Two Brand New Books Today

Teacher Book Talk Tuesday, here we go! This week I share some new children's books to use in the classroom.

Don't Let the Pigeon

Finish This Mini Activity Book!

by Mo Willems

Instagram is a'buzz with news of the Mo Willems plush characters– Elephant, Piggy, Pigeon, Duckling, and Knuffle Bunny– on sale at Kohl's for five bucks! I love the Kohl's Cares book and character promotions because revenues go to charity. 

But the thing that I didn't know about until I went into Kohl's was that along with select Knuffle Bunny, Pigeon, and Elephant & Piggie books, there is this brand new ACTIVITY book. It is designed for one child to use. However, because it has a storyline, with typical P&D banter (and hotdogs), and because many of the activities can be tweaked to use in a classroom, I think teachers will want this one, too. It says mini in the title, but I can't find anything mini about it... well, other than the price. It, also, like the plush characters, is only five bucks. 

I suggest you hurry... I don't know how much Kohl's Care inventory Kohl's keeps on hand, but both books and plush characters are flying off the shelves. The store clerk mentioned that they were restocking the shelves continually throughout the day, and people were coming in specifically for these books and characters.  

They had just restocked when I went in

She Persisted

by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger

This book is getting a lot of hype right now. I was interested in it for several reasons, enough to order it pretty much sight unseen. I thought it would be good, obviously, or I wouldn't have ordered it, but I was surprised at how good it is. 

Ms. Clinton highlights a diverse group of women. Diverse by their time in history, race, background, profession, and significant accomplishments. Some of these featured leaders are well known and whom you'd expect to see in a book such as this. But some I had never heard of before. 

Anyone whose had a baby knows of the "Apgar Score" that newborns receive at birth based on a variety of vital signs. But I didn't know that this test, still used today, was developed by an early pioneering female doctor. 

There is just enough of the right information given, too. Inspiring, though brief, educational, yet not bogged down in details. I'm betting my fives have their interests sparked and learn from the many examples– not just about what women can do, but what anyone can do when they put their mind to it and persist, no matter the odds or what anyone says. 

The illustrations make the book very appealing. Soft colors, interesting compositions, a good size for a read-aloud. I love that almost all the illustrations include children in one way or another– either by depicting these women as children themselves, or showing children engaged with these female heroes in their unique roles. A quote from each of these leaders is woven into each illustration– words to live by.

This book ranks a full five stars with me. I REALLY like it, look forward to using it, and recommend it to all teachers, no matter what age you teach. 

I hope you found today's reviews insightful. I, and any of my linky friends, will be back again next week with more books. Hope to see you then. 

Oh... one more thing. If you are not a regular reader then you might not know this week's accomplishment was the making of a classroom tour movie. Along with the Teacher Book Talk Tuesday series this summer, I've also been posting about classroom design. The video is part of that and I have more to go. I gathered all past posts on my classroom in one spot. Click below to go there and to find the video. I would love for you to view and like. If you comment I'll follow you on Instagram because we will be BFF!

 

Bloggers you can join me in sharing book reviews. Just link up below. Thanks for stopping by!

An InLinkz Link-up

Reading and Writing Love

Five quickies on this almost-to-the-end-of-school Friday. We get out in three weeks. Am I counting the days? Am I counting the minutes?? Thanks Doodle Bugs for the Five for Friday linky. I include a Funny Kid Friday below, too.

1. We wrapped up our Mo Willems unit today. Ya gotta know about Elephant and Piggie, Knuffle Bunny, and Pigeon books, right?? If you don't, go look them up RIGHT NOW. We own several copies of ALL twenty five E&P books (book lingo in my classroom). I save them for the end of the year, not only because they are a happy note to go out on, I mean funny even for adults, but because at this point ALL my kiddos can read them... well, read them after they've heard them, and read them with a partner. And they do love to read them. From the teacher perspective E&P are especially good for teaching dialogue, talk and thought bubbles, reading details in pictures, punctuation... so much. We've made Mo hats to celebrate his unit before, but only with Pigeon. This time all the characters prance across the front with a little directed drawing help.

Mo hats!

To show just how much we connect with Mo and his characters, I share what I found inside one little guy's hat.

Mo love

Cracked me up. I have about seventy Mo books altogether and they were worth every penny of investment. Most are available in paperback now, so they are a bit cheaper than when they first came out. Our school library is well stocked, too, as they fly off the shelves during our unit. Ya GOTTA do Mo if you don't already.

2. When the kiddos have the whole room to choose from at free choice and they choose this, you know something is going right, eh?

They LOVE the window seat!

3. Speaking of books and reading, I am going to be doing a book linky this summer so we can share the book love.

Teachers can share favorite kid books, teacher books, and books they read for pure pleasure. I've started my list already. It's going to run on Tuesdays for twelve weeks from June 6 thru August 22. Please spread the word and remember to stop back here when it starts in less than two weeks now. Keep your eye open for the book button!

