Three Great Read-aloud Picture Books with Unique Activities

Remember this guy from my Frogs, Food & Fun post? Well, he's helping me celebrate the one-year anniversary of my introduction to the world of teacher blogs and TpT. Yippee!

A tasty "frog" for students to sample after reading the book "Gilbert de la Frogponde"

I can't believe that this blog is already over a year old! In honor of the occasion, I'm highlighting three of my favorite springtime read-alouds and their corresponding TpT units with fun extension activities that I blogged about when Swersty's Swap Shop was just a baby. Drumroll please: 

1. "Gilbert de la Frogponde" by Jennifer Rae

Click here to go to my "Chef de la YOU!" TpT book study unit. It's FREE!

What's for snack? 

2. "Charlie the Caterpillar" by Dom De Luise

 Click here to go to my "Caterpillars, Datapillars & Butterflies" TpT unit. It's on sale until Wednesday!

Making datapillars is a fun way for your students to record and display facts!

3. "Surfer Chick" by Kristy Dempsey

Click here to go to my "Surfer Chick and Her Rad Dad!" TpT book study unit. It's on sale until Wednesday!

Make your own Word Pool center, complete with real water, dude!

Happy springtime reading, everyone! 

~Swersty

Me...Crazy about Biographies!

I recently posted about Biography Bowling, something my classes will be doing this week in the library. Before we bowl, however, I wanted to introduce biographies to my students, so we read "Me...Jane" by Patrick McDonnell last week. If you haven't heard of this book, you are missing out! It's a beautifully worded, simple biography about Jane Goodall that reads like a picture book.

After reading the book, we watched some wonderful videos about chimpanzees from the Jane Goodall Institute website. The kids loved seeing the chimps and hearing about Jane Goodall's passion for animals and nature! (Our favorite video by far is one made for Valentine's Day called "Sending You Love from Tchimpounga"--check it out for 61 seconds of melt-your-heart moments starring chimpanzees!) Once the videos were over it was time for a quick trip to the biography section that prompted a discussion on how biographies are arranged on the shelves. 
During checkout time, a few well-behaved kids got some help finding books with one of the library's chimps, Jubilee (named after Jane Goodall's stuffed animal from childhood):

Behavior management is so much easier with stuffed animals around!

Now we're ready to bowl in the library this week! Before I sign off, I have to include a short Biography Bowling video of my buddy Reagan and her class from a couple of years ago. Will she get a strike? Watch and see!

That's what it'll be like in the library this whole week, and I can't wait!

~Swersty

Biography Bowling

Looking for a fun way to promote the biography section of your library? 

Why not try...

This is an activity I try to do every other year or so to teach the arrangement of books in this section, but I am waaayyyyyyy behind in introducing biographies to my students this year (the pictures are from a few years ago). Normally we do Biography Bowling in February, somewhere between the birthdays of Abe and George, but that just didn't happen this year. No worries, though--we can still bowl in April, right?!

First I borrow bowling equipment from my P.E. coach (who is AWESOME--he lets me use hula hoops, footballs, and basketballs for different library activities throughout the year). I then type names of famous people from my biography section onto sheets of labels and attach them to bowling pins.  I also run spine labels to match the biography names and attach those to the bottom of the pins.


Biography Bowling is fairly simple to set up once you make the bowling lane (made entirely out of bulletin board paper). The most labor-intensive part for me was the yellow end because of the black circles for placing the pins. I did laminate that piece to save me from making it again.


To play the game, start with all bowling pins lining the sides. Students take turns grabbing a pin and going to the biography section to find a matching book to the sticker on the pin. When a match is made, the pin gets placed on the yellow paper on a black dot. This part is timed, and I usually allow more time for the younger grades to find the matches than the older grades. When the time is up we count how many pins are on the yellow paper (the number of biographies the kids found to match the names on the bowling pins). That number is recorded on a sheet with other teachers' names from the same grade level. Here's a sample sheet showing that Mrs. Jones' class found 29 matching biographies during the allotted time:

Each "x" is just for show to make the score sheet look similar to a real one.

Then I tell the kids that their teacher will get one shot to knock down the pins in the yellow area. This invariably turns the students into super cheerleaders for the classroom teacher (who is more than a little nervous at this point)! Check out the before and after pictures from a teacher who got a strike. I just love the facial expressions and body language of her kids, don't you?!!

Once the teacher bowls, we count how many pins were knocked down and put that number in the "Bonus" column before totaling the two scores. 

Here is an example of what a finished score sheet for one grade level might look like:

In the past, I have announced the top scoring class for each grade level on announcements. 

