Dream Snow

The Grade 1 class listened to one of my favourite books of all time. The books is called "Dream Snow" by Eric Carle. It is about a farmer that is a thoughtful, generous man who loves his animals and wants them to experience the surprises of Christmas morning.

Everything in the world is important!

I shared a book with a class called, "The Important Book" by Margaret Wise Brown. It is not a story, but rather a book describing and detailing the importance of many objects. After reading the book aloud, we talked about how everything in our world is important and has a purpose.

I suggested to the class that we could create riddles and the students could guess the object. Two of the students shared their funny riddles, and had the whole group laughing. This is a great book to show how the author described each and every thing within the book. Purpose and importance go hand in hand in life; you can't have one without the other, if you take the time to recognize it.

Bentley & Egg

My read aloud with the Grade 2 class was a favorite of mine during this time of year. The book is called "Bentley & Egg" by William Joyce. I will finish reading the book next week, and I left the students wondering what will happen next. The story is about a boy, a musical frog and duck that lays a single egg. The duck needs to leave her egg to go and see her sister's ducklings. She asks her good friend Bentley the frog to care for her egg. He is not enthusiastic about the job, but as time passes he paints the egg and begins to sing to it and truly care for it. Surprisingly, a boy finds the decorated egg, thinking it is an Easter Egg, and takes it home. Bentley is fearful for the egg and goes searching for where the boy and the egg that he loves has gone. To be continued next week....

Sand sculpture comes alive

My read-aloud with the Kindergartens today was called "Foghorn" by Mary Elizabeth Hanson and beautifully illustrated by Paul Orlando. The possibility of having a sand sculpture come alive unlocks the imagination of the children. Foghorn is a sand sculpture of a cat that a little girl named Elizabeth created one day at the beach. She had taken such loving care in creating the sculpture that once she was done and left, the cat missed her. He came to life to follow her home. Elizabeth has a very difficult time trying to convince her parents that this sand sculpture cat is at their home and in their yard. When the rain comes, her sand cat wants to return to the beach. She is reluctant to let him go but she understands. Once she lets him go, to her surprise she finds a real cat that looks very familiar with the same colour fur and telltale scarf that was on Foghorn.

Imagination grows with book reading and writing. The children were thrilled about the possibility of their own sand sculptures coming to life.

A picture book about friendship

Today I read the book called "Everyone Needs a Friend" by Dubravka Kolanovic to the Kindergarten class. It teaches us about friendship and acceptance of others, which is important to instill at a very young age. This is a feel-good book with beautiful illustrations of Jack the wolf and Walter the doormouse navigating the struggles that we can sometimes face in friendships.

Would it be a snail?

The Grade 1 class was full of smiles on their little faces, ready for library class to begin today!
I shared an outstanding science book with them called "The Snail's Spell" by Joanne Ryder and pictures by Lynne Cherry. I asked the children to listen carefully to all of the words of the book because it was going to answer an important question: what is it that is in the garden? The children listen intently to the words and half way through the story most of the children had the answer. They did ask to see the front cover of the book before I began reading, but of course, I declined and told them I would tell them why at the end of the book.

Playing the riddle game and learning about this very interesting creature was informative and FUN. Did you know that small black eyes rest at the tips of the feelers of the snail? He can tuck his eyes inside his feelers and hide them from danger. Impressive!

After we talked about this creature, I shared another book with the class called "Snails" by Jen Green. This book is from a favourite series called "Nature's Children." I shared a photograph and information about the sea slug. The colourful creature is pink, white and yellow. They also had an opportunity to see a Giant African land snail, which is the biggest snail in the world.

The Grade 1 students and myself will look at the snails now knowing how unique they truly are.

Pinduli

Janell Cannon is one of my favorite children's book authors. I shared her book called "Pinduli with the Grade 5/6.

Pinduli is a young hyena who is always complimented by her mother. When Pinduli goes out into the African land she is met by many animals on the savannah who make hurtful comments about her ears, her hair, and her stripes. She transforms her appearance with mud and she keeps her ears down so no one would recognize her. On her way home she meets the animals that insulted her appearance. Luckily, they did not know who she was and thought she was a ghost spirit. This gave her an opportunity to ask them to meet with one another to talk about how bad their name calling is. So, when she went home and bathed, her ears stood up and she was once again her mother's pride and joy.

I chose this book to share with the middle grades so they would have empathy for the situation that Pinduli was in. A few words can be very painful when someone's appearance is insulted. This chain of events had a happy ending on the African savannah lands.

When wishes have wings

This week I shared a book with the Grade 1 class called "The Sheep fairy : when wishes have wings" by Ruth Louise Symes and illustrated by David Sim. This is a wonderfully imaginative book about a sheep named Wendy Woolcoat. Her favorite pastime is to eat grass, eat grass, eat grass, eat grass, eat grass, eat grass, sleep, eat grass, eat grass, eat grass. Now you know what she likes to do!

Wendy helps a fairy in distress and she is granted a wish, and her wish is to fly. Her sheep wings helps her to fly in the sky among the stars, and also to save her friends from a wolf. The illustrations are colorful and the children laughed when I read what Wendy Woolcoat liked to do most of all. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes and Wendy Woolcoat is one of them.