Happy Birthday, Kansas!

Happy Birthday, Kansas!

This week in the library we were very busy celebrating Kansas. First grade friends and I shared the book Wagon Wheels by Barbara Brenner. This story always gets me. It is a wonderful story for our first graders and fits into the curriculum quite nicely. For all of you teachers or librarians here is the information:

Review:

1. Historical fiction, picture book.

2. After the Civil War, follow the Muldie boys and their father to Kansas to find free land through the Homestead Act.

3. A. This easy reader is just that, an easy read especially for beginner readers. Barbara Brenner uses appropriate language, varied sentence length and structure as well as short chapters to engage young readers. All of these along with the rugged, colorful illustrations transport the reader into a harsh but hopeful time in our country.

B. The greatest aspect of Wagon Wheels is the language and sentence structure to appeal to young readers. Getting students and children interested in history and the past is difficult but Barbara Brenner created a story that makes you want to turn the page to find out what happens next. This is due to how easy it is to read. Through this 63 page story, 61 pages are illustrated to help decode the text and visualize this story for the reader.

C. The three boys and their father begin to make their ‘home’ in the Kansas prairie. “It wasn’t much of a place—dirt floor, dirt walls, no windows. And the roof was just grass and branches. But we were glad to have a dugout when the wind began to whistle across the prairie” (14-15). Easy decodable text accompanied by a picture on the bottom of the page translates to the reader how these families lived in dugouts in the ground for harsh winters. At the end of the story, the three boys ventured out to find their father who had found better land to settle on. “We walked along the trail. It led up a hill. On the side of the hill we saw a little house with a garden in front. We could see corn growing. A man came out of the house. When he saw us, he began to run towards us” (58-59). These well formed sentences with appropriate language do not intimidate readers and makes them want to keep turning the page.

4.Curriculum Connection- Wonderful introduction to chapter books with short chapters that can be accompanied with comprehension questions.

We then shared the Fiction/Non Fiction "Snow" Lesson. I love this lesson because not only does it remind me of how much my first grade friends have learned thus far but because it means we are on our way to our very first research paper in the library. Love this time of year.

 We read, discussed and compared these stories and then went a step further and discussed text features in our non fiction book. These are some of the things we will see when we start our research on farm animals in the coming weeks.

In Kindergarten we shared S is for Sunflower a Kansas Alphabet and we discussed the many things that are Kansas. This was a fun story to do with Kindergarten as I found that they all made connections quite easily to this story and to our home in Kansas.

We also discussed another very important day that is coming up this weekend Groundhog Day.

Many of my friends had never heard of ground hog day. We shared the story of Lorna Balian

A Garden for Groundhog  and Groundhog Day by Gail Gibbons.

 

We then did a bit of our own predicting and tallied our predictions on if the Groundhog would or would not see his shadow. Most of my friends are hoping that he does not see his shadow so spring will be on it's way sooner...I am doubtful with the crazy winter we have had thus far but I too, am hopeful.

We then also, learned a little poem to help us to remember the rule for the groundhog seeing his shadow and an up close photo of a groundhog. The kiddos loved checking out the groundhog and let me be clear they all had an observation to share. I LOVED IT! We got our brains brainstorming!

 

Our Spotlight book The Little Little Girl With The Big Big VOICE by Kristen Balouch 

 

Happy Birthday Kansas! Our fact of the week was offered by this book KANSAS.

 

 

I have finally put together the next READING CHALLENGE!!! Our Winter Read-A-Thon.

This reading challenge will run from January 31, 2014- March 6, 2014

Please remember the goal here is to encourage reading. It should be fun. Lets turn off the television and video games and lets share a book or a designated time when we can all be reading.

Students will be required to  read:

3- General Fiction Books

2- Realistic Fiction Books

3- Informational Books

3- Mysteries

2- Chapter Books

2- Free Choice

Each student will bring home a 15 Book Challenge sheet to record their books.

When it is returned they will receive a whole class returns their record sheet

they will earn a reward as a class. We are all very excited to begin reading.

prize. If the

 For the Adults:

It just wouldn't be any fun if I didn't make a challenge for the adults.

