Todd Parr

I don't know about you but I just love Todd Parr.  I love, love, love his books and so do my students.  Here are a few Todd Parr activities we have done in the library!

Reading Makes You Feel Good eBooks
I read Reading Makes You Feel Good to kick off our Reading Celebration last month.  I wanted to do some sort of school-wide activity around the book because we were focusing on being our school being a community of readers.  I decided students could use the iPads to make Todd Parr inspired pictures about why reading makes them feel good and make an ebook.

We used the Drawing Pad app to make the images.  I saved the pictures and then we imported the images into Book Creator, where students added their text.  When the books were done (1 per iPad), I exported the ebooks to iBooks to read.  It was pretty easy overall but took the whole month since I only have 6 iPads.

 Celebrating Our Differences
Last year, the theme at my previous school was "celebrating our differences".  There were many activities we did to celebrate differences such as a cultural night.  In the library, I read It's Okay to Be Different with my 5th graders.  We talked about Todd Parr's illustrations and how we could create illustrations in his style.  Using KidPix, the kids made their own page for It's Okay to Be Different.  We hung the pictures down the hall:

 Skype Author Visit
A few weeks ago, one of my library colleagues was hosting a Skype author visit with Todd Parr and invited me to join her!  It was amazing!  Todd introduced his dogs, which thrilled the kids.  He read one of his newer books - The Underwear Book and gave us sneak previews of two upcoming books (very exciting!).  He talked about how he makes his books and patiently answered many, many 1st graders' questions.  It was so much fun! I can't wait to have him Skype visit at my school at some point!

What Todd Parr-inspired projects or lessons have you done in your library?

Creepy Carrots Center

I recently had a question about my Creepy Carrots Center I had during our school's reading celebration. Since I missed the boat on a mock Caldecott, I used March's Reading Celebration as a chance to read some of the Caldecott winners, like Creepy Carrots, Extra Yarn, and This is Not My Hat.  Needless to say, the kids LOVED these titles.

I saw a Creepy Carrots inspired poster created by some of Mrs. Crook's students at WES Media Center and knew my students would love making creepy carrots for our library.  I went through the orange and green paper scraps we had in the teacher's room and made the orange paper into a variety of carrot shapes.  I put out the orange carrots, green scraps, markers, glue sticks, and kid scissors and let the kids go to town.  They could tape their carrots anywhere in the library and the library is now covered with carrots.

I was semi-concerned about some little kids being creeped out by the "creepy carrots creeping EVERYWHERE" but kindergarten actually begged me to read them the book after seeing the other creepy carrots.

Some 4th graders also drew creepy carrots in Drawing Pad on the iPads:

Have you done any fun Creepy Carrots activities with your students?

PS - Grab a Creepy Carrot Center sign freebie here.

Super Easy Poetry Center

Happy Poetry Month!

I've shied away from poetry in the past because I'm not very comfortable with it.  I did have a lot of fun with spine poetry last year and between that and a few other really inspiring poetry ideas I've seen around, I'm giving it a shot this year.  I plan on sharing some of the fun projects and other centers (April vacation next week = blog catch up!) but I have a quick and easy poetry center or poetry activity for you today: Table Top Poetry.

During my Kindergarten Mo Willems author study a few months ago, I was inspired by @the_pigeon's dining room dinner doodles and covered one of my tables with bulletin board paper for the kids to draw their favorite Mo Willems characters.  It worked beautifully and was a fun, silly way for the kids to share their learning.  I decided something similar would work for poetry too.

I decided to choose a theme each week and picked "under the sea" to start.  I covered a table with blue paper, printed a picture of a coral reef for inspiration, and put out pencils and markers.  This is what happened over the course of the week:

Any favorite poets, poems, or activities you can share with this poetry-newbie?

Reading Celebration!

Hello!  I've been a bit MIA during March as I've been planning and organizing a bunch of fun activities for my school's reading celebration.  I've also been trying to spend a little less time on the computer and more time reading since that's what I've been asking the kids to do!

I have some highlights of our reading celebration to share.  Between this, preparing for my final review, summer reading planning, Dewey Shelve-it and my real life (I do have a life outside of the library...now that it's nice out Mr. Lodge and I have been running again!), there were a few times when I thought "oh boy, why did I decide to do all these things!?" but now that it's done, I'm so happy with the whole celebration.

Before the reading celebration, I did some planning with my literacy specialist and a small Reading Celebration Committee, where we tossed around ideas and I was able to get input from classroom teachers.  This was helpful because I'm not always sure how much something will impact the classroom and I know they have a tighter schedule and more to squeeze in, especially because we had two weeks of testing this month.  They also had some great ideas to add to our fun!

