Category Archives: Nature Smart

Two Perfect “Picks” for Valentine’s Day: Porcupining and Hokey Pokey

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This Valentine’s Day, I’d like to share with the readers I love (you!) some of the things I love: wonderful pun-packed picture books by my author-crush Lisa Wheeler and free, already-planned activities to make teaching those books super-easy.

Porcupining: a Prickly Love Story and Hokey Pokey: Another Prickly Love Story, both written by Lisa Wheeler and illustrated by Janie Bynum, feature one of my most-beloved picture book characters, Cushion the Porcupine. We first meet Cushion in Porcupining where he is looking for love in all the wrong places. This forlorn hero of the petting zoo finally finds true love with Barb, a hedgehog. Then, in Hokey Pokey, Cushion wants to make his beloved Barb happy by learning to dance. Asking a fox, a rabbit, and a chicken for dance lessons only leads to prickly situations, and once again Cushion seems stuck out of luck. But Barb proves to be the perfect pick for Cushion when she teaches him all the moves he needs, and together they dance the Hokey Pokey.

 

Comparing and contrasting two stories with the same characters, same author, and/or same illustrator is a great way to teach the Common Core State Standard of Integrating Knowledge and Ideas. On her website lisawheelerbooks.com, Lisa has a free teacher’s guide to go with these books. Use the graphic organizer from the teacher guide for Porcupining (written by super-cool author Tracie Vaughn Zimmer) to compare the main character, the problem, the three ways the character tries to solve the problem, and the solution in both books.  Then, print off the adorable recipe cards for Cushion Cookies (made by another super-cool author Hope Vestergaard) and your Valentine’s Day is set!

“This Is Not My Hat” wins the Caldecott Medal!

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If you’re a kid-lit lover like me, you already know that This Is Not My Hat written and illustrated by Jon Klassen won the Caldecott Medal for 2012. (Were you huddled around your computer screen that morning, too, watching the live broadcast and squealing when your favorites were announced? Just me? Ok.)

This Is Not My Hat is an ideal picture book to teach the Common Core Standard of Integrating Knowledge & Ideas: “Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot”  and “explain how specific aspects of a text’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting).” The story told by the text is not exactly the same as the story told by the pictures. (Working on a lesson on inference? Grab this book!)

A little fish (the fellow you see on the cover) is narrating the story as he swims. “This hat is not mine,” he admits. He stole it from a big fish, and we see the big fish sleeping. “…(H)e probably won’t wake up for a long time,” says the little fish, and we see the same illustration of that big fish, but now his eyes are wide open. So all the words are from the little fish’s point of view, but we see in the illustrations what the little fish doesn’t realize – the big fish does realize his hat was stolen, does know who took it, and is out to get his hat back. The end shows the big fish with his tiny hat back on his head, and the little fish is nowhere to be seen. Anyone want to infer what happened in the end?

Kids who loved Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back will adore this book, and find similarities beyond the hat theme. So share This Is Not My Hat and compare the information gained from the illustrations to the information we get from the text, and then compare the two books, and you’ll have a double-whammy Integration of Knowledge & Ideas lesson! The endings for both books is left up to the reader to figure out. You can have students debate what they think happens at the end, and give reasons to support their position. Do any of your students think the little fish got away? If he did, what might happen next?

Because there are only three characters in This Is Not My Hat (little fish, big fish, and tattle-tale crab) it’s super-easy to make a Storybox with the book and either stuffed animals, puppets, or felt pieces of the characters for kids to retell the story. If you’re crafty, have kids make hats from brown paper bags (keeping with Klassen’s muted tones) for them to swap and declare, “This is not my hat!”

Stay: The True Story of Ten Dogs

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‘Tis the season for gift-giving and for “best of the year” lists. The New York Public Library put 100 terrific titles on their Children’s Books 2012 list, including my pick for Most-Heart-Warming-Non-Fiction-Book:  Stay: The True Story of Ten Dogs by Michaela Muntean with photographs by K. C. Bailey and Stephen Kazmierski.

Luciano Anastasini needed a second chance. He was a circus acrobat, from a long line of circus performers, until the day he fell fifty feet from the high wire. His body eventually healed, but he could no longer perform his old routines. He decided to train dogs for a new act, and since he was hoping for a second chance, he chose dogs who needed a second chance as well.

Bowser ended up at the pound because he was always stealing food from his owner’s table. Stick was a stray. Penny spun madly in circles, Cocoa was a digger, Tyke did the opposite of what he was told to do. Luciano took the dogs in and taught them to do fantastic, funny tricks. As the news spread about Luciano’s success with “hopeless” dogs, people brought him more dogs who needed a second chance: E-Z, Meemo, Sammy, Free, and Rowdy. Together Luciano Anastasini and his Pound Puppies have entertained circus crowds across the country. Muntean writes, “Sometimes a dog and a person will find each other at just the right moment – a moment when they need each other more than either could ever imagine.”

