ATTENTION BLOGGERS!

My group and I would like to thank you for your insightful comments. We enjoy hearing from all of you. Please remember that we would love to hear more from you. Having good background knowledge of good books that are out there to use in the classroom, can make instruction and lesson planning so much easier and effective. Know we are all here to help each other. Teaching is a learning experience in itself and we want to make that experience a positive one!

We Planted a Tree

This book is about- you guessed it, children planting trees. It's a great story about why we should plant trees. The children in the book learn how trees help the environment and us. I read this to my 3rd graders as part of our Earth Day week in school and they absolutely loved it! Afterwards we were able to actually plant trees and clean up the area around our school. It's a great book to use if you are trying to introduce basic information about our environment, seasons, or healthy eating. It's written as a poem, so you can also use it in a poetry unit if you'd like.

My Dog ate my Homework!

This book is really fun! It is a collection of silly poems that both children and adults will find amusing. Here is an example of the title poem.

My Dog Ate My Homework
My dog ate my homework. That mischievous pup got hold of my homework and gobbled it up. My dog ate my homework. It's gonna be late. I guess that the teacher will just have to wait. My dog ate my homework. He swallowed it whole. I shouldn't have mixed it with food in his bowl.
--Kenn Nesbitt

As you can see the poems are really fun and can get students engaged. Poem units can be a challenge sometimes because the children either love poetry or hate it. Usually there is no happy medium, but incorporating this text can break that cycle. This collection of poems can help children see that poetry can portray even the silliest of emotions. That makes the reading and writing of such poems, a really fun experience for all!

Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse

I love this book and I found a great web page that has everything you would ever need when reading his book to children. It offers so many great ideas. It also gives great print off in pdf that all you have to do is print how easy is that! I hope you love this web page and the book Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse as much as I do!! Happy Reading http://www.teachingheart.net/kevinideasl.html

Gingerbread Friends

This is a great book to read for the winter holidays, about a young Gingerbread baby and its adventures to find some new friends. Gingerbread and Friends is a beautifully illustrated book with all the water color painting done by the author Jan Brett. The site http://www.janbrett.com/ is the Jan Brett author site and offers a plethora of activities to go with her many books. Jan's books are aimed the lower elementary level grades Pre-K to grade 3. The site has a large selection of videos to go with Jen Brett's many books. One of the many videos shows how Jan Brett creates the Gingerbread Baby in a step by step process so you and your class can make you own Gingerbread Baby.