Select any 5 book ideas from this Book Challenge Card. You could keep this card going until you complete it. I just wanted to give lots of ideas to choose from.  Enjoy!

 

I finished up my current read of the Apartment By Greg Baxter

Reading this book reminded me of the sitcom "Seinfeld"--on the surface it's a book about nothing. The story centers around the day in a life of one man--an unnamed American--who is trying to erase his past. He moves to an unnamed European city and befriends a young woman, Saskia, who offers to help him find an apartment. The story is gray, cold and depressing much like its setting. On a deeper level, the book is a work on the travesty of war, the consequence of personal decisions and the negative view toward Americans harbored by other countries. It reads rather flat in its style of stream-of-consciousness writing. 

I longed for the moment when he turned out to be a terrorist or romance set in but there is none of that in this story. It took you along to expect these things but they never occurred, which I kind of appreciated.  I wasn't able to predict where the author was taking me. Yet, I felt content as I finished it. No one more surprised by this than I.  So, do I recommend it sure it was a quick read and I did enjoy it.

Changing themes and finding my next book club book choice. I am reading The Husband's secret and I have book club this weekend so I need to get finished up. Can't wait to tell you all how it turns out. So far I find it difficult to put down.  You may notice that this is by Liane Moriarty and I read her other book in the fall called What Alice Forgot. I have to say I am really enjoying her style.

A little teaser for you: Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret. Something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is very much alive....

Regarding my Books and Bloggers Swap I just sent off my package of books to my swap partner, Rebecca Bryant from http://www.everydaylifes.com  and I hope you love the book choices I sent your way. Looking forward to receiving my books soon...Yeah! I will post the reveal as soon as they arrive.

Friday Confessionals

I confess:

• I was hoping and praying for a snow day/cold weather day, this week but ....that didn't happen.
• We have had a lot of friends sick and I am trying to avoid it, like the plague.
•  So ready for spring weather (That groundhog had better not see his shadow).
• I am totally psyched about the reading challenge.
• Looking forward to the Super Bowl and spending time with my hubby and friends this weekend. Go Seahawks!!!

Enjoy your weekend!

Happy Reading,

Mrs. Shamhart

Fairy tales, Friendship and Middle School Leaders

What fun we had in the library this week. We  continued reading and sharing Fairy Tales in First grade. We shared the story of Rumplestiltskin by Jonathon Langley.  Wow! I was so impressed, my friends were making text to text connections and text to self connections, throughout our discussion of this story. We followed the our anchor chart to determine weather or not our story was truly a fairy tale or not, you will be happy to know that it is indeed a fairy tale. Then we determined that several other stories we have recently read were not fairy tales.

In Kindergarten we continued our Author study on Mo Willems. We finished up the Knuffle Bunny stories with Knuffle Bunny Free. We also, shared Leonardo the Terrible Monster, which is a wonderful story about friendship.

On Friday we had a special fun filled day of character education. We had student leaders from the middle school share, prepared lessons for our students. We shared lessons on traits like fairness, trustworthiness, responsibility, caring, citizenship and respect.

Here are 2 middle school leaders sharing the story A Sick Day For Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead
Which is a wonderful story Amos McGee, a friendly zookeeper, always made time to visit his good friends: the elephant, the tortoise, the penguin, the rhinoceros, and the owl.
But one day - "Ah-choo!" - he woke up with the sniffles and the sneezes. Though he didn't make it into the zoo that day, he did receive some unexpected guests.

 

We then created an anchor chart about being a good friend. See it here...

 

 

My current book choice is The Apartment by Greg Baxter. It is a story about the day in the life of a protagonist as he makes his way across an unnamed European city in search of an apartment. It reads like poetry. I am hanging on every word.  

 

As I stated last week I am working on the reading challenge, for the rest of the winter. The students will need to read 20 books between now and Spring break. This is going to be fun.

I am getting excited already. We will be calling it our WINTER READATHON!!!  

A challenge from me to my students.

