I love old(ish) picture books. I am a vintage girl at heart and when choosing read alouds I often find myself gravitating towards older books. Now, The Vanishing Pumpkin is not terribly old (published in 1983) but it reminds me of the Halloweens of my childhood with its illustrations and vocabulary. The Vanishing Pumpkin is written by Tony Johnston, but it is illustrated by Tomie dePaola who has a very distinct artistic style. If you have any Tomie dePaola books in your classroom library you might want to pull them out to compare the styles before or after your read aloud. This book is chock full of rich vocabulary: snitched (stolen), perched, rapscallion, fresh (sassy), varmint, wickedly, and some fun examples of alliteration: "lucky lizards", "in fact, they fairly flew", "great grizzlies", I have created a FREE, quick, cute jack-o-lantern craft and quick writing activity that you could use with this book if you would like. J...
Are you still teaching the week of Thanksgiving? Looking for a fun EDIBLE THANKSGIVING TURKEY CRAFT ? I mean, it is Thanksgiving week and that means eating, right? My mother-in-law showed me this easy, cute, turkey craft about 25 years ago and I have made it with my class many times since. It does require some supplies, but the kids love it and it is very easy to put together. Add in a turkey read aloud or Thanksgiving video and your students can snack and watch (or listen). You will need the following supplies... large sugar cookies Chocolate Pinwheel cookies white icing candy corn *I also like to use some sort of Dixie cup for the icing and a popsicle stick to apply the icing- I usually have these on hand. I always go for the off brand to keep costs more reasonable. If you are planning this far enough in advance you could send a parent donation request note and ask parents to send in the supplies for the craft. For each...
Last week we took some time to learn about Author's Purpose. My kids had some background knowledge, but needed a refresher course. We also needed to go a little deeper in understanding what it meant to persuade. We created a class anchor chart together and had a good discussion of the big 3- persuade, inform, and entertain. Of course, I used the acronym P.I.E. to help them remember. Here is the chart we created... After our great discussion I was ready to send them off with a task. Last year I had purchased a great set of task cards from Rachel Lynette- Author's Purpose Task Cards: 24 Cards: Persuade, Inform & Entertain (If you haven't used any of her task card sets before you are missing out- they are fantastic!) The students group work centered around the task card set- but I used this set of cards in a little different way- they lent themselves really well to a sorting activity. I put my students in groups of three and sent each group o...
Comments
Post a Comment