created and how I've differentiated it for K, 1 and 2.  I hope you'll think about incorporating this book and writing activity into your upcoming school year.

Great picture book about perspective...

There's a cute little library in town that we like to visit when we're back home in the summer.  I quickly perused the picture book bins last week and found a real gem!  As I've taught my students to do when they are choosing a good book to read, I also used 

the TIP method. 

Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Tom Lichtenheld is a simple, funny book about perspective: what you see may not be what another sees.  I love the idea behind this book and the funny dialogue!  I will purchasing this book and putting it in our 'Read with Someone' book basket.  I really hope these authors write more books in this style!

This book could also lead to some great writing!  I'm thinking of creating some doodles and pairing kids up to write their own books in this style.  We can publish them so they can also be part of the 'Read with Someone' basket.

Can't wait to get this book and try out the writing activity!

Phew!

My first day has come and gone and it was FaNtAsTiC!

I think it was probably my best first day in all my years of teaching.  I was sooooo nervous though, complete with butterflies and a tummy ache!  The only time I ever get nervous like that is the morning of a (running) race, so I don't know why I got so nervous this time. I didn't overplan, we got through everything, I poured on the praise and the kids were so well-behaved!

I started with my favorite first day book, First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg.

I also ate lunch with my kiddos, which was very interesting, but it was good that I was there to help those kids who are new to our school and the whole lunch routine.

***

One of the things I love about teaching 1st grade and kids so young is that you can turn anything into a game and they eat it up.  One of our former, awesome, gym teachers played this when it was time to line up and leave her class and I've adopted it for whenever we leave our classroom -AND- during group bathroom breaks: the Secret Person Game.

Before dismissing kids to line up I choose 1 boy and 1 girl to especially keep an eye on BUT I don't tell them who it is and thus, they all line up hoping it's them.  As they line up I think aloud to encourage them all to line up and stay lined up nicely (Is my Secret Boy lining up quietly and staying quiet?  Is My Secret Girl making sure there is space in front and in back of her?).  If the Secret Boy lines up nicely and stays quiet I announce who it is and he adds a gem to our 'Gem Jar' and the same thing goes for the Secret Girl.  If one or both of them does not line up correctly then I tell kids we can't add a gem, but I don't announce who it was.  This game works SO well it seems silly :-)

***

Tomorrow we're going to write about our summer vacations after listening to 

So I can get an idea of my student's writing abilities.

Both of the books I've mentioned above are part of a Back-to-School Literature Activities PACK that you can find at my TPT store and it's on sale!

What a Weekend!

This weekend it was absolutely GoRgEoUs up here in Anchorage, Alaska!

It has been raining straight for the last three weeks....I was ready to build an ark!  But the sun came back in full force and we soaked it up.  My sister is visiting and we hiked Flattop Mountain (with everybody else in the city it seemed).

I've been back at work for the last week and a half, but I haven't had students yet.  We are so fortunate that K and 1 teachers get 5 extra days before students arrive and we schedule conferences with incoming families.  During these conferences we assess students (AIMSWeb reading & math and our own reading and math assessments) and connect with parents right off the bat.  It's really a fantastic thing and I'm thankful every year!  Wednesday morning we get the show on the road though :-)

Have you ever heard of this book?  It's an Alaskan tale that popped into my head today twice.  I'm always making connections between children's literature and my own life and I love to share that with my students!

1st Connection: At the end of our hike we saw some people berry picking on the hillside and down in the valley.  I assumed it was blueberries they were eagerly picking.  So we climbed up onto the hillside and began to pick as well.

 

But we discovered, by asking a woman who had a huge bucketful of these berries, that we had picked crowberries.  Never heard of them?   Us either.  They are used to make jam and are put into aqutak (Eskimo ice cream).

I'm going to let our little collection ripen and then make some crowberry muffins.

2nd Connection: Later in the evening we hiked on a huge sand dune that we had no idea was 5 minutes from our house.  I just bought a toddler hiking backpack off Craig's List yesterday so we got to try it out (actually my sister wanted to carry Max).

Blueberry Shoe is the story of a family that goes hiking and the toddler in the backpack loses one of his shoes.  A vole, a fox and a bear all come upon it and use it for awhile.  Dirt and blueberry seeds find their way into the shoe and the following spring it is found (with a blueberry sprout) by the family again.

I encourage you to get your hands on a copy because it's a cute story and could fit in nicely to a plant lifecycle lesson or unit.

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

Birthday Books

Today is my un-birthday!  You remember that scene from Alice in Wonderland, right?  Well I watched that movie with my 5-year-old recently and that must've put a bee in my bonnet because I'm working on something I've always wanted to do in my classroom: A Birthday Bag.

I've almost finished getting it ready for TPT & TN but I need some help:

What book(s) do you read to your students -or- your own child on their birthdays?

Please leave a comment to let me know :-)

P.S. Happy Birthday to my little brother Jason :-)

Rocks, rocks, rocks!

Geologist: One who studies rocks, knows a lot about rocks, loves rocks, considers rocks pets, and stuffs her pockets full of rocks.

I've just described my 5-year-old daughter and soon-to-be Kindergartener.  Nothing quite entertains her and holds her attention like rocks.  So when we couldn't get in to see Monsters University at 3:30p.m. last Sunday (because it was sold out), I quickly ran through the possibilities of a plan B.  Throwing rocks! We're on vacation in Northern Minnesota, so most of the beaches here are beautifully rocky.  An even more brilliant idea then popped into my head: we'll collect a few to take home and paint them!

We had a blast painting rocks at the kitchen table...which got me to thinking about 2 things: a book and my classroom.  

 This is a neat book about the 10 rules you must consider when looking for the perfect rock.  This would be a fun beginning of the school year read and activity. Considering the rules and bringing in a rock could be the homework, painting your rock could be the schoolwork.  Kids could keep them on their desks or in a basket and use them as reading buddies (saw that idea somewhere).  I'm sure there are lots of other ideas as well.

It's a turtle...can't see the legs or head though.

Once I finished painting my rock, I started playing around with the plastic plate that was my palette and had a blast mixing the colors, making designs and writing words for my daughter to sound out.  

Then a lightbulb lit UP: this could be a fun way to practice handwriting (whole group or small group).

 

Once we both were finished I had yet another idea: we would take our painted rocks back down to the beach and leave them there for someone else to find so we could bring a smile to someone's face.  And of course if we leave rocks, we'll also have to take some more...

P.S. I wrote this post yesterday and today we went down to the beach to leave our rocks...and get more to paint! Here's mine.  Can you guess what it's supposed to be?

But or Butt?

I came across and bought THE funniest, but informative, book yesterday:

I grabbed it off the shelf because:

#1)  Did I just see what I think I saw?

#2) I have a 5-year-old who thinks butts and poop are hilarious.

#3  I was curious...

Not only is this book funny, but it's actually a great non-fiction read!  The whole premise is that the author, a photographer, doesn't always get the perfect animal photograph because they often turn away from him....showing him their butts!  So he decided to make a book about it, ingenious if you ask me!

I started thinking about how I could use this book and when I could read it to my students.  I start non-fiction in January, after winter vacation, so I could do it then.  But I really don't want to wait so long!  So I thought about reading at the beginning of the school year, a month in.  We could do a writing extension called Whose Shoe? where I take a photograph of everyone's shoe and then we do shared writing to come up with a riddle for each student, just like the book.

And lastly, I have to laugh at the author's last name....I read it as tequila, which I think is awesome and, in a margarita, delicious!