The Best Thing

I thought I would start this post as I do so many others. A new selection of books will join our ever-growing collection Monday morning. I just LOVE Books-a-Million and their great sales (thank you, Sarah!) ~ tons of nonfiction for $2.00 and buy-one-get-one free! Whoop ~ Whoop! So excited ~ not only for the great new nonfiction but for the fun new little picture books to add to our collection. I just love a good picture book!

Our class is so pumped to start our next unit Monday morning! We will be immersed in the world of mythology as we read Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, and the kiddos have been waiting on pins and needles for us to start this one!

We have some great lessons and activities ahead of us! As we have built this unit, I have found a few other texts to help us with our journey. The Ultimate Guide and The Lightning Thief graphic novel will be great additions to our fun study of mythology. As soon as possible I will share some of the fun!

 

Our kiddos experienced the double-edged sword of finishing an amazing book! We completed Jack Gantos' Dead End in Norvelt last week, and while we anticipated every word till the last just to see what adventures Jack would encounter next, we were just as sad to say goodbye to the strong, round characters of Jack and Miss. Volker. Dead End is so full of mystery and history that each day the kiddos could not wait to get to the carpet to listen! 

As happy and sad as we were to finish, we are just as excited with our latest read aloud. Dark Life by Kat Falls has captured us whole before the end of the first chapter. I cannot wait to see where Kat takes us, and Ty and Gemma,  with this one! 

I have a few picture books to share of course... 

I want to start with an amazing Caldecott winner that is so beautifully perfect. Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Bryan Collier, is a touching memoir of American history. My sweet kiddos had no problem understanding exactly what made Dr. King's words big!

I cannot wait to share with my kiddos one of the fun little picture books that I found this weekend. Hieronymus Betts and his Unusual Pets by M.P.Robertson is chock-full of adjectives and descriptive details! Sibling love, more-or-less, fill the pages, and no doubt we will have many connections and comparisons. I can almost see a morning meeting game come out of this one. :) Common Themes: the love of family and friends.

One last picture book to share with you tonight. I could not even begin to tell you where I picked this one up a number of years ago, but I can tell you that each year it is a favorite of the kiddos. The Magic Crystal by Brigitte Weninger is a true lesson of believing in ourselves and being happy with what we have. The illustrations by Robert Ingpen are wonderful and mysterious all the same.

Last to share is the wonderful weekend I have had... Mr. Dunn and I will celebrate our 20th anniversary on Tuesday and we have spent most of the weekend in an early celebration of sorts. It seems just yesterday that we were married. Twenty years can pass in a wink. Josh surprised me with a pretty little anniversay band. Such a sweet man he can be. ;)

I made this video a few years ago, for another anniversary, but I still love it just the same. 

Well, thanks for indulging me.

Happy Reading!

Currently Ducky!

Holy Moly! Look at me...two nights in a row! Well, the hubby is working an off duty job for the night, and the kids are all off doing their own things. I guess that leaves me to my own devices...

It's the beginning of the month...you know what that means! Time to join Farley at Oh' Boy 4th Grade! I love her Currently linky parties!

With all of our focus turned to reading like scientists, I have pulled in a couple of great picture books to nurture that kind of thinking. The best part is how fun both of these stories are!

Redwoods by Jason Chin is perfect for pulling kiddos into the magic of the Redwood Forrest! They loved it and we had many, many questions that we wanted to explore further after we read. That is my goal...to open the door to the love of reading, the love of learning, and the love of exploring!

Ducky by Eve Bunting is a fictionalized story of a true event in history. On January 10, 1992, a crate of bath toys, washed overboard on its way from Hong Kong. 29,000 Floatees, including red beavers, green frogs, blue turtles and yellow ducks, were released to float the North Pacific Ocean.  Again, scientifically or not-so-scientifically, however you look at it, what fun to continue researching and exploring! I found a great article, Beachcombing Science from Bath Toys, written by Curtis C. Ebbesmeyer. Such cool reading...what scientists we will be!

The route of the Friendly Floatees.

One last book to share for tonight. This one is just because I find it so stinking cute. You just have to love Slugs in Love by Susan Pearson! I am starting to see a pattern in my love of most picture books...cute, sweet, precious but I just can't help it. How can you not love Herbie and Mary Lou? This is a touching poetic story that my kids love and only Kevin O'Malley can make slugs look cute!

