Category Archives: Non-Fiction

Use Silver Seeds to plant poems

Leave a reply

This is one of my go-to books I use every April to celebrate Poetry Month. Silver Seeds by Paul Paolilli and Dan Brewer with paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher is simply beautiful. The poems are all about nature, and they’re all written in a form many kids recognize. When I show the first poem,
“Down goes the moon
And up comes the sun,
Welcoming the
New Day”
lots of hands wave in the air, “It’s an acrostic!” Yes, these poems have a word as the topic of the poem written from top to bottom on the page, and each letter starts a line of the poem. When we teach our kids to begin writing poetry, it’s an easy form to follow. I love that the poems  in this book aren’t just one word per letter, but you can show kids how to write acrostic poems using either one word to make a descriptive list, or several words per line to paint a broader picture.

Silver Seeds is a great poetry book to hit the Common Core State Standard of Range of Reading (RL. 10 if you’re keeping score) in the elementary grades, but it’s also a cool writing activity to get kids to use the dictionary. I model for the students how to write an acrostic poem about myself using my first name. I ask, “What could I put for K?” Krazy, Kool, Kitten, and Kid are usually suggested, but none of these really works for me. How can I find a K word that I think describes me? I open up the dictionary and begin to browse. Perhaps I am kaput (there are days when this is too accurate!), or keen, or kissable.  I decide that I am Kindly, and we can go on to brainstorming and looking for  R words. Using the dictionary to find words to describe themselves is a fun way to use the resource and you’ll be thrilled at some of the new adjectives your students learn. A love of language, a love of poetry, planted with Silver Seeds.

For more information, visit johnson&fancher.com

Rah, Rah, Radishes!

1 Reply

Three cheers for April Pulley Sayre and Rah, Rah, Radishes! A Vegetable Chant! How do you make healthy eating fun? With Sayre’s vibrant photos of vegetables taken at her local farmer’s market paired with her contagious rhymes:
“Oh boy, bok choy!
Brussels sprout.
Broccoli. Cauliflower.
Shout it out!”

Start your lesson by asking students, “What do you think kohlrabi is? How about fennel? Rutabaga?” Read Rah, Rah, Radishes! and see if your kids can discover what those uncommon words mean. Encourage kids to chime in as you reread (“Go, green bean!”) Play “Cross the Line”: all the kids stand one one side of the classroom and imagine an invisible line down the middle of the room – or put down tape if your maintenance team won’t go nuts. Say “Cross the line if you’ve tried broccoli,”  asparagus, the vegetables listed in the book. Have kids brainstorm vegetables that didn’t make the book. Is a tomato a vegetable? Find out in the back of Sayre’s book! If you have time and funds, bring in some vegetables for kids to try! Take photos of the vegetables and have kids use those Logic Smarts to sort the photos – by color, by part of plant (root, stem, leaf, or fruit), by which they liked and which they didn’t. With all the gorgeous colors of fresh produce, you can make a “color wheel” using vegetables –  challenge kids to eat a rainbow! Rah, Rah, Radishes, hooray healthy eating, and super job, Ms. Sayre!

For more information, visit aprilsayre.com.

Little Pink Pup

Leave a reply

This book makes me squeal with delight! It’s Little Pink Pup by Johanna Kerby and it’s my new favorite non-fiction book. Pink was the smallest of twelve new piglets. He was so tiny that he couldn’t push his way past his siblings to get to his mother, and he ended up cold and hungry in the barn. His owners brought Pink into the house in hopes that Tink can help him. Tink was a dachshund mama with babies of her own to feed. When she saw little Pink, Tink cuddled him in close and treated him like one of her own puppies. The photos of the  little brown puppies and the little pink piglet snuggling in or playing together are cute beyond words. The last photo in the book showing a healthy, full grown Pink and his teeny but proud dachshund mama makes me happier than a pig in mud. It’s such a great story, and it’s a fantastic example of how engaging well-written informational books can be. Every kid I’ve shared this book with has swooned over little Pink and his doggy foster family, and I’m wondering how many holiday wish lists in my town had “piglet” added to them (sorry, parents!) You may not be in the market to bring home a hog, but you’ll definitely want to pick up Little Pink Pup to share with your little ones.

