Dog Loves Books [Week 5]

Dog Loves Books

By Louise Yates

I honestly just picked this book because the cover was really simple and cute and so I thought it would be an easy book for kids, and that's exactly what it is.

It's about a dog who LOVES books and so he decides to open a book store, but on opening day he gets lonely because only 2 people came in, neither looking for books. He decides to read to not be as lonely, and soon he is going on adventures with dinosaurs and kangaroos and is flying through outer space, all with the help of words and pictures. At the end a little girl comes in wanting a book and he knows just what to recommend. The last page of the book says "Dog loves books but most of all... He loves to share them!"

I grew up reading and so I have always appreciated books and the adventures one can go on while reading, but I know not everyone experiences that. I think this would be a great tool in a prek and kindergarten classroom to introduce kids that reading is fun and that books are a great tool, especially when you are lonely.

This book is nice because kids can read it themselves as a beginner book because the pictures tell most of the story, the words are very basic and building blocks.

In my lesson plan that I did on this, I talked about really relating this to kids and asking if they have ever felt lonely and what they did when they felt that way. Also, about your favorite book and if it lets you have adventures. 

Below is a link to a little article about reading outloud to your child and why it's important. This concept of reading is important ties a lot into our discussion of reading aloud. I think this book could be read aloud in a young classroom to introduce key concepts, but it's also a good book to teach kids how to read themselves.

http://www.earlymoments.com/Promoting-Literacy-and-a-Love-of-Reading/Why-Reading-to-Children-is-Important/

Z is for Moose [Week 4]

Z is for Moose

By Kelly Bingham and Paul O. Zelinsky

I was just browsing the library shelves looking for a book that looked cute, and I thought the title was interesting. I absolutely loved this alphabet book. Unlike others where it just says "A is for Apple, B is for Bat, C is for Cat..." this book makes it funny and fun for kids.

It does go through the alphabet but the moose randomly pops into pages asking if it's his turn yet and wreaking havoc in some of the letters. The group I gave my book talk to this week though it would really have the kids laughing and interacting, because like when they watch "interactive" tv shows, they like to tell the characters when it's wrong.

At one point the moose comes in to the page and asks if it's his turn yet, and I could just imagine the kids in my class yelling "No, it's not!!!! Moose starts with an M!!!!!!"

It's a great story that helps kids learn the alphabet while still being entertaining and not so text book. 

http://pbskids.org/games/alphabet.html

This link is to alphabet games I found on PBS KIDS. Kids will be more likely to learn the alphabet if it's in a fun way, and PBS has some great kids shows that make learning fun :)

Stone Soup [Week 3]

Stone Soup

By Ann McGovern, Pictures by Winslow Pinney Pels

This was my FAVORITE book growing up, and rereading it I still loved it! This is a about a traveler who comes to this old lady's house and asks for food but she tells him she doesn't have any. As she is about to shut the door on him, he asks if she has a stone because he can make soup from a stone.

So he gets a stone from the road and then he asks her if she has some boiling water to make the soup, so she boils some water. He puts the stone in the soup, and then to make the soup cook faster they added onions, to smell better they added carrots, to taste better they added beef bones, to make it fit for a king they added pepper and salt, and to make it thicker they added butter and barley.

Each time they added something the traveler would say something like: "It is fit for a prince now. But it would be fit for a king with a bit of pepper and a handful of salt." In the end they ate a feast fit for a king and as he was leaving he took the stone and put it back in his pocket. When the old lady asked why he was taking the stone he said: "Well, the stone is not cooked enough. I will have to cook it some more tomorrow."

One of the many reasons I love this book is just because the story is great for kids. It's catchy, fun, short, but informative. I also love the pictures, especially in this book, they add so much and made me laugh when I was younger. I think this book is a great way to not only teach kids lessons about making something out of the little things and that you always have more than you think you do, but also very basic concepts like list making-- every time they added a new ingredient they listed all the others that were in the pot as well.

I found this blog when looking for a picture of the book. This is a cool idea that you could do in a classroom, even though this blog is for a family. It's how to make "stone soup" and have everyone participate.

http://mess-cipes.blogspot.com/2011/11/stone-soup.html

Another great site the the above one links to is Stone Soup for the World, which is ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

http://www.soup4world.com/

The Tale of Tricky Fox [Week 2]

The Tale of Tricky Fox

Retold by Jim Aylesworth

Illustrated by Barbara McClintock

This is a folk story told to a group of students by a teacher about a very sly fox who makes a bet with his brother that says he can find a pig and bring it back. The brother says if he does that he will "eat his hat", so the fox goes and knocks on farm houses and at each house he spends the night and entrusts the old ladies with his bag but tells them not to look in it. Each night however the lady does before the fox wakes up. When the lady is asleep the fox gets out of bed and takes what was in his bag out. So the next day he tricks the old lady into giving him what he wants, by asking where his ______ is. This story ends with him trying to trick a school teacher. "And Tricky Fox didn't know that teachers are not as easy to fool as regular humans are." The school teacher figures out he is tricky, and instead of putting a pig in his bag, she puts in a dog. So when he goes back [without looking in the bag] his brother eats his hat, and then they open the bag to find a bull dog that chases them.

Sorry, that was a hard story to explain concisely. I think that this is a very good story, I love the illustrations. They really add something to the text. I think that this story would be really great for the younger grades to teach them that tricking people might work at the time, but it will come back to bite you.

You could even use this to talk about folk tales and stories that you might have heard from your families that teach lessons, and what they are.

It would be cool to have each child tell one story that (s)he has heard that taught them a lesson, and make a binded book for the classroom.

I'm so clever- tee-hee-hee!

Trick, trick, tricky! Yes, siree!

Snap your fingers. Slap your knee.

Human folks ain't smart like me!

http://www.longlongtimeago.com/llta_folktales.html: A website I found that has a bunch of folktales that might be useful when teaching.