Short and sweet post tonight ~ Happy Reading!

Scottish Highlands and Quiet Sundays

 

Books, books, books! Look at that sweet pile of books donated to our school! There are some great titles in there, and the kids were super pumped to get started reading them...you JUST have to LOVE that!

Okay ~ who is ready to hear my broken record? It has been FOREVER since I have spent a quiet Sunday blogging away. Today, I finished the third book in the series that I have been rereading (if you are like my husband, go ahead and look confused and laugh at me here - yes, I said REreading) and it was all that I could do not to pick up the fourth, again. But I pulled myself away from the Scottish highlands to join the land of the living again, sniff sniff. Josh would probably be quite pleased, but he is not even here to enjoy my return. LOL

At times I feel as if I could spend my entire day curled up in my bed reading my favorite books. Maybe a sad, nerdy thing to admit, but I think by now most of you know this of me. The sadder part is that when I am not reading them, lately, I am listening to them. I have found Audiobooks.com and let's just say that at this point, it is a pretty good thing that I have unlimited data on my plan. Jeesshhh....

Any~whoooo...I digress, as usual. Although it feels as if I have not been in the world of the living for a bit, LOL, I promise that our class is still working our little hearts out, and I have enjoyed some great time with family and friends.

Such fun cabin time with my wonderful teacher friends :)
~ super way to get re-energized and ready to conquer the world ~
I could not ask for a better group of friends or mentors!

 

Katie and I hit up our first 5K of the year. It was slow going, and can you just say SORE! Holy Cow...if you don't use it, you sure do lose it! And not in a good way...I don't understand some of the places that hurt when I move... I am so ready to get back in the swing of walking/jogging, and even more ready to lose this weight, AGAIN! :( I just have to stay motivated and get moving! (One of the reasons I found Audiobooks.com :) great listening when walking and nevermind that it feeds my book addiction hehe.)

Some of our Read Like a Scientist anchors. Such interesting reading!

 

Did I mention we have been doing a lot of work in our class? My sweet kiddos have loved our focus of "Reading like a Scientist." Who knew how cool Mars is? What I have really enjoyed is watching my kiddos pick up their own nonfiction reading, and pointing out the text structures and features we have talked about!

Just a little of the grammar we have focused on. That tricky apostrophe is giving my group a run for their money, but I have faith...we will become apostrophe experts!  And yes, I know you have seen this anchor before, but we are still working hard on sentence structures. Sometimes, not only is the apostrophe a sly and tricky punctuation mark, but the faithful, familiar period eludes my kiddos as well. Practice makes perfect though, so we will keep chugging along until we are perfectly punctuated ~ even if it kills me! It very likely will!

I have a couple of super sweet picture books to share with you tonight! I will start with the amazing Berkeley Breathed. I still love his beautifully illustrated stories as much as ever. Pete & Pickles is at the top of my just-absolutely-precious list. Such a wonderful story of kindness, friendship, empathy, and I could go on and on! I love looking at this one slowly with the kiddos and really sharing the illustrations carefully, so that they can make boundless inferences. This is a perfect example of how illustrations can really add rich detail to a story.

Since I am sharing all things cute and precious, I just have to share Cynthia Rylant's The Old Woman Who Named Things. Again, Rylant makes teaching common themes in literature a piece of cake! Kindness and courage to open your heart fill the pages so beautifully illustrated by Kathryn Brown. I have always had a soft spot for old people LOL, and this little old woman is no different. Conversations of why? and I wonder? abound as we try to decide what it would mean for her to give in and name her sweet little visitor.

Speaking of Cynthia Rylant, here is one more great read for you. Snow illustrated by Lauren Stringer is simply lyrical and seasonally fun. Packed full of figurative language, simile and personification, you cannot go wrong with this one. I just love Rylant books, and much like Bunting she has so many different illustrators that they are all so different.

Just a few more cute things for fun! It has been a while since I have posted...

We could all use a pep talk right? I hope you love this as much as my kiddos did! We had lots of conversation about the path less traveled ~ I want to be on the road that leads to awesome!