4. I found these at Target this week.

Fun, cheap, and LOOK what you can do with them!

They make the CUTEST little first day of school gift for incoming students! I know it is early to be thinking about BACK to school, but you want to do this. I include a letter to students on how to use the wishing star that goes out to incoming families in their school start-up packet. I am especially proud of this idea because although you find great ideas all over the internet, the wishing star came out of my own little head. I happily share it because it brought me big kuddos with my new students and incoming families this past fall.

And people, my resource is FREE! You can read about how I use it by clicking on the family letter below.

Then grab the FREEBIE at my TPT store by clicking on the pack.

5.  We wrapped up a letter writing unit today... not letter, as in alphabet letter, but letter as in written communication. Letter writing for my class is a "bend in the road" mini-unit in writing workshop. In the past I have done this unit earlier in the year, but I found it to be a great end of year unit to do right now, too. The kiddos are getting just a bit nostalgic... if five year olds can get nostalgic... as it slowly sinks in that our year is coming to an end and they are not going to see all their friends over the summer as they do now. We spent the last three weeks writing to all sorts of people, but especially to each other.  The classroom mailbox has taken on new meaning.

For our celebration we played with our food, so to speak. I gave the kids licorice strings and they "wrote" the two most useful words in letter writing– Dear and Fondly. They loved it.

I really relied on my Let's Write to Someone letter writing resource, one of the few products in my TPT store. It helped me remember what I do in this unit, and the anchor charts, stationery and postcard are really helpful. You might check it out if you are looking for a way to refresh writing in your last weeks of school. You can find it by clicking below.

Along with this unit came a little Funny Kid Story I share in closing.

A favorite guest teacher was in our classroom during writing time this last week. Even though she knows our kids well she was rather taken aback when one of the littles asked, "What is the F word?"

She got quite a chuckle when she realized he was after the word Fondly!

Have a great last few weeks, OR congratulations on finishing another successful year of teaching, whatever your case may be.

Click on back to Five for Friday! Thanks, Kacey, for helping us find each other!! And I sure hope that Five for Friday will be back next Fall!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

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!

Mo Willems Pigeon Hats- So Fun!

We love Mo Willems' Pigeon... who doesn't? There are lots of things you can do with that little bird full of big character. One of our favorites is making Pigeon hats.

Is that Pigeon on your hat?

It starts out as a guided drawing lesson. I fold paper into quarters and guide the kids to draw Pigeon four times. I ask them to draw Pigeon so that he fits the quarter sheet and fit on the hat. A lot of them draw him smaller, but that's okay– if he's smaller he still fits on the hat. I draw a big rectangle on the white board to represent where the pigeon parts go on their quarter sheet. We look at Mr. Willems's illustrations to try to capture some of Pigeon's expressions.

Then I ask the kids to evaluate their work and pick the pigeon they want on their hat. This time I had them choose two, as we were making hats to send to our penpals at a nearby school.

To make the hat I use a very ordinary, inexpensive paper plate, free of coating if I can find it, as they are easier to stick the pigeons to. Then I do the cutting– I come in from the edge and cut a circle just a bit bigger than the contoured circle in the middle of the plate.

Cut out a circle. Hold the plate facing down for easier cutting.

This is an adult task I'm afraid, but I got forty done while watching my one hour of weekly TV-- Call the Midwife. Tip: they cut better if you have the plate facing down while cutting. I use a piece of packing tape to splice the cut back together then old up the opposite edge to make a surface to glue Pigeon to.

Tape it closed with packing tape.

Fold up the edge opposite the tape to make a surface to glue Pigeon to.

Aren't they cute! You can see kids' individuality come out, even as they were all drawing the same character.

A flock of Pigeons!

I am especially fond of these little gems because although I've seen a lot of Mo Willems stuff, I haven't seen Pigeon hats quite like these, where the whole Pigeon is captured. It ties literacy and drawing together beautifully. The kids like drawing Pigeon so much, they started on a little Pigeon kick- Pigeons, Pigeons, everywhere! Wait till next week when we get to Elephant and Piggie!

Even works with pigtails!

Just as an aside, I do a Mo Willems author study at this point every year. The kidpeople know a lot of sight words now, and after we've read through the books once or twice, they all can read the books themselves. Nothing like hearing, "Again! Again!" when reading great books to kids :)

A sad note on this otherwise happy post, which I shared with my favorite ECE educator extraordinaire Dr. Jean: This same day we had to do standardized, computerized testing! I could not get back to the room fast enough to do something really fun and child appropriate! We can't control the testing, but we can use our powers for good to counter the evil-- HA :)

Love Mo Willems!  Love the Pigeon!

The post Mo Willems' Pigeon Hats– So Fun! first appeared on kidpeoplelassroom.com