Storyline Online and a FREEBIE

Storyline Online is one of the best sites for viewing children's book read alouds. Let me share some details you might not know yet, and I'll throw in a helpful Freebie you'll use again and again.

If you've looked on YouTube for kids books being read aloud you've found thousands of them. Any given children's book title usually has several different uploaded read aloud videos to choose from and there is a wide range in quality. I found Storyline Online this very way, while looking through all the YouTube videos for read alouds.

Storyline Online is made possible by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, SAG-AFTRA. It is absolutely free to use. As I write this they have over fifty children's picture book read aloud videos available. Here's a sample.

Each video starts with the actor, or actors, holding the book and giving a book introduction before beginning to read.

The camera zooms in on the illustrations, where often little parts of the pictures become animated. Throughout the story you go back and forth between seeing the illustrations and the actor reading the book, so kids never forget they are being read to. 

Fully animated video movies of children's books are great, to be sure, but it is easy to forget those cartoons come from books. I think when kids watch books being read by live people there is added value and emphasis on reading.

Because I had always viewed the Storyline Online videos directly on YouTube, I didn't realize that there are activity guides written for each story, which you can only get on the Storyline Online site.

     

The activity guides, written for teachers mostly, but some with activity guides specifically for parents, are chockfull of ideas– some suggest before, during and after the story discussion points, themes, writing ideas, art, movement, even cooking activities... all sorts of things to choose from. You can find them by going directly to StorylineOnline.net under the All Books tab.

You can watch the Storyline Online read aloud videos on YouTube, but when watching on YouTube it is pretty easy to get to other videos and ads, some of which you wouldn't want your kids to view. You can also watch Storyline Online videos directly on StorylineOnline.net, with options of watching via YouTube or SchoolTube, with SchoolTube being the safer option.

Either way you choose to watch on the Storyline Online site, when you get to the end of the video, other Storyline Online videos will pop up. That isn't a bad thing, unless you want kids to only watch one particular story, or you want other kids to use the same device and watch that one particular story.  So to keep kids on the correct story I created QR codes for the stories through Safe YouTube.

Click to download Safe YouTube QR Code cards for Storyline Online videos

Safe YouTube is better than safe mode on YouTube, and it takes away all those many buttons and videos that cause distractions and allow kids to click and end up anywhere on YouTube. No online connection is completely safe and kids seem to find a way to other things no matter what, so always keep an eye on what they are watching.

I created one for each story on Storyline Online, currently fifty three in total. You can print out the QR Code cards in color, or they come out crisp and clean if you choose to print in black and white. Laminate, cut apart, and you'll have a set of cards for kids to use on any device with a QR Code reader. It will take them to that story and no other. These work great in classrooms as centers, Daily 5 and Readers Workshop stations, and independent reading choices. If you're a parent you'll find them useful at home or on the road with devices.

To get this Freebie just click on the picture of QR code cards above. There are six pages in all. I will update as I see new stories appear on Storyline Online. Be sure to Pin this post so you can get to updated pages.

I suggest you cruise by StorylineOnline.net to see the full list of read aloud titles. I found many good books there, books I hadn't heard of before. I like to have actual copies of the books the kids are going to listen to, and I like to read the book to my students first, so I can make the most out of that read aloud– focusing on vocabulary, story problem, characters, etc.  But if I'm low on cash, Storyline Online is a way to let my kidpeople hear quality books at no cost to me. Many of my favorite Flashlight Press books are there, too, and if you are a regular reader you know how I love Flashlight Press. (News Flash– I'll be giving away another Flashlight Book soon!!) Storyline Online has won lots of awards and that is for very good reason. Good book selections, VERY well read!

Hope you found this post about Storyline Online and the activity guides helpful. And I hope you'll download the QR Code cards and find them useful with your kids. I am not being paid or getting any perk for telling you about Storyline Online. I just wanted to share a great resource.

See you next time!

