Category Archives: Early Learning

The Ballad of Valentine

Leave a reply

“Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Valentine,
I have written forty letters, but you’ve never read a line.”
Alison Jackson and Tricia Tusa have me singing this Valentine’s Day. In their book, The Ballad of Valentine, a narrator tries most every way he can to let his true love know how he feels about her: he trains a homing pigeon and attaches a note with twine, taps a note in Morse code “asking you to please be mine”, rents out a mail car on the westward railroad line, but nothing works. Thank goodness his true love isn’t a gal who just waits around, for although his efforts fail, she’s been busy baking a cake and she asks him to be her Valentine.

After you croon this book along with your little darlings, have them take a look at all the “ine” words. We call our lists of words with the same endings “word families”, so make an “ine” word family with your little ones. You can go through the book and see which ones Alison Jackson used, and then brainstorm more to add to the list. Sitting in a circle, you can pass around a clementine to each student, or roll a ball of twine, and have kids come up with an “ine” word. Practicing rhymes with your Valentines  – it’s divine!

For more information, visit alison-jackson.com.

Quiet Book and Loud Book

Leave a reply

Because it’s February, I decided to dedicate today’s post to a couple of books I love: The Quiet Book and The Loud Book written by Deborah Underwood and illustrated by Renata Liwska.  As a librarian, I find I’m partial to The Quiet Book! “There are many kinds of quiet:” Underwood writes. Some are lovely, like “Best friends don’t need to talk quiet” or “Making a wish quiet”. Some will bring giggles of recognition and “uh-ohs!” like “Jelly side down quiet” (I love the animals’ looks of distress as they see the jelly on the rug!) and some give words to feelings that are harder for little ones to express: “Last one to get picked up from school quiet”.

After reading The Quiet Book to kids, they’ll be begging to hear The Loud Book, but before you share it, brainstorm with them the different kinds of loud there are! They may come up with ideas similar to Underwood’s and get to have the thrill of “that’s like what I thought of!” I can imagine that your little ones will come up with some fantastically off-the-wall ideas,(and I encourage you to email Deborah Underwood and Renata Liwska with the best of your bunch!) but I can almost guarantee that they’ll be delightedly surprised with the ideas in the book they’d never considered. Some of my favorites: “Burp during quiet time loud”, “Candy wrapper loud” (Liwska draws the animals in the movie theater), and “Spilling your marbles in the library loud”.

These two books together are perfect if you are working on the Common Core State Standard of Integrating Knowledge and Ideas. You can make a chart to compare the ways to be quiet and the ways to be loud and then try some of ways you’ve read about – preferably outside!

For more information, visit deborahunderwoodbooks.com or renataliwska.com.

Tales for Very Picky Eaters

Leave a reply

Most of you kids’ book fans have heard of the Newbery Medal (given to an author of the most distinguished contribution to literature) and the Caldecott Medal (given to the artist of an outstanding picture book) awarded every year by the American Library Association, but you may not have heard of the Geisel Award given to “the most distinguished American book for beginning readers”. So if you’re looking for a great book for a young reader, the Geisel Award is the perfect place to start!

This year’s winner: Tales for Very Picky Eaters  written and illustrated by Josh Schneider. I knew I loved this book as soon as I read the “check yes or no” quiz on the inside flap: “Lumpy oatmeal makes me gag.” “I am repulsed by mushroom lasagna. It smells funny.” “Eggs are slimy and I will not eat them.” James is served such undesirable foods by his father, who has very good reasons for giving them to his son. The oatmeal the father bought is Growing Oatmeal, and if the Growing Oatmeal isn’t eaten, it may grow out of control. Mushroom lasagna is made by a troll in the basement who doesn’t want to return to his previous job at the rat circus. And you’ll never guess why James should eat the eggs!

I can think of several “picky eater” books this would be great to compare to: Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child, Little Pea written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Jen Corace, and of course The Monster Who Ate My Peas written by Danny Schnitzlein and illustrated by the world’s greatest illustrator (and world’s best husband) Matt Faulkner. Read two books about picky eaters with little ones and compare the problems (what wouldn’t this character eat and why) as well as the solutions. Try bringing in some of the fearsome foods and see who in your class will taste a pea! You’ll be teaching the Common Core State Standard of Integrating Knowledge and Ideas, and perhaps tickling a taste bud or two.