Reading Goal
An overarching goal throughout the month was that we would read one million minutes as a school.  We tracked our reading on a bulletin board in the front of the school.  We will be reaching our goal this week!

Library Activities
In the library, we have been doing all kinds of fun reading activities.  I started off the month with Reading Makes You Feel Good by Todd Parr with all grades.  Students were asked to think about the reasons reading makes them feel good.  My iPad center all month has been to create a Todd Parr inspired illustration of why reading makes you feel good.  We are using Drawing Pad to make our pictures.  After creating the picture, students save it and import the image to Book Creator, where we add text.  As soon as all the pages are finalized, I'll be able to export the book to iBooks to read like a real ebook!  I'll share as soon as the books are finished!

We had several weeks of guest readers, including parents and other teachers. This was really fun for parents who enjoy coming in and also for some of the staff, like our secretaries, who each came in to read to a class.  The kids rarely get to see this fantastic ladies outside the office so it was nice for them to be able to share some of their favorite books with the kids.

A favorite read aloud during our celebration was Boy+Bot by Ame Dyckman.  I tweeted how much the kids loved the book and Ame Dyckman sent us bookmarks and stickers!  Amazing!  If you're on Twitter, she's a great author to follow (@AmeDyckman).

We had many other reading centers like sharing favorite books through a photo booth and decorating truffula trees with favorite books for a bulletin board (which I forgot to take a picture of!).  We also read Creepy Carrots and had a creepy carrot center.

Another way to share books was this teachers' favorite books table.  I put out signs saying "Teachers' Favorite Books" and "What books do your teachers love?" and asked teachers and staff to tell me their favorite books.  I put names on sticky notes to show who picked out the books.  The kids loved choosing books recommended by their teachers!

Favorite Character Day
The kids were SO creative with this.  We had a few Cat in the Hats, Harry Potters, Jack from Magic Tree House, and Fancy Nancys.  We also had Creepy Carrots, Stink, Skippy Jon Jones, Humphrey, Mrs. Beaver from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (a current read aloud in 3rd grade), and the Paperbag Princess.  One of my favorite ideas was four 4th grade girls who came as versions of Edward Tulane, their current read aloud: Edward as himself, Susanna, Malone, and Jangles.  Another favorite - a girl named grace came as Just Grace.  She carried around the book Still Just Grace and told everyone "I'm still just Grace". Funny!  Teachers even got into it, coming as Molly Lou Melon, Mrs. Granger from Frindle, the Cat in the Hat, Things 1 and 2, and Sam I am, Amelia Bedelia, and Mrs. Wishy Washy.  Below, you'll see Cowgirl Kate, some Hogwarts students and Dobby, the Paperbag Princess, and Roscoe Riley.

 Here I am as Pinkalicious with a 4th grade Purplicious!

One of the kindergarten teachers had this great idea for kids with no costume: favorite character hats.  There were a few friends with Pigeon and Fly Guy hats, which they loved!

Breakfast, Blankets, and Books
My absolute favorite part of this reading celebration was our Breakfast, Blankets, and Books morning.  A first grade teacher does this with her class the day before Christmas vacation.  The idea is the wear PJs, bring a blanket, read, and eat breakfast.  To apply the idea to the whole school, we decided to have everyone wear PJs, students could bring a blanket or a stuffed animal, we would read all together as a school, and breakfast would be at each classroom teacher's discretion.  We have a lot of food allergies so teachers did many different things - from the teacher bringing in donut holes, to kids just bringing an extra snack, to room parents making pancakes!

We had a staff breakfast to kick off the day, which was so much fun!  Then, classes were called down to our cafeteria/gym first thing in the morning.  Students and teachers spread out with their blankets and books and read for half an hour!  It was amazing!  Even some of my little friends who don't always make good choices or have trouble focusing were all engaged and reading.  We wrapped up our blankets and books reading time with a fun reading-themed poem read by some of the 4th graders.  I got a lot of positive feedback about this activity and it was definitely my favorite!

We had a mini Blankets and Books for the afternoon kindergarten during a 4th grade library class. The 4th graders were happy to oblige and be book buddies for our kindergarten friends!

Whew...what a month! Happy reading!

PS - Check out this amazing project Mrs. Reed did to celebrate World Read Aloud Day at her school.  She sent home bookmarks for families to decorate and share why they think reading/reading aloud is important.  I would LOVE to add a project like this to my reading month next year.  What a great way to include families!