It's such a hit with my students that they always beg for another week of bowling! Of course there's always a huge increase in the amount of biographies checked out when we do Biography Bowling, and that counts as a lucky "strike" for this librarian!

~Swersty

Great Picture Books to Read Aloud

I ran across a great linky party about books! Denise at Sunny Days in Second Grade is showcasing favorite books for her most recent Show & Tell Tuesday theme. 

I just love a good read-aloud, so I'm linking up and sharing some of my personal favorites. Some of these books are linked to blog posts I've written that describe activities to go along with them. All of the following are picture books that have been kid-tested and approved by my students this school year! 

"Pierre the Penguin" by Jean Marzollo

This is a must-have for your penguin unit! It's the true story of a penguin who lost his feathers and the brilliant solution that helped to restore them. Pierre just celebrated his 30th birthday and still lives at the California Academy of Sciences, which features live penguin cams on their website to show your students after reading the story.

"Moe the Dog in Tropical Paradise" by Diane Stanley

A great book to read in winter-time when you're wishing for warm weather! Click here for my blog post on this story.

"Little Granny Quarterback" by Bill Martin Jr.

You don't come across too many books about a football-playing grandmother! Click here for my blog post on this story (scroll to the end of post to see activities my students did with the book).

"There is a Bird on Your Head" by Mo Willems

Another hilarious Elephant and Piggie adventure! I read Elephant's lines using an elephant mask with a bird attached to the top and the kids were enthralled! This just might be my favorite book in the series.

"Little Dog Lost: The True Story of a Brave Dog Named Baltic" by Monica Carnesi

This is the true story of a dog rescued from an ice floe in 2010. Students can see pictures of Baltic and a video of his actual rescue on the author's blog! 

"Snowflake Bentley" by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

This is a beautiful picture book biography of Wilson Bentley, a farmer born in 1865 who photographed and studied snowflakes. Students can use Wilson Bentley's pictures as inspiration for making or drawing their own snowflakes.

"How Rocket Learned to Read" and "Rocket Writes a Story" by Tad Hills

Rocket's got reading and writing covered! See my blog posts here and here for ideas and activities.

"Senorita Gordita" by Helen Ketteman
This book is a Southwestern-style retelling of "The Gingerbread Man" and is so fun to read aloud! Kids will join in the refrain with enthusiasm ("with a flip and a skip and a zip-zoom-zip"), and comparisons to the original Gingerbread Man fairy tale are sure to follow. Spanish words are sprinkled throughout the book, so an introduction to a few of them before reading it will have your students thinking about language and making predictions based on prior knowledge of the original story.

"Porkenstein" by Kathryn Lasky
 A fun Frankenstein-esque story to read at Halloween. Throw on a lab coat and safety goggles and start conducting science experiments after reading this book!

"The Library Dragon" by Carmen Agra Deedy
A librarian has serious issues with kids checking out or even touching the library books in this awesome story. Click here for my blog post on "The Library Dragon".


Be sure to check out other great picture book recommendations at Sunny Days in Second Grade's linky party here!

~Swersty

A Tropical Paradise in Winter!

"Moe the Dog in Tropical Paradise" by Diane Stanley is one of my favorite books and perfect to read at this time of year because it takes place in winter:

What images come to mind when you think of winter? Snowflakes? A blanket of white snow covering the ground? Ice-covered ponds and lakes? Well, winter in Central Texas is usually pretty mild, so unfortunately snow is a rare occurrence here. Last week was no exception with daytime temperatures in the mid-70's. Oh how we yearn for a little snow and ice once in a while!

So you can imagine the surprise for my students when they found out that there was an ice storm in the library, complete with a snowman, igloo, and an ice tunnel!

Our story area was transformed into a giant igloo!

The ice tunnel--brrrrr!

What does the inside of an igloo look like, anyway? Let's take a peek...

Entrance to the igloo

Hmmm, not quite what you might expect...

The tropical decor shocked the kids, but it made sense after hearing the story. And they really loved leaving the story area through the ice tunnel:






The story doesn't actually have an igloo or an ice tunnel in it, but I couldn't resist adding them. And in case you're wondering about the extravagant set-up, I didn't do it all by myself. I had help from my daughter and her friend, who were completely in charge of the tropical paradise area while I tackled the icy parts. We had fun decorating, and the students had a blast with this story! The setting prompted great discussions about weather, with students comparing warm and cold climates. Personally, I enjoy living in a warm location, but wouldn't mind a nice snowfall once every winter. How about you? 

~Swersty