Shades of People

Leave a reply

Peach, coffee, cocoa, copper, tan, ivory, rose, almond. So many Shades of People in this gorgeous book by Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly! I can think of no better book to read to little ones in celebration of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I’ve tried reading his biography in the past to kindergartners, only to have it go over many heads. This year, I’ll share Dr. King’s message of peace and acceptance with Rotner and Kelly’s spot-on writing and exquisite photographs, followed up with a fun art activity.

“Have you noticed that people come in many different shades? Not colors, exactly, but shades.” Rotner and Kelly open the door to discuss skin colors in the most lovely of ways, with photographs of smiling children. Children with golden skin, with freckles, with lusciously dark skin, with rosy pink cheeks. “Our skin is just our covering, like wrapping paper. And, you can’t tell what someone is like from the color of their skin.”

So before you read this book, wrap it up in paper so the cover can’t be seen. Hold it up for your kids to guess what the book is about. Can’t tell what’s inside just by looking at the wrapping? Just like a present! And, just like a person! Read Shades of People with your kids and talk about the descriptive adjectives. How would you describe your skin? I’m sort of peachy-ivory – how about you? After you’ve read and enjoyed the book, get out the paint and let kids paint pictures of themselves. Let them experiment with mixing colors to match their skin tones. Even if you only have the basic primaries, it’s a good science and art experiment to add a bit of red and yellow and even blue to white and black and brown. Celebrate all the colors in your classroom!

For more information, visit shelleyrotner.com.

Are You a Horse?

1 Reply

Roy gets a saddle for his birthday with the instructions to find a horse and enjoy the ride, but Roy doesn’t know what a horse is. Are You a Horse? by Andy Rash had my group of kindergartners giggling and chiming in each time Roy asked a different character his big question. “Are you a horse?” Roy asks a cactus, but it can’t be a horse because it’s not an animal. Roy asks a snake, but even though it’s an animal, it can’t be a horse because a horse has legs. Time after time, Roy uses what he’s learned  and finds a new something to ask, “Are you a horse?” only to be told no. Finally he finds an animal that meets all the requirements (an animal with legs, friendly, fast, no stripes, etc.) – yes, it’s a horse! The last page had those kindergartners guffawing, because Roy and the horse do use the saddle to go for a ride, but the horse rides Roy.

There’s a great deal of “yes/no” information in this book, so it was the perfect story to teach kids how to use a chart as a graphic organizer. I made a chart with all the characters Roy meets (the cactus, the snake, etc.) going down the side. Across the top of the chart were listed all the characteristics that came up in the book: are you an animal, do you have legs, etc. Next, I put the picture of each character on a 3×5 card. To make sure I had enough for everyone in the class, I made three cards for each character. I passed out the index cards and asked the kindergartners to find the people who had matching cards (the cards had both the picture and the words to help my non-word-readers). Once the kids were sitting with their character buddies, we filled out the chart together on the Smart Board.

“Are you an animal? Cactuses, thumbs up if yes you are an animal, and thumbs down if you’re not.” Because the kids were in little teams, they could look to each other to answer the question. “Noooo!” Since the cactus did not meet the animal requirement, we wrote the word “no” with a frown face in that square. “Crabs, are you an animal?” Thumbs up meant we wrote the word “yes” with a smiling face in that square. If we weren’t certain (do crabs lay eggs? Good question!) we marked those squares with a question mark and decided to find out the answer during library time.  As a group, we used the chart to review and organize all the information we’d learned in reading Are You a Horse? and all the students were actively involved. My animal-loving “nature smart” kids were thrilled, my “logic smart” kids were in heaven, and I had a blast listening to a classroom of kindergartners asking in their best cowboy drawl, “Are you a horse?”

For more information, visit Andy Rash’s website: rashworks.com.