I will also have a challenge for adults. I think you will be happy with this challenge. I look forward to encouraging and promoting reading in 2014.

I also, wanted to let you all know that Sgt. Hinkle sent a letter from Afghanistan. It arrived just today and I haven't had a chance to share it with the kiddo's just yet but I am so excited to share it.   It was a community effort and this letter is meant for all of those that had a role to play in executing the care packages that went out this fall. I will be framing it and hanging it in the library, I will take a photo after I share it with my classes.

I also, have signed up with SLANT BOX Swap again, sign ups till the end of the month.

Happy Reading,

Mrs. Shamhart

The Holidays Are Behind Us , Welcome 2014!

Happy New Year! Can we all collectively agree that the holidays flew by in a whirlwind?

 The week of December 14th we had a week of fun in the library. Every day the kids came down.
On Monday, we checked out books so we would have books over the break. Tuesday, every class got to visit with Santa and have their picture taken. It was so much fun!!! Then, on Wednesday, we had a holiday store, which primarily consists of items for moms and dads. Things like holiday decorations, jewelry, glove, hats, scarves, books, wallets, coffee mugs, lotions, and household items. (These items donated by Kennedy staff and friends).  It is so exciting watching them shop and seeing them get excited  to give to some one special. Then, on Thursday, we had a Christmas movie with Christmas cookies. We watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in first grade. I was surprised how many had never seen it before. Which was awesome because they were glued to it. In Kindergarten we watched a movie called Jingle Bells which was a wonderful story. I had 3 classes (a whole pod) in the library at one time, with 4 showings that day. The students were very well behaved and it was fun for everyone.
See the article in our wonderful Abilene Reflector Chronicle about Santa in the library
http://www.abilene-rc.com/newsdetail.asp?article_id=1999&HL=News%3AKennedy+students+receive+surprise+visitor

 My grandson Ollie, even made a visit to see Santa. He dressed in his elf costume in hope to impress the big guy! :) I'm not quite sure Ollie knew what to think of him.

The new year started off with Fairy Tales in the library. We shared Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel and The Little Red Hen. We will continue with Fairy Tales and Fractured Fairy Tales this week with 1st graders. See our anchor chart we created:

In Kindergarten we shared the Knuffle Bunny stories and we have enjoyed sharing about them. Learning about the Author Mo Willems and getting to know his characters.

This is always a fun series of books to read and a must have in your child's at home library.

I have selected several wonderful stories to add to your child's count down to Valentine's Day book bin.  Find them here:

I am thinking of starting another book challenge and the wheels are spinning. I am hoping to have something put together by the end of the week.

In the mean time let me tell you about a new swap I am involved in. I don't know about all of you but I read a lot of blogs and one of my favorite blogs that I view on Bloglovin is Chaotic Goddess Swaps
and the name of this swap is right up my alley so to speak. It is the Books and Bloggers Swap.

Chaotic Goddess Books and Bloggers Swap

Can't wait to get started on this swap. 2 of my most favorite things; books and blogs.
I can't wait to tell you all how it goes.

Happy Reading,
Mrs. Shamhart

Grinch in the library and much much more...

This week in the library we have been on the holiday countdown. Counting down till we see Santa next week, till we enjoy the Christmas store in the library, till we have Christmas cookies and movie day in the library, or until we have our classroom parties and or our long Christmas break. YEAH!

This week has been so much fun. We chilled out in the library and enjoyed Christmas stories and even made connections with the Grinch! Is that possible? Sure it is!!!

 

Not only did we read this story we created an anchor chart to go along with it. How might we make the Grinch smile? We came up with a lot of great ideas! My favorite was, read him a book.  See our chart.

 

Some of our other fun stories we shared this week. 

 

Our 3 Month Reading Challenge has officially come to an end.

  Feeling pretty accomplished that I accepted this challlenge and met it too.  I will post a final list with all my titlles next week. 

Happy holidays!

Wrapping things up in the library....

  

I missed blogging for the last week. With the holiday and being sick I have been playing catch up, both at home and at work. I completely lost my voice and felt miserable through the holiday.