Carla's Sandwich– Appreciating Differences and Trying New Things

My class had a lot of fun and learning with Carla's Sandwich by Debbie Herman, illustrated by Sheila Bailey. Published in 2004, it is not a new book, but it was new to me when I spotted it on the website of my favorite publisher, Flashlight Press. How could I have missed it before? With quirky illustrations, and a storyline and dialogue that rings true to kids' ears, this book was a fast favorite for the kidpeople and me, too. Let me share what we did with it.

The sandwiches Carla brings to school are different, unique and creative... at least that's how she sees it. Her classmates deem them disgusting, gross, and sick, and after a while even spunky Carla is brought low by their lack of understanding and respect for her sandwich ideas. That is, until hunger steps in.

Before ever reading the book I asked kids what their favorite sandwiches were, listing them on the board. Ham came up most in the list of five favorites, to my surprise. Then I asked each child if they would eat all the sandwiches on our class list... Nope. Would then even try them? Nope. Even if it was a classmate's favorite, they weren't going to touch it.

And then as we often do, we checked out certain parts of the book, enjoying what we found at first glance. Well, look at that– the cover has a piece of bread with a girl... Carla, probably...  inside it. That's an interesting illustration idea. And look at those endpapers... we always check out the end papers.

And yes, the back flap has "About the Authors" information. All the best books include that.

We dug in and after reading the first half of the book, at which point all of poor Carla's sandwiches have been rejected by her classmates, I stopped and asked the class what they thought so far. They very much agreed that they wouldn't want to eat Carla's sandwiches because they were "really yucky." However, my kidpeople thought that the kids in the book were mean to Carla and "she should be able to eat any sandwich she wants," even if my kiddos themselves wouldn't eat it if she brought it to our school.

After reading the whole book my class thought it was good that the classmates in the story tried a new sandwich and were glad Carla felt better, but they were still pretty dubious about eating sandwiches like Carla's. I brought most around to the idea that at least trying new things was a good idea, even if you worried that you wouldn't like it.

We especially enjoyed discussing descriptor words like different, unique, creative, gross and disgusting. And wasn't it interesting that "sick" means ill, but a sandwich could be "sick" too. I love helping kids understand the nuances of words. And we didn't even touch on sick meaning awesome in slang... ai-yi-yi.

We also came up with other things to say when we didn't like something, words that wouldn't hurt somebody's feelings. You don't have to agree with people, but you can't be mean.

The next day I set up a sandwich bar for kids to make a sandwich for snack. I wanted them to try it, ultimately, so the ingredients were overall acceptable to kids, but the combination was still a challenge to most. You'll see in the picture below bread and peanut butter, cheerios, chocolate chips, banana slices and yogurt.

They got to put on varying amounts, but they all put on at least a bit of each, I think.

Then came the bigger challenge. Hmmm... should I try it?

Every one of my kiddos ate at least two bites, and most ate it all, in very enthusiastic fashion.

After our snack we talked about how Carla was brave because she kept bringing "creative" sandwiches for lunch, even when kids wouldn't eat with her. Being different is okay and we can all be different and accept others who do things in different ways. Their way might actually be pretty good in the end, if we at least give it a try.

I give Carla's Sandwich two thumbs up. Teachers will find both important concepts and story elements to teach. And it sure lends itself to hand's-on experiences with new foods.

I reviewed this book for Flashlight Press, receiving a free copy, though I bought another so we'd have two in class. I have been impressed with many Flashlight Press books over the years. Those editors have a great eye for books that kids love, and teachers and parents value for a slew of reasons. Click to see their books.

Much to my delight, I found Carla's Sandwich, along with quite a few other Flashlight Press books on Storyline Online. This site, sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, is terrific because each video features different actors reading a real book, which often are animated is some little way. There are over fifty stories to be found and all come with an activity guide.

Be sure to keep your eyes open for my next couple posts, because I am going to feature some tips about Storyline Online, including a freebie you'll want to have!

Well, hope you discovered a new book and got an idea or two. See you next time!

