Actually, friends, the title of today's holiday read is Christmas Wombat by Jackie French. I borrowed it from the library because it was new to me and I loved the cover art. Our Aussie friends are probably very familiar with wombat stories, but Americans, not so much. Anyway, I test-piloted it on my little group of RTI students
(first-graders) yesterday. They were very curious about what a wombat was. In the beginning of the story they received critical information about what a wombat spends his day doing.
“Slept. Scratched. Slept.”
Then we discovered that our little wombat friend was very, very, very, partial to carrots. It just so happened to be Christmas Eve, and people had started setting out cookies and milk for Santa, and big bunches of carrots for his hungry reindeer.
Our wombat (who we observed, looks sort of like a little bear cub and runs sort of like a little bunny) wins a stare-down with the reindeer and accidentally falls asleep on the runner of Santa's sleigh!
The children in my group were delighted as they figured out that the wombat thought that the whole purpose of the trip around the world was to get more carrots! You will love this new (to me!) Christmas classic.
Click here to watch a video about the common wombat:
http://natgeotv.com.au/videos/animals/wombat-93AD3663.aspx
Here is a short and sweet coloring page as well!
http://www.supercoloring.com/pages/australian-wombat
Till Next Time,
Nancy
This book is just creepy enough for early in the month. Not too scary, but if you get the audio version, you get some Twilight Zone type music to shiver along with.
It's a Caldecott Honor-winning story about a little rabbit named Jasper who helps himself to carrots every chance he gets....from the nearby field of carrots. Jasper is very greedy. After a while, he starts getting the creepy feeling that he is being followed. Thunk, thunk...carrots are after him!
Are there really carrots after him...or is it just his imagination? In the classroom, this opens the door to some interesting self-to-text connections. Students can write about a time that they were terrified about the monster in the closet, or the one lying in wait under their bed. For fun, students can cut out carrot "monsters" and display them popping out of hidden places all over the room...the creepier, the better!
Another idea would be to let the students write about anything that they have ever been afraid of in the past (in my case, that would have been dogs.) Have them draw their fear as a monster before they write about it. What made their monster so scary? How did they get rid of their monster? In my case, I got a dog of my own at the age of 39! Something good to share with another scardy-cat!
Wondering what happens to our little friend Jasper Rabbit? You'll just have to read the book to find out!
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