Funny Reads, Miss Mary Mack, and Ladybugs!

Week 34

PreK 3, PreK 4, Kindergarten: Funny Book week #5

Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum, by Lisa Wheeler

This funny rhyming story has the same pattern as "The Mitten": each animal who comes along gets stuck in a melty wad of bubble gum. Will they be able to escape when a truck comes down the road? Only if they work together and only if they use the bubble gum!  Cartoony illustrations and a tap-your-toes beat make this a great choice for a preschool read aloud.

Little Bunny Foo Foo, by Paul Brett Johnson

A picture book to go with the song of the naughty bunny "Foo Foo" who bops forest animals on the head and keeps misbehaving, despite warnings from the Good Fairy. In this version, Foo Foo is using mud pies to bop the heads of foxes, muskrats, and even bears! The Good Fairy interjects among verses of the song to show her disapproval. She even engages the audience by asking questions like "Do you think he listened?" A fun read aloud (and sing-along) for younger students and a good mentor text for older students to show point of view and voice.

Grade 1: Guiding Questions - What do we know about ladybugs? How many text features can we identify on our own?

This was one of those fun times when everything comes together perfectly! No sooner did I choose the books for this week than someone showed me that my lovely Benjamin Fig tree has aphids. Imagine my delight! Now I could read about ladybugs and how they clean up a garden's aphid problem and SHOW aphids right here in the library! And of course, we are still working on mastery of our text features along the way. Stay tuned for a voice thread showing what we've learned.

What About Ladybugs? by Celia Godkin

This nonfiction picture book follows a gardener through the process of learning how the different bugs contribute to and harm his garden. When he decides to use pesticides to kill off the most destructive bugs, he inadvertently causes a bigger problem. His garden becomes infested with aphids and there are no ladybugs left to control the aphid population. A wonderful look at the interconnected way all creatures are needed to create a balance in nature. Colored pencil illustrations.

Grade 2: Guiding Questions - What are some rhymes we can use on the playground?

We learned some more hand-clapping and folk rhymes to finish up our traditional literature unit: "Miss Mary Mack" and "Double Double." We watched videos (on the grade 2 tab of the library site) to see how they are played. "Double Double" can be used with any compound word, so we had a quick review of what those are. We used baseball, ice cream, and hot dog among others.

We also learned some rhymes to help out with playground politics: rhymes to choose who is "it" and rhymes to deflect name-calling in a fun way.

by Joanna Cole

Here are some of our favorites for choosing who's "it"

"Each peach, pear, plum,

When does your birthday come?"

(Spell out month and count out date!)

"My mother and your mother were hanging out clothes.

My mother gave your mother a punch in the nose.

What color was the blood?"

(Spell out the color!)

Here are some of our favorites for name-calling:

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star

What you say is what you are"

"I'm rubber and you're glue;

It bounces of me and sticks to you."

Grade 3: Guiding Questions - How do we capture a screen shot?

photo © 2006 Mikhail Esteves | more info (via: Wylio)We're still chugging along with our Dewey Advertisements, learning lots of computer skills along the way.

This week we learned how to take a screen shot. This will enable us to insert a picture of the website that fits with a Dewey section. We learned to press apple + shift + 4 to take a screen shot that lets us select the part of the screen we want.

Stay tuned! Next we put it all together!

Grade 4/5: Checking out and Reading workshop