Share Stay: The True Story of the Ten Dogs with your students and discuss how Luciano turned each dog’s “flaw” into a strength in his act. (You’ll hit the Common Core State Standard of Key Ideas and Details, and hopefully have a wonderful class discussion on how our own flaws can become strengths, too.) Because it is the holiday season, consider making a craft that benefits shelter dogs. I love these easy, braided ropes you can make from upcycled old shirts. You’ll teach your students more than just informational reading skills; you’ll teach them that they can help make the world a better place.

Bones: Skeletons and How They Work

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I could say, “here’s an informational book that will tickle your funny bone” or  “it’s so good it’s scary”, but Bones: Skeletons and How They Work by Steve Jenkins needs no rib-tickling tricks to get kids’ attention. For Halloween or health units, this book is thoroughly engaging.  Using cut paper, Jenkins makes incredible illustrations of all kinds of bones to show how structure aids function. Some of the bones are shown actual size, so it’s easy to compare a human skull to that of a baboon, a dog, a parrot, or an armadillo. Some bones are too large to show in actual size, so Jenkins makes the bones to scale. Kids can compare an adult human’s foot bones to the fossil foot bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex!  Not only is this book visually a treat, it’s chock-full of “who knew?” facts that kids love: “a giraffe’s neck is as long as a man is tall, but giraffes and humans have the same number of neck bones: seven.”

I love sharing informational books like this with students. With Steve Jenkins’ books, I’m squeezing in the Common Core State Standards of Range of Reading and Key Ideas and Details, I can work interesting books into math and science units, I’m immersing my students in nonfiction, and all the while the kids think they’re just enjoying a good book. Because  most of Jenkins’ illustrations are actual size or to scale, you can use Bones: Skeletons and How They Work in a measurement lesson. Kids can estimate how long a bone is and measure it with a ruler. For higher level math, have students measure the to-scale illustrations and multiply to get actual-size measurements.

If you read this book with students around Halloween, it can be a springboard to make some spooky decorations. At enchantedlearning.com, you can print off a human skeleton template for students to cut out and put together with brads to see how all our bones fit. Hang up the skeletons and your decorations are not only scary, they are scientific! For a treat that’s not loaded with sugar, try serving “Bones Dipped in Blood” (pull breadstick dough into bone shapes, bake, and serve with pizza sauce.) To incorporate a bit of technology and to rock it old school, go to YouTube and treat your students to the Schoolhouse Rock video clip of “Them Not-So-Dry Bones”. “Right now there’s a skeleton locked up inside of you!”

For more information, please visit Steve Jenkins’ website: stevejenkinsbooks.com.

Alphabeasties and other Amazing Types

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My husband, the illustrious author/illustrator Matt Faulkner, is very intelligent (note his wise choice when picking a spouse). He was also the last kid in his class to learn the alphabet. Matt is very visual, and one of the reasons he had a hard time distinguishing some letters was because they can look so different depending on the font. That’s why Alphabeasties and other Amazing Types by Sharon Werner and Sarah Forss is so terrific. This alphabet book makes animal pictures and alliterative phrases using different typefaces. Uppercase Gs are shown with and without a “beard”, and  you’ll see a lowercase g sometimes has a “groovy curl on its head” but sometimes it doesn’t. A gaggle of Gs and gs group together to make a giraffe standing in long blades of grass. The sheep shapes are made of S’s, so the sheep sheared with scissors has a pile of curly S’s at its feet.  It’s great to have a book point out that letters can look different in books because of the typeface – “a lowercase a can wear a little hood” or “a lowercase a can be a ball and a stick.” No wonder it earned starred reviews and Parent’s Choice awards. Alphabeasties and other Amazing Types will help all those visual “Picture Smart” learners with letter recognition and the Common Core State Standard of print concepts.

If you have access to computers and printers, let students choose interesting fonts in which to type and print their names. Bring in magazines, newspapers, coupons, etc. for students to cut up and compare letters in different fonts.  Students can glue all the a’s on a big A shape, etc., or make alliterative classroom pictures with them by drawing an outline of the animal and letting students glue the corresponding letters onto the shape. An Alphabeasties Amazing Activity Book is available in bookstores along with flashcards. When you’re ready for fun with numbers, check out Werner and Forss’s book  Bugs by the Numbers.

For more information about Sharon Werner and Sarah Forss, visit their website at wdw.com