Pieces – A Year in Poetry and Quilts

The Second Graders heard some seasonal poetry from Pieces – A Year in Poetry and Quilts. The backgrounds for the poetry in this book are photographs of beautiful patchwork quilts.

I put out a basket of poetry collections and books by Shel Silverstein and other poets for children to read to themselves. We chatted about using the subject index to find the kind of poetry that interests you. Children worked on finishing their collage poems and some began making bookcovers for an autumn poetry collection that they will be receiving next week.

Tops and Bottoms

After coming in from the school garden, the First Graders listened to Tops and Bottoms, a story about a hare who tricks a bear into giving him the best parts of the crops that he grows. The book is somewhat predictable, and the children readily caught on to the pattern of the story.

We also looked at Autumn Acrostics, a book of acrostic poems. We started with the words SQUASH and GOURD and came up with our own wacky attempts at this structured type of poetry.

Then we used our basket of gourds as inspiration for some drawings.

What to read?

I promised the 4th Graders that I would pick a chapter book to read to them, but found myself in a quandary. I pulled out some of my go-to read-alouds, but couldn’t make up my mind. So I decided to show the children my book choices and to ask them to think about how they find a book when they come to the library. The books I described were PeeWee’s Tale, The Chocolate Touch, The Van Gogh Cafe, A Dog’s Life, Niagra Falls, or Does It?, and The Flint Heart. There was much enthusiasm and sharing about these titles and the following advice was given:

I read the blurb and I look at how many pages and how many words on a page.

I look at the backside summary. If I like the summary, I get the book.

Depends on my mood. Mostly I’ll get a historical fiction book or anything that catches my eye. I love long books.

Look for books friends recommend to me because my friends have really good taste in book you know.

You could judge it from the cover or its blurb or by recommendation.

I look for magic and fantasy books.

I look for series so if I like the book I can read more.

I think we are going to read  Niagra Falls, or Does It? which is part of the Hank Zipzer series by Henry Winkler.

More Magnets…

If You Could Jump Like a Frog

The Kindergarteners measured the handprints we made after reading Actual Size. We put them in size order.

Then we read If You Hopped Like a Frog which compares different animals’ capabilities to humans’.

Some facts we learned:

• If you hopped like a frog…you could jump from home plate to first base in one leap!
• If you were as strong as an ant….you could lift a car.
• If you had the brain of a brachiosaurus…your brain would be smaller than a pea!

Sophie’s Squash

Last fall, Trader Joe’s provided me with one of my favorite activities of the year. I was inspired to read The Ugly Duckling and some other stories by their selection of wacky-looking squashes and gourds. Then the children did observational drawings of them.

Yesterday, back to Trader Joe’s I went, and happily purchased some tiny ornamental squashes.

After looking at my bounty together, I read Sophie’s Squash to the Nursery and Early Ages classes. It’s the story of a little girl who falls in love with a butternut squash at the farmer’s market. She names it Bernice and treats it as her baby. She cares for it until Bernice begins to soften. Sophie buries Bernice in the garden and is rewarded with two new baby squashes in the spring.

I asked the children what they thought was inside a squash and one child replied, “slime and seeds”. I asked them what the different squashes looked like and another child said, “a melted pumpkin”!

 

Here are two of our “geese” hanging out with the plants on the Early Ages windowsill……