Christmas in July!

 At the moment, it's 86 degrees here in New Hampshire, and this frosty scene looks downright refreshing!  

I was reading a post by one of my favorite bloggers the other day, and she was making an adorable brown felt bendy Stick Man because Stick Man is one of her children's favorite books! I had to grab the template immediately, because I knew how much fun it would be to introduce a "real" Stick Man to the children next December.

Last year I "discovered" this book (always fun to find a book that is new to you) and I was so taken with it, I wrote a literature unit about it that is posted on my TPT store. In honor of Christmas in July, you may download it FREE from my store here.

    

Stick Man, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, has many misadventures as he tries to get back home to his Lady Love and his children in their home in a tree. It makes for a wonderful story map! He floats down a stream, gets used in a snowman, and is even a dog toy being thrown across the field! The magic happens on Christmas Eve. Stick Man is next in line to be tossed on the fire in the grate, when Santa Claus himself suddenly needs an assist. There. You will have to just go read it for yourself now. Your children will love it!

I am unable to directly link to the neat blog that features how to make your very own simple Stick Man! However, you can get to it by traveling back through her pin which is on my Pinterest page. Go to the board that says "My TPT Store". On the board you will find the adorable felt Stick Man from felt from the gingerbread-house.co.uk. It is worth the trip! https://www.pinterest.com/nancybpierce/ 

Stay cool! Go read something!

Nancy

September Hopes and Dreams!

I thought that since I would not be teaching in my own classroom this year, I would not be tempted to buy any new read-aloud books. I was wrong. Somehow, before exiting the grocery store, my eye was caught by a bright-colored book cover. I opened it up, standing there in the aisle, started reading it, and knew I would have to have it. It connects with so many important ideas in the younger grades.

The book's title is This School Year Will Be the Best! by Kay Winters. Quick recap: on the first day of school, the teacher asks the students what they are "hoping and dreaming" will happen this school year. Each page captures a different child's joyful thought. There are about 22 "hopes", so it reads like a full classroom is talking, one by one. Some are the hopes we all have, modest hopes like, "I hope I look good in my school picture." Others are more personal, like "I hope I remember my homework."

In the First Grade class where I am assisting this year, the teacher went around the room asking each child this same question. Then they went back to their tables to write their thoughts and illustrate them. We put their work up in the hallway on a bulletin board titled First Grade Hopes and Dreams!

This book is meant to be shared more than once. On another level, the teacher can prepare some sentence strips or use a doc.cam to put up select sentences from the story. The purpose of this lesson would be to discuss "Which of these hopes and dreams could really happen, and which would probably never happen in real life?" For instance, one child is hoping a chocolate fountain gets installed in the school. Nice, but not likely! This lays the foundation for connections with fact vs. fiction OR fact vs. opinion.

I personally like the idea of taking the dreams a bit further and having a discussion about goal-setting. What do you have to do if your goal is to remember to bring your homework to school? How do we attack any sort of academic goal? By:
making a decision,
writing it down, 
choosing a strategy for improvement,
checking to see if it worked,
setting a new goal OR choosing a new strategy.

Link that discussion up to your introduction of data notebooks and you are on your way!

The written response sheet pictured above was made by Anna Whisenant, and is available for free on TeachersPayTeachers.  I have found another nice free TeachersPayTeachers product that you could download: the author is Elizabeth Vineyard, from the blog The Climbing Grapevine. Go to TeachersPayTeachers store, type in "hopes and dreams", hit "free" on the left hand side, and get your own copy to use in your classroom.