Last Week of Giveaways!

This week we have our last week of Teacher Book Talk Tuesday and our last book and Amazon gift certificate giveaway.

Week Three Giveaway! Last One!

Time to focus on moving back to the classroom. You have just enough time to slip into the giveaway. Best of luck to you. This week we have a very new book from Flashlight Press which also happens to be written by Holly Niner, who wrote our featured book last week.

But first I need to announce that last week's winner was Mary L. I sent a happy email to her and when I hear back, last week's book prize, The Day I Ran Away, and her Amazon gift certificate will be on the way.

And remember our winner of Too Much Glue? Well, she sends a word of thanks and let's us know how she will use her book. Tina is a learning disabilities teacher who teaches Math and English to K-5 students in Kansas. Her older students work on reading fluency and she plans on having them practice reading Too Much Glue to the younger set. The K-1 students love that and the older ones get fluency practice and a self-esteem boost in one. She will also use the book to teach gluing rules– anything multi-sensory makes a huge impact on her kids and glue is a part of that. Tina is a regular reader of the blog and says she finds lots of kindergarten ideas here that with a tweak or two she can use with her full range multi-age of students. Thanks, Tina! We are happy Too Much Glue found a good home.

No More Noisy Nights

by Holly L. Niner and Guy Wolek

What do you say about a book which stars a mole, a ghost, a boogey monster, and a Pixie? What?? I say that's a rather unlikely cast of characters, but the kiddos will like 'em all.

Mole has a new house! He works hard to make if feel like home, moving all his things into place. He happily settles in for the night... until he finds his new house is too noisy to sleep in. After making some pretty silly mistakes in the morning because of his sleepy, muddled brain, he decides to take action and that's when he discovers he has housemates. Mole must get creative to keep everyone happy.

This book is a great one to get students thinking about problem solving when things aren't going well among classmates. How can you keep everyone happy when you are all so different and you all like different things? And if you are a parent who wants a new bedtime read, No More Noisy Nights certainly lends itself to that... put qualms about noises that go bump in the night to bed with the friends in this book.

I also think it is nice to see Halloween-ish characters in a non-Halloween book. If you are a teacher who doesn't do Halloween in your class, you might think about using this book to show that sometimes ghosts and monsters have nothing to do with the holiday.

Guy Wolek's illustrations include lots of techniques that kids can use in their storytelling. Cutaways that show what's happening in different places, sound words, and motion lines help tell the tale of the cute and colorful characters. Students will love looking over the pictures, finding details.

And this Flashlight Press book includes About the Author and About the Illustrator blurbs, too. They're such a good way for kids to see authors and illustrators as real people, and learn ways to write their own blurbs. Whenever I need an example of what authors share about themselves, I grab a Flashlight Press book because I know I'll find blurbs there. And as to the end papers– you know I always mention the end papers– well, your kiddos are going to have to think a bit harder about these because it is not obvious. A bit of mystery that can probably be solved by the end of the book.

You can find my Flashlight Press book reviews by using my search lists on the right side bar and see Flashlight Press books by clicking below.

This cozy tale will come to live in some lucky teachers classroom, along with a ten dollar Amazon gift card. Some of my blogging friends are helping me give away the books– The Teacher Desk 6, STEM is Elementary, Peach, Love and Primary, and Kindergarten: Hand in Hand We Grow. You can check out their blogs by clicking on their icons below after they link up to this post. By following any or all of this diverse group of bloggers you can get up to eight entries. Winners need to have a US address in order to win due to shipping costs, I'm afraid. I'll announce the winner next week. Thanks to Flashlight Press for the books and The Teacher's Desk 6 for the Amazon card. (Note- to follow me on YouTube click here.)


a Rafflecopter giveaway



Now I'm off to prep my night before school student gifts so I can deliver them next week. Click on it below if you'd like to see how they work– it is FREE to say thanks for stopping by!

Good luck to you! See you next time!

