Try Food as a Way Into Reading
Learning is best done through experience, and food is definitely a way into learning for many of us. To tie reading in with some cool hands-on (and mouths-on) experiences, grab this biography, Try It! How Frieda Caplan Changed the Way We Eat written by Mara Rockliff and illustrated by Giselle Potter.
Apples, bananas, tomatoes, potatoes, these were almost the only things that Frieda Caplan saw when she went to her produce market. But Frieda wanted to try something different.
She brought mushrooms to sell. Everyone thought they were weird.
Until they tried them. Suddenly everyone wanted mushrooms. People even dubbed her the “Mushroom Queen”.
But she wanted more than just mushrooms.
She tried kiwi, jicama, sugar snap peas, cherimoya, champagne grapes. Red bananas, baby corn, star fruit! All kinds of new foods! She brought them all to her produce market.
And people tried them. And liked them!
A master teacher, Ed Spicer, taught his first graders that learning is all about trying. He encouraged his students to celebrate trying something new, even if they weren’t successful at first, even if they didn’t like it – that in itself is learning. You can create really memorable learning experiences by reading Try It! How Frieda Caplan Changed the Way We Eat and talking about new food.
Read this book with your kids/students/campers and talk about foods that seemed weird before you tried them. Are there foods they didn’t like before but now they do? You can make charts together of interesting foods and kids can put their names in the columns of “Yes, I like it” or “No, I don’t like it” or “I don’t know – I haven’t tried it yet”. If you have food magazines, kids can cut out foods they like and foods they want to try. Model for them, if kids start saying something is gross, that you used to think a certain food was gross but that part of growing up is that your tastes develop. Tell them about foods you used to think were weird that you now enjoy.
If you’re working with your own children or with children you know don’t have any fruit/vegetable allergies, you can bring in something like star fruit to try. I have researched allergies and it turns out for almost every food, someone is allergic to it. (Check out verywellhealthy.com – I never knew some kids aren’t bluffing about being allergic to broccoli!) To play it safe with a large group of kids, pick a cooked fruit, like applesauce. (Still, avoid anything with strawberries.) Do you think green applesauce is weird? What about pear sauce? Weird food is only weird until you try it!
Read MoreReading an “Again, again!” book in a new way
Happy Almost-the-End-of-2020! I think this year has been most challenging for those living with or working with small children. How do you keep them enticed if you can’t get new books from the library or from school? How do you keep yourself from going nuts if you’re tired of rereading the same books? Here’s how.
Ask your child, “What do you notice when you look at the cover of this book?” It’s really interesting to hear the details kids notice that we adults may not, the details the illustrator intentionally puts in.
“I see faces in the trees!”
“I see them now, too! Do you notice anything else?”
“The trees have snow on this side and the tree over here doesn’t have snow. So that’s winter and that’s not winter.”
“I wonder why the illustrator drew the trees that way. “
You can talk about what you see until your child is done reading the picture and wants to hear the words. The pictures often give information that the words don’t. Reading pictures is a big part of learning to read words.
This technique of letting kids lead the reading was a big shift for me as a teacher/librarian. I’m eager to get to the words. I’ve often told kids what I want them to learn from the book, trying to pour in knowledge. Lifelong learners are gatherers of knowledge. We can put kids in charge of pulling in meaning first.
Even if it’s a book you’ve read a dozen times, encourage your child to take the lead. They can tell you what they see and show you how their minds are making meaning. You may see the familiar book in a new way when your child says, “Again, again!”
This Whole Book Approach is wonderfully taught by Megan Dowd Lambert in her book, “Reading Picture Books With Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking About What They See”. I highly recommend it!
Read More“One Family” is one you need for Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, but it’s a challenge to find Thanksgiving picture books that connect with kids (I find many “pilgrim and Indian” books that are cringeworthy with stereotypes). This year, I’m focusing on the “thanks” in Thanksgiving and sharing One Family by George Shannon with pictures by Blanca Gomez.
The simple counting book is elevated here to show the beauty of what a family can be.
Counting up to ten, we see all kinds of inclusive loving groups: two dads and their daughter (all with different shades of skin), grandparents and kids, a family where the dad and his sons are wearing turbans, a mix of adults and kids where it’s not clear what the relationships are but who cares because they’re smiling and together. On the last page showing all the people we read, “One is one and everyone. One earth. One world. One family.”
