Library Lessons

Last week in the library I read Hug Machine by Scott Campbell to Pre-K through 2nd. It's on the Texas 2x2 list. It's an adorable book about a little boy who is a hug machine. He hugs everybody and everything he can get his arms around.

I started the book with the inside flap.  It says Hug Checklist at the top of the page then there are pictures of people, animals, and things on it. I asked the students if they thought the hug machine could hug all those people, animals and things by the end of the book. I got varying answers. At the end of the book there's the same page but everything has check marks by it. Some students would tell me "that's a lot of hugging". Ha!

I did my best to read the book in a robot voice... the kids bought it but I'm no Jim Dale that's for sure! I made my voice deep for the whale, sad for the porcupine, tired when the hug machine got tired. Adding voices to a read aloud really makes a book fun.

There's a page with a porcupine on it asking if he can be hugged. I made a show of touching the porcupine's spikes and exclaiming "ouch". The little kids giggled. The older kids gave looks of confusion. Were the spikes really poking me? Was my "ouch" real? I wish I had snapped a picture of their cute little faces. 

There's also a part in the story where the hug machine tells us he eats pizza to refuel. To make the book a little interactive I had them fill in the blank when I read the sentence "I like to eat ________." Students yell pizza. Then I asked "Who likes pizza?" Everyone's hands flew in the air. Of course!

I ended story time with this video. I'm sorry but the video is so stupid BUT the kids LOVED it. LOVED it. The 90-Second Hug Machine is interactive. Some classes really got into it and hugged each other some classes didn't and just sat there and giggled. I tried to find that naughty student in each class who probably doesn't get a lot of hugs because of their behavior but probably really needs the hugs and had them be my hug partner for the video. 

Mid year our Deaf Ed teacher read this book to her class and did a lesson. She made this cute finger puppet for me that she taped to my check out computer. Some of the students noticed it and pointed it out to me. 

For 3rd through 5th I showed the Winner of the Bluebonnet Book Award video. We were all a little surprised by the winner. None of my students voted for DJ. As we were watching the video they would give hints for the top three winners. Some classes guessed better than others.