An InLinkz Link-up

Hoods, Hacks, Hoots, a Sequel and More

Okay, so Happy Friday again! This is another post, the real post, for this Friday. You know with me it either NEVER rains, or it POURS when it comes to blog posts. Oh, to be one of those bloggers whose life never interferes with their posting schedule. Thanks to Kacey at Doodle Bugs for Five for Friday. Here's five.

1.  I have often said that I should have been born an octopus. Between needing to rein in hold little children and carry seventy two LOTS of things to school everyday, I could always use more arms. Here's me coming to school the other day.  Can you relate?

2.  The day I was schlepping all that stuff was my teaching assistant's last day. She was only there to help launch the school year.... waaawwwww! I wish it could be all year. The kids and I made her some special little momentoes– the kids made cards and I put together a piece of special artwork... I use the term artwork loosely. I wanted the kids to be featured. I share it to give you some ideas for your own goodbye gifts.

Yes, it took a while to cut out all those little heads, but I think it turned out pretty cute, and she loved it. It will hang in her home office. We miss you, Chris!

3.  Did you see my earlier post about my Paint Drying Rack Hack? You can see and read about how it works if you click the picture.

4.  Okay, now this is the REAL purpose of today's post– a new favorite book review! Amanda Noll and Howard McWilliam teamed up again to create Hey, That's MY Monster!

Hey, That's MY Monster is a companion to I Need My Monster and furthers the adventures of Ethan and his monster, Gabe. This time Ethan's little sister Emma joins in the fun.

What is going to happen when Gabe has to make somebody else go to bed? Everyone needs their own scary monster to help them go to sleep, but why does it have to be Gabe??

Great illustrations accompany this monster tale, from cover to cover... I mean LOOK at this fresh crop of end paper monsters... monster drawing lesson, anyone?

And look at the adorable little sister...

There's just the right amount of shiver to hook five year olds right in. We read it fifty seven many times, with "Again!" following every reading. I am always interested when books strike just the right note with the Littles and this one does. Going to bed in the dark, with monsters or without, is a fear that is pretty much universal, and this story helped the kiddos deal with that fear in a lighthearted way.

You can read two posts on the first book, I Need My Monster here and here. The posts contain a freebie to use with the kids and a link to a neat video.

Some classrooms do monsters only at Halloween, but in my classroom, monsters are regular characters in our daily drama. Our favorite monster puppet Ten-Ten Twenty helps us do math (click to read previous post) The rest of the monster gang provide good sports when we need to act things out– little monsters CAN be naughty, you know, SORT OF like five year olds.

I highly recommend both I Need My Monster and the new Hey, That's MY Monster. I thank Flashlight Press for sending me the review copy. I can honestly say it is adored by my monster loving kidpeople AND their monster loving teacher, too!!  You can check out both books at your favorite bookstore and Amazon. You can see a complete list of Flashlight Books by clicking below. They are a consistently high quality publisher and every teacher should know about them.

5.  Last but not least, it's time for

So my kindergarten colleague and I were sitting on the teacher bench at recess when one of her kiddos came up and gave her a truly beautiful, red maple leaf. She thanked her little person and said,

"We've been learning about all sorts of leaves in our classroom, haven't we? Can you tell me what kind of leaf this one is?"

Her kiddo was thoughtful for a moment then said, "Dead."

A quick, gleeful glance exchanged between us two adults said it all, "The kids are the best part of this job!"

Click on back to Doodle Bugs for more teacher news.

And if you hoped over from Small Victories, take a leap on back to continue reading this week's favorite posts!

Hope you got a grin or two this time. Have a TERRIFIC fall weekend! Oh, and do check out my new wink below... that husband of mine...

 

Currently Five for Friday

April fools are we! Lots of QUICK stuff to share. Using as few words as possible today– except for number 3! I am linking to both Oh, Boy, It's Farley Currently and Doodle Bugs Five for Friday because this month the first is also a Friday!!

