Category Archives: Vocabulary

Rah, Rah, Radishes!

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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.

Quiet Book and Loud Book

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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.

I Had a Favorite Dress

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As the season of present-giving draws near, I’d like to mention two books that not only make great gifts, but also talk about the value of making the most of what we have as well as recycling. I Had a Favorite Dress written by Boni Ashburn and illustrated by Julia Denos is a terrific twist on Joseph Had a Little Overcoat.The little girl in the story has outgrown her favorite dress, but her crafty mom uses it to make a cute shirt. When the girl outgrows that, mom uses it to make a tank top, etc. I won’t spoil the ending, but it comes full circle beautifully, making it clear that creativity can help us take minor tragedies and turn them into something wonderful. And not only is it eco-considerate, it even teaches the days of the week! Woohoo, Boni Ashburn and Julia Denos! Purchase “I Had a Favorite Dress”

 

After reading I Had a Favorite Dress to your kids, compare it with the Caldecott-award-winning story, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback. Both stories talk about taking an article of clothing that’s either worn out or outgrown and turning it into something else. Comparing and contrasting the two books will hit the Common Core State Standard of Integrating Knowledge and Ideas and inspire lots of higher level thinking. After all the analytical thinking fun is done (Venn diagram, anyone?), give your students scraps of fabric, scissors, glue, etc., and encourage them to make something from a bit of what looks like nothing much. Encourage everyone in your life to take their old, worn, outgrown clothing and either make something new or donate the items to charity. In the words of Boni Ashburn: “Make molehills out of mountains!”

For more information, visit boniashburn.com, juliadenos.com, or simmstaback.com.

One Dark Night

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It’s October, and you want to read a not-too-scary book to get in the Halloween mood. But what if Halloween isn’t something you celebrate? At our public library, we have many patrons who don’t want a story with witches and ghosts. So, what can we read to get us shivery and snuggly? One Dark Night written by Lisa Wheeler and illustrated by Ivan Bates.

Mouse and Mole live “in a wee little house, in a wee little hole” but one dark night, they venture out into the woods. Meanwhile, “in a big giant lair, near a big giant glen” a big giant bear is growling – and hungry. As the two wee animals travel in the dark, the giant hungry bear gets hungrier. What will happen when Bear finds wee Mouse and Mole? “You’re late!” he grumbles, and the three go back to Bear’s lair for a big giant feast.

I like the juxtaposition of the wee little creatures and the big giant bear, as well as the happy surprise twist on a story that gives us just enough suspense.  After you talk with the students about what they thought would happen and what actually happened, divide the class in two groups to act out the story as you reread it. Let the Mouse and Mole kids stand against one wall and tiptoe from it when you read their scenes. Let the Bear kids stand against the opposite wall and take big giant steps forward during their scenes. Kids can even say the lines of the characters after you in wee or giant voices. The two groups will meet in the middle of the room for the Bear kids to announce “You’re late!” and they can all come back to your gathering spot together. And if there happens to be a wee little treat waiting there for them, even better!

For more information, visit lisawheelerbooks.com.

Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow?

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Before I rave about  Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow? by Susan A. Shea and Tom Slaughter, first I must rave about the public librarians in Washington. I just spent a day talking about great books and ideas with some of the most dedicated, hardworking, professional librarians I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. These librarians do it all in their eastern Washington libraries, and I am inspired by them to do more when I get back to my library in Michigan.

But if I’m spreading the love this morning, I have to send some love to Susan A. Shea and Tom Slaughter for this book.

“If a snakelet becomes a snake, can a cupcake grow and become a (lift-the-flap) cake?”

How do I love thee, Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow? Let me count the ways.

1.I didn’t know they were called snakelets, so yay for learning vocabulary in context.
2. Nothing like lifting a flap to grab a young audience.
3. The flaps are actually sturdy enough to withstand multiple readings.
4. Love the rhyming practice we get to guess the right answer.
5. Half way through the book, we stop to get the answer (yes to these, no to those) and then we go to round two, which ends with a baby grows to become – you!
6. Tom Slaughter’s art is yummy.

This works wonderfully for the early science units on living and non-living things. An easy extension idea for non-crafty folks like myself is to give students a large piece of construction paper folded in half. At the top of the page, write “Do you know which ones will grow?” One one half of the page, write “Yes” and write on the other half “No”. Kids can choose die-cut shapes, or shapes cut from magazines, to glue on the appropriate side. Cute for a class book or a bulletin board, too. You know all your students will grow to love this book.

For more information, visit tomslaughter.com