I am doing much better now and I am starting to finally feel more myself.

I didn't post last week that my Kindergarten friends made a book of what they are most thankful for this holiday season. Here are a few pictures.

Madison is thankful for her friends.

Pierce is thankful for his family.

Mrs. Barrett's class received our book from Mrs. Young's class this past week and we absolutely loved getting to see it.  She wrote us an amazing letter and sent us a fun game to play. Thanks so much to our friends. We sent ours out late due to me being sick. Hope we hear back from them soon. We created a book from the photo's above.

My first grade friends finished their persuasive writing and their Pigeon/Turkey craft. I was pretty impressed at how well they all did. We also talked about "how to" make Kool-aid. As, the first graders begin their next writing activity. We talked about directions and following directions. We discussed how sometimes it is difficult to follow directions that are not clear. We talked about many things that we know how to do all by ourselves. How would we explain how to do these things to someone else. We selected a topic "Kool-aid". Many of us know how to make Kool-aid. We discussed how we could organize our directions that it might be clear to someone who has never made Kool-aid. And what a terrific job they did.

We also have been working on an author study of Karma Wilson. We shared the "Bear series" Titles like: Bear Snores On, Bear says Thanks, Bear Feels Sick, Bear Feels Scared,  Bears Stays Up For Christmas. We made lots of connections with these books. We also noticed that the book is about friendship. The books start one way and end with the friends having the same type of experience as Bear. The books are fun and are in rhyme.

 Our fact of the week was selected from the Scholastic News Book (which I highly recommend).

The kids have checked out the rest of the series and I have a waiting list on some of these titles. Fun facts for kids.

 

Our spotlight book must have been a little bit  of wishful thinking on my part. Nonetheless I really love this book. It depicts the many different things one might do on a snow day. What fun!

  I have compiled a Winter/Christmas list of books you probably don't want to miss:

 I wrapped these  books up for my grandsons to read to them this month.

Book Challenge

We are wrapping up the challenge and we have 1 week left.

December 15th is our final day of the challenge.

Did you complete it? Did you read some books you might not have otherwise read?

Well I most certainly did. It was a lot of fun. I hope you will share some of your amazing stories

and book list with me. I am on my last book. I actually turned to my son for an idea of an author with my initials and he suggested this book: Fallen By Traci Slatton

Christmas DIY Sign

Our amazing art teacher, Mrs. Holaday is providing staff with a fun holiday craft instructional. We all think she is pretty amazing. So I thought I would share my craft with you. Now because I was sick I missed the first class. Mrs. Holaday  came down to the library and told me exactly what to do so I could catch up. So here goes.

1. Select  the board the size you would like your sign to be. Sand it and put vaseline on in random areas of the board.

 

2. After allowing it to dry paint the board with black paint.

 

3. After allowing that to dry, put more vaseline on the black paint in random areas.

4. After allowing that to dry I painted the sign the color I wanted it to be. (Red)

5. Then I printed what I want the sign to say:

Merry Christmas  but in  Christmas Font. 

I hope it all works out, Mrs. Holaday has our next craft class scheduled for this coming Tuesday. I will continue posting my progress.

I just joined yet another swap. I actually love being involved in these different swaps. This newest one is called the Cheer up Swap! For those of you who can't wait for spring to arrive, I am right there with you!!! I really love the holidays but I dislike the cold weather. So this swap will be a fun count down to spring for me.  This one doesn't start until Feb. so sign up if you are like me and would love to meet someone new and share some swaps through the mail.

I just finished sending off my 2 other swaps I have been involved in and were they ever fun. 2 of my most favorite things Christmas and books. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!! I will totally unveil my reveals as they arrive. Can't wait!

As I begin to wrap up the many things going on both at home and at school, I realize how much we have going on and how much more I could be sharing. I am looking forward to the holidays and welcoming in a new year. I hope your families have a very happy holiday season.
Remember if you are lost for a gift idea, a book makes a perfect gift! :)

Happy Holidays and Happy Reading!!!
Mrs. Shamhart