Mama Built a Little Nest

Mama Built a Little Nest

by Jennifer Ward, illustrated by Steve Jenkins

Book Blurb from catalog: Illustrations and simple, rhyming text introduce different kinds of birds’ nests, from the scrapes falcons build on high, craggy ledges to the underground nests burrowing owls dig. Includes brief facts about each kind of bird.

Wondering how to change a research report into a poetry unit?  Try using this book as your guide!  Have students do their typical animal research, writing a wonderful descriptive paragraph.  Then challenge your students to use the information that they learned to write a rhyming couplet or ABAB poem.  This project might be a good one for your early-finishers or those that love creative writing.

Or use this book in a more traditional sense to compare and contrast the nests created by different animals.  This book would be a great mentor text for young students just learning how to use a Venn Diagram.

Whose Hands Are These? A Community Helper Guessing Book

Whose Hands Are These? A Community Helper Guessing Book
by Miranda Paul; illustrated by Luciana Navarro Powell

Blurb from the catalog: Rhyming text offers readers clues for matching busy hands to the correct community helper including cooks, farmers, scientists, mechanics, physicians, and teachers.

Who doesn’t love a guessing book?!  Use this book for two skills: learning about community helpers and practicing rhyming words.  Readers get clues about the community helpers, with an extra bonus that the community helper rhymes with the text right before the statement “These hands belong to…”

A perfect addition to the Kindergarten Community Helpers Social Studies unit!

Pair this book with the Community Helpers app ($1.99 in the app store) and our Community Helpers books found on our school’s My Capstone Library.

A Pig, a Fox, and a Box

A Pig, A Fox, and A Box

by Jonathan Fenske

Award: Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor 2016

Book Blurb from the catalog: After finding a box just the right size to hide in, a little fox tries to play some tricks on his big friend, Pig, but things do not work out exactly as he planned.

This would be a wonderful book to compare/contrast with the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf!  Add a compare/contrast with the characters in Clever Beatrice for further compare/contrast discussion!

Other comparing/contrasting of the pig characters from this book and the Elephant and Piggie series would really get readers thinking!

The book is very open ended and allows for further lessons on making predictions (Will fox play tricks on pig tomorrow?).

 

The Magically Mysterious Adventures of Noelle the Bulldog

by Gloria Estefan
illustrated by Michael Garland

Noelle the Bulldog can’t figure out her special talent.  She can’t run fast like other dogs, swim like fish, glow like fireflies, or have shimmery colors like the birds.  Then one day, the dogs can’t get their ball from underneath a car.  Noelle saves the day.  A fish jumps out of the pond, Noelle is able to pick him up and put him back in the pond.  The birds needed seed, and Noelle knew just where to go in the house.  Noelle’s special talent was found on the inside!

From the publisher: It captures all the worry of an outsider trying to fit in and all the joy of discovering that everyone has a talent that matters, and that true beauty comes from inside

Reading Comprehension: Metacognition, Schema, Connections, Questioning,

Other lesson ideas: Tolerance and acceptance, Everyone’s unique, rhyming and rhythm

Writing: Personal narrative about one of your special talents in action, sentence fluency (due to the rhyming and rhythm the sentence beginnings vary a lot)

Shoes for Me!

Shoes for Me!
by Sue Fliess

Picture book, hardcover

A little hippo grows out of her shoes and gets permission from her mom to go looking for a new pair.  She finds all different types of shoes and can’t decide which one she wants to keep.

This book would be a great read when talking about good fit books, particularly when discussing the interest and purpose portions of the IPICK system.

Teaching Points: IPICK books, Good Fit Books, Rhyming, Rhythm

Don’t Laugh at Me

Don’t Laugh at Me
by Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin

Format: picture book, hardcover

A picture book on tolerance (and also a popular song), Don’t Laugh at Me shows various reasons why we are all different and the pleads with the reader to not laugh at them.

Great resource for beginning of the year when building classroom community, and also to begin the discussion on bullying.

Comprehension strategies: metacognition (thinking about your thinking), Visualizing

Lesson Ideas: Rhyming, Tolerance, Bullying, Empathy

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