Now again, for those of you that know me well, I cannot miss a chance to share a little Jason Mraz. With all of our reading like scientists, I was excited to share with my kiddos a fun little song that just happened to have some very scientific facts in it; a moving message didn't hurt so much either.

I will let Jason say goodnight :) 

Happy Reading!

Currently Catching Up

Hello my long lost friends. I promise; I am still around, and our class is still working hard. I have found myself lost, once again, in one of my favorite stories. This is precisely why, on most occasions, I choose not to read during the school year, yet here I am these past weeks lost in a story with such tunnel-vision that I seem to lose focus on most everything else. Ahhh...the magic of reading!

Since this is my first post in a bit, I have decided to join Farley's Currently again.(I know...again, I am better late than never.)  I love spending a few moments here and there blog hopping. There are so many amazing teachers out there, and all share so many great ideas. I am glad to spend a few minutes catching up with the blogging world.

We are blazing our way through our latest unit as we learn to "Read Like a Scientist." I am enjoying watching  my students' eager response to our look at Mars. Today's nonfiction is certainly NOT what I grew up with. The imagery in most of these books is amazing, and I find that I am hooked as much as the kiddos are. As we continue our research, we are taking a strong look nonfiction text features.

This is the time of year that I find it harder to squeeze in so many of my favorite picture books. Just this weekend during my planning, I combed through my library thinking about just how many I have yet to share with my kiddos. I guess that's where more time in the day would come in handy. :) I do have a few for today though...

Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner was a perfect review of prepositional phrases. This is a new addition to my library, but it came at the perfect time. Not only is this book jam packed with prepostitions, we were able to revisit some of our figurative language as well.

Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner

Now, you can never go wrong with a Steven Kellogg book, and The Missing Mitten Mystery is a great winter read. If your students have not read it before, it is easy to infer and make predictions with. I received my own special copy during one of my student observations during college. All of the sweet kiddos of the class signed the book for me! Love it!!

The last little picture book that I want to leave you with is a classic Munsch. I know it seems a bit low for my class of fourth graders, but I can promise you that every time I read it hoots of laughter can be heard by all. Thomas' Snowsuit is a great look of problem/ solution, but the close look at character traits is sure fun with Thomas!

Happy Reading!

Resolution time...

Wow...I cannot believe how long it has been since I have posted anything! I have thoroughly enjoyed my break and whew...I have been thoroughly lazy! I spent time hanging out with my own kiddos, playing in the beautiful snow, enjoying long days in bed with my favorite books, and eating entirely too much. Which brings me to resolutions....

So although January 1st has come and gone, I am just now getting to resolutions. I figured I would start them all as soon as I go back to school, so that means TOMORROW! Holy Cow...our break is over and tomorrow we are back to the real world.

Southside Biggest Loser ~ here I come! I cannot wait to get back on track! I am sharing here and tomorrow with the kiddos because I have found that the more people I share with, the more I hold myself accountable.

Now, of course winning Southside's very own Biggest Loser, wink wink, is not my only resolution this year. I usually have somewhat the same plans, and I succeed at some more than others but here are my goals: continue becoming a healthier person and run, run, run; work hard on becoming a more organized person, at home and school; and dag-nab it, make myself a rich person by becoming so incredibly smart with money, hehe! Wish me luck! I can't wait to see what goals my kiddos make for themselves tomorrow!

I have just one sweet book to share with you tonight. Come to think of  it: I wonder if keeping up with my effort to share one picture book a day should be one of my resolutions? Oh well, any-whhooooo, I just love The Day Dirk Yeller Came to Town by Mary Casanova, and looky here, looky here...my copy just so happens to be signed by the illustrator Mr. Ard Hoyt. What a sweet gift from one of my sweet kiddos!

Just look at these precious illustrations!

Well you see, Dirk Yeller is a jumpy, jittery, itchen, twitchen, bad guy, and just guess what he discovers... he discovers that the more he reads, well, the less he itches and twitches. The more he reads the less he jumps and jitters. You won't believe the wonderful things that befall him as he discovers the wonders of reading! What a fun way of sharing the love of reading with my kiddos.

I'll let Dirk Yeller help me say goodnight for now...happy reading!

Thoughts, Prayers, and a Moment of Silence

Sending out thoughts and prayers!