Use this book to inspire your students to write and draw about their own families. To continue the counting 1 to 10 structure, students can write about what they are thankful for this holiday. Pair this with the wonderful new nonfiction book Families by Shelly Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly if you want to compare and contrast to hit the Integration of Knowledge & Ideas standard. I count you among my many blessings!
Read More27 Books You Can Use This Year
During the “Moving Beyond the Basics… Reaching for More” conference on Aug. 11 at the Byron Center High School in Michigan, a roomful of teachers and I read through boxes of books. (Thank you, Annemarie Johnson and Kate DiMeo, for inviting me to share informational picture books and to talk about kids’ book publishing.) ((Have I mentioned that my first picture book, GROUNDHOG’S DILEMMA, will come out this December 1 from Charlesbridge?)) After browsing and brainstorming, we generated a list of 27 books with lesson ideas we can use this year in kindergarten through third grade. Feel free to share it!
| Title | Author | Illustrator | Lesson Ideas |
| Alphabeasties and Other Amazing Types | Werner Sharon | Forss, Sarah | alliteration, identifying letters in different fonts – visual learners |
| Aunt Ant Leaves through the Leaves | Coffelt, Nancy | homonyms/homophones | |
| Bee Dance | Chrustowski,Rick | vocabulary, informational reading, chronological text structure, debate if it is “narrative” or “informative” | |
| The Best of Times | Tang, Greg | Briggs, Harry | multiplication in third grade, rules for each and tables |
| Boy, Were We Wrong About the Weather! | Kudlinkski, Kathleen V. | Serra, Sebastia | compare/contrast what we once thought to what we now think, text features, weather in first grade, landforms in second |
| Families | Rotner, Shelley | Rotner, Shelley | “all about” writing at a simple level = great mentor text |
| Greedy Apostrophe: a cautionary tale | Carr, Jan | Long, Ethan | grammar – ways to use an apostrophe |
| Henry’s Map | Elliot, David | mapping skills lesson, pictures with labels = text feature, mentor tex for writing | |
| How To Surprise a Dad | Reagan, Jean | Wildish, Lee | mentor text for “how to” writing that goes beyond basic instruction format, mentor text for incorporating all five senses in details |
| In Mary’s Garden | Kugler, Carson | Kugler, Tina | compare/contrast with “The Most Magnificient Thing” |
| The King Who Rained | Gwynne, Fred | homonyms/homophones/word play, figurative language | |
| Lucky and Stu vs. the Mikanikal Man | Van Wright, Cornelius | reading for pleasure! Friendship themes and good “boy” book | |
| Math Fables | Tang, Greg | Cahoon, Heather | number sense for youngers |
| Me, Too! | Dunklee, Annika | Smith, Lori Joy | opinion writing: “Reason #1”, friendship story to discuss |
| Messy Jesse | Bowles, Paula | writing prompt, “what I’m good at”, punctuation lesson | |
| Nino Wrestles the World | Morales, Yuyi | using context to decode unfamiliar words, appreciation of other languages/cultures | |
| One Boy | Seeger, Laura Vaccaro | finding words within words | |
| One Word from Sophia | Averbeck, Jim | Ismail, Yasmeen | persuasive writing, writing for an audience, text features like glossary |
| Ostriches Are Not Pets! | Niver, Heather Moore | persuasive writing | |
| Over in the Wetlands | Rose, Caroline Starr | Dunlavey, Rob | vocabulary – word choice and author’s craft, context clues, inferring, how do animals prepare for storms compared to how people prepare? |
| Rufus Goes to School | Griswell, Kim T. | Gorbachev, Valeri | use at the beginning of the school year, shows importance of learning how to read, point out persuasive reasons why pigs should (not) go to school |
| Simple Machines | Adler, David A. | Raff, Anna | use as a mentor text for flip books, compare/contrast, nonfiction with illustrations and not photos, text features, easy nonfiction that’s not about animals |
| Speed, Speed, Centipede! | Dahl, Michael | Trover, Zachary | early math counting by tens, shows 10 frames |
| This Plus That: Life’s Little Equations | Rosenthal, Amy Krouse | Corace, Jen | writing with math symbols |
| Water is Water | Paul, Miranda | Chin, Jason | “show, don’t tell”, art tells story as much as text does |
| Wumbers | Rosenthal, Amy Krouse | Lictenheld, Tom | lesson on speech bubbles |
| Zero the Hero | Holub, Joan | Lictenheld, Tom | higher math concepts, friendship, lesson on speech bubbles |
Guess Who Is Out of the Den?
