Library Lessons

Image taken from
http://www.michaelhallstudio.com/pages/books/aardvark/index.html

Last week I read It's An Orange Aardvark by Michael Hall to Pre-K through second.  It's on the 2015 Texas 2x2 list.  Students LOVED this book! When I read "carpenter ants" there was always one student in the class who would call out "That's our school!"  Which lead to a discussion of all the different ways to use the word carpenter.

Pre-k especially loved sticking their tongue out to see if it was as long as the aardvark's.

I also had students fill in the blanks for the colors.  The sentence was "It's orange and blue."  I'd pause after and and the students would fill in the color.  One of the carpenter ants was drilling holes in the stump and made a wrrrrr sound.  I didn't think about letting students make the sound but one class did so I ran with it.  I encourage all the other classes to do the same.  We just had fun with this book!

After I read the story I showed this short Sesame Street video of a real aardvark.  We compared and contrasted the book aardvark to the real aardvark.

On a side note, they were testing in an office connected to the library one day last week.  I had a 1st grade class in the library.  I told them we had to be super quiet since they were testing.  BUT  I still wanted them to participate in the story because I think that's one reason why they enjoyed the story so much.  They were soooooo cute whispering the colors and the wrrrrrr sound!

Image taken from
http://www.cammuso.com/books.html

I finished reading The Misadventures of Salem Hyde: Big Birthday Bash by Frank Cammuso to 2nd-5th grade.  It's on Texas Bluebonnet list for 2015-2016.  Students are loving Salem!  She's a witch who gets into all kinds of trouble without even trying. Since Frank came to our school for an author visit they are going crazy for his books!  I'm debating continuing the series with them. I might put it up for a vote.  If they want to keep read then I'll have to beg the student who has the 3rd book checked out to give it to me.  Ha!