1.  Currently...

2.  We started Flashlight Twosome Tuesdays.

My kids come in every morning (except for Mondays) to independent book reading time. You can see what our new theme for Tuesdays is. I hunted everywhere for cheap but heavy duty flashlights. I found some at the dollar store but their plastic was very brittle and I thought they wouldn't hold up to kindergarten use. I was happy with these Ray-o-Vac LEDs from Menard's and they were only two bucks, made of tough plastic, and just the right size for kinder purposes. They even have a strap to put around wrists just in case somebody lets go. I decided we'd always do partner reading with them so I could buy half as many. Big Hit. Tuesday is our new favorite day!

3.  Mo News  If you look closely at those photos you'll see that the kids are reading from our Mo Willems bin... er, bins. I'm sure I don't need to tell any primary teacher just how wonderful Mo Willems' books are. Whether it's Knuffle Bunny, Pigeon, Elephant and Piggie, or his wide cast of other book characters, they are all fantastic! He ranks with Seuss, Henkes, and Lobel when it comes to capturing the myriad of human emotions using a cast of characters which include mice, frogs, toads, pigs and elephants. How do they DO that??

Although I love all Mo books, Elephant and Piggie stole my heart in their very first book, which I bought four copies of before I knew the complete E&P title list would include twenty five books in all. My own collection has over 40 with the many duplicates. Not only do the E&P stories hold great humor and interest for kids and adults, they are early readers, too. I wait until this point in the year each year to introduce Mo's work so my kinders have enough beginning reading skills to truly read E&P. Once they've heard the stories, are reading with a partner, and are HIGHLY motivated to read these books for themselves, they all CAN read the books. My two huge bins of Mo books stay out for weeks and the kids pour over them again and again. They become very fluent and add great expression– not that that is difficult with Mr. Willems' books. Reading at it's best!

And now here is some sad news... sniff. The LAST Elephant and Piggie book is coming out May 3. Yep, the. last. one. sob. The Thank You Book will be the twenty fifth and final book in the collection. Do you have them all? Here's a handy graphic from Mo Willem's blog.

I printed it out, and even though it was a little fuzzy my kiddos could put ours in order (yet another literacy activity to do with the books...There are tons!) and we found we were missing one! gasp. I remedied that fast! We are all waiting to get our hands on the very. last. installment of the E&P adventures. This year's class fondly shortened the books to that nickname, by the way... we are very into initials. Get with the lingo, baby. Click on that E&P gallery picture above and you'll go to Mo's blog on his website. If you haven't visited in a while you should because there is new stuff. Oh, and here's a photo of just ONE of the many activities we do based on Mo's books. This year we added a "Don't let the Pigeon...." fill-in-your-own-idea sentence to the hat. I made this hat up, but you can google and search Pinterest for MANY more activities. We *puffy heart* Mo!

4.  One. more. day. to enter the giveaway! Flashlight Press has been kind enough to donate a new hot-off-the-press book for my first ever blog giveaway.  And you could win... no. really you could. Just CLICK on the picture below and scroll down the post and you'll understand why your chances are very good. And hurry!

Click to find Giveaway!

5.  And for those of you who got this far, a funny for you.

My class just wrapped up a How-to writing unit, and my guys were experts on lots of things. For some reason though, taking sequential steps gave some kids trouble. For example, making a PBJ went from spreading the peanut butter to eating the complete sandwich... with no mention of anything in between.  I spent more time this year than most years demonstrating the idea of step-by-step and acting out the actions as they wrote them so they could see the parts they were missing. SMALL steps became the focus of many lessons... when you teach they do learn.

I had to bite back a chuckle as he read to me. For those who are not fluent readers of kindergartenese–

How to Go In My Room
First, open the doors.
Next, take some steps in the room.
Then, you might want to take some more steps.
Last, you're in your room.

Yep, he really got it!

Click on back to the Currently linky by scrolling way UP there to the Currently pic. And click on Five for Friday below to see more Fives. Thanks for hosting Farley and Kacey!