I’m not the only one feeling the love for Little Pink Pup; it just won the 2011 Children’s Choice Book Awards for Kindergarten – 2nd grade! If you go to author Johanna Kerby’s website, you can see tons of pictures of mama Tink, not-so-little-now Pink, and more of Kerby’s farm animals. I love that this book is a true story of acceptance illustrated with photos taken by the family. Have your little ones bring in family pictures to use as writing prompts – pictures of themselves as babies, pictures of their pets, etc. all will inspire great storytelling and writing. If family photos aren’t an option, consider taking photos in your classroom or library with a digital camera and printing them off to use as story prompts.

I hope that 2012 brings you all peace, joy, and plenty of great children’s books! I am so grateful to share my favorites with you!

For more information about Little Pink Pup, visit johannakerby.com.

I’m a Turkey!

Leave a reply

When I was little, I had a book with a 45 rpm record (yep, I’m that old) that I loved. It was “A Lot of Hot Water” read by Gordon from Sesame Street. Audio recordings of books have gone through a media transition or two, but it’s still a thrill to hear a good story read aloud by a talented reader. Jim Arnosky has a free downloadable MP3 version of his song “I’m a Turkey“, and my preschoolers this week gobbled it up. Arnosky’s folksy singing style is just right to get little listeners talkin’ turkey with him. The large art and short text in this book make it a fast, easy storytime choice. I’m going to share more books with cds or MP3 versions with my students. I’m sure they enjoy listening to another voice besides mine!

After sharing I’m a Turkey, we stretched by doing the Turkey Jerky. It’s like the Hokey Pokey, except you put your right wing in, your left wing, your tail feathers , etc. After announcing “that’s what it’s all about!”, we gobbled twice instead of clapping.

Next, I gave each student a feather from the craft store. I showed them this turkey decoration (the kind that folds flat to store but unfurls into a kind of fan for show) and we said this rhyme:
There was a little turkey who had lost his tail.
When he saw it was gone, he began to wail.
“Oh woe is me! Please tell me whether
You have found my red tail feather!”
Whoever had a red feather could stick the feather in one of the holes on the turkey. We repeated the rhyme and changed it until all the colors of the feathers were used. It took me less prep time to use the turkey decoration and feathers we already had than to make the bulletin board out of construction paper like I’d originally planned, and the students loved sticking in the real feathers. Having two easy, inexpensive activities to go with a book sung by a fun artist made me very thankful indeed!

For more information, visit jimarnosky.com.

November is National Adoption Month

Leave a reply

 I like that we celebrate adoption in the same month that we celebrate Thanksgiving. For preschoolers and kindergartners, Thanksgiving doesn’t have much to do with Pilgrims and Native American Indians. Honestly, it doesn’t even have much to do with giving thanks for all we have (kids in the single-digit club live in the moment and aren’t prone to introspection.)  Nope, for little ones, Thanksgiving is all about a big, lovely meal and family. So let’s celebrate families, in all their wonderful shapes, sizes, and forms, with some of my favorite books about adoption.

Want well-written non-fiction? Get Shelley Rotner’s books. Her latest is called I’m Adopted and it is wonderful. Co-written with Sheila M. Kelly, this book is full of Rotner’s gorgeous photos showing all kinds of kids and families. The book is simply written but not watered down. One of my friends who adopted her son two years ago said the book is “so respectful, and heartfelt”. I’m trying to incorporate more informational books into my storytimes, and I’m Adopted will be perfect for my family-themed read-aloud time.

Todd Parr has been a storytime favorite for years. Who can resist his bright, bold art? I love the straightforward, positive tone of Parr’s books. In We Belong Together, Parr writes, “You needed a home… and I had one to share.” Gets me every time. The cartoon-y people and animals make the book relate-able for every child, and I like that Parr shows all kinds of family combinations.With the big art and short text, I can read this book to the youngest preschoolers as well as my older school-aged students.

For a more lyrical, snuggle-in-together book, try Sweet Moon Baby: An Adoption Tale by written by Karen Henry Clark and Patrice Barton. It’s about a baby girl born in China, and a mother and father far away, and the journey that brings their family together. Soft and sweet, this may be just the right book for some of your students who were part of an international adoption.

After you share a book about adoption with your students, let them talk about their own family stories, and when they were babies. Use your digital camera to take photos of your students, and paste the face of each student on a baby die-cut shape (they will fall down giggling seeing their faces on baby bodies!) Have students write or dictate the story of their birth, or the day they came home to their families, and attach the “baby picture”. Celebrate each and every student, because it’s November, and we are thankful for them!