Non-fiction Book Labels

I am always organizing the book buckets in my classroom. 

This year I added a lot more books to my non-fiction shelf. In the middle of the year, I decided to reorganize and came up with the labels below. 

I had the students make the illustrations. 

I wish I had taken a picture of the buckets on the shelf with the books in them because they looked beautiful. 

What I like about this system is that if I had a book that I didn't have a category for I just put it in the alphabetical order spot. For example, if I had a book about coyotes I would put it in the cat bucket.

Fonts by KG Geswein {Thanks!}

click here for labels

Illustration Study

If you teach a writing workshop unit of study that focuses on illustrations I have two great books to recommend to you. 

Both books use illustrations to enhance the meaning of the written word. Besides being great books for an illustration study, they both connect to September school topics/themes. 

{ Touchstone texts are pieces of literature that the students know and love and that can be used throughout a unit of study as another way of teaching craft~Leah Mermelstein}

 Say Hello by Jack and Michael Foreman

This book touches on that idea of being alone and needing a friend. The illustrator uses colors in interesting ways in this book. 

The second book is called 
Bully by Laura Vaccaro Seeger.
The illustrations are big and bold.
{This is funny too.}

What I love about this book is the ending. The bull makes a bad choice but in the end, they can all be friends. I think this is an important message to send to kids and parents. 

 

 The idea of an illustration study comes from the wonderful book In Pictures In Words by Katie Wood Ray. You can check out my illustration Pinterest board below. 

Science Word Cards

In the spring of last year, I blogged about a science time in my class when my students would go outside and become a scientist. I called, this time,  BATES BACKYARD. With the help of my science curriculum specialist, we introduced the kids to Science Notebooks. You can see below that the notebooks are composition books bought at Staples, the paper inside is graph.  The students have plenty of space to record data, take notes and make scientific illustrations. You can click here to read a post about notebooks.

I read a few books to help me with my thinking about science in the primary class and using science notebooks. I found two great resources  Writing in Science in Action by Betsy Rupp Fulwiler and Starting With Science by Marcia Talhem Edson. 

One of the things in Writing in Science wrote about was using a writing frame or structure for students to refer to as they do their writing. I decided to make a table Science Word Cards. This way each student could have their own.

Writing Frame

I plan to let the students illustrate or

glue things in the empty boxes. For

example,  for shiny, we could glue a piece of tin foil.

Click here for Word Card 

click here for the label for notebook

Funny Books

I just got back from vacation and picked up two new books that are VERY humorous. {Well, I think they are funny.} 

The first book is called The Day The Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

ABOUT THE BOOK 

Poor Duncan just wants to color. 

But when he opens his box of crayons, he finds only letters, all saying the same thing the crayons have had enough! They quit!

Beige Crayon is tired of playing second fiddle to Brown Crayon.

This is the layout of the book you can see the letter on the left side from the green crayon
and the illustration on the right. 

If you see, this book pick it up and buy it! 

I only read the first page and knew I had to have it.

I love the illustrations and the format of the boy receiving letters from each crayon upset about something.

The letters written by the crayons are loaded with voice!!! 

The second book is called Oliver and His Alligator 

by Peter Schmid

          ABOUT THE BOOK 

Oliver is nervous about the first day of school, so he picks up an alligator at the swamp, just in case. And boy, does it come in handy! Whenever anything scares Oliver--be it a teacher, a classmate, or the prospect of learning "everything"-the alligator makes the problem go away. Quickly, school becomes much simpler . . . and a little lonely

I love that this book is about being nervous on the first day of school. I can picture kids laughing loudly when they hear this book. Students will think it's wildly funny because it's so far fetched and outrageous. 

I plan to read this book on the first day of school and use this book when I teach a unit of study on illustrations. 

Alphabet Games

I have a list of games I hope to make and share this summer with you. My twin boys are starting Kindergarten in the fall so we are working on the alphabet. I made this alphabet game to help them with identifying,  and matching upper and lowercase letters.  

Goal: Match the upper and lowercase letters

Each child gets a game board. 

I plan to give each child a set of the letters above (cut) in a baggie. When it's their turn, they take a letter out and match it to the upper case. I will have an alphabet chart for support.

Click Here 

I Have Who Has

I HAVE WHO HAS  is an old favorite game. Below is a set of uppercase and lowercase letters. 

Each child gets a card in the circle. 
The first card reader is START.
The children listen for their turn.

Click Here 

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Heart Word Books

This post will share with you little sight word books that I made for my class this year. Books are created for the following sight words

I took the sight words from the book Word Analysis Developmental Reading Assessment by Joetta M. Beaver.  

Here is an example book

click here for Heart Word Books 

If you don't know about this site Educreations, you have to check it out!  It is free to join and super easy to use. If you're a blogger, it makes it super easy to create/share lessons with your class. I just got an I-Pad so I am playing around with different ways I can use it next year. Heart word book Lesson

Special Thanks to the fonts used for this download.

Jessica Stanford Original Fonts

Kindergarten Works

Kimberly Geswein Fonts

Clay Birds

I love this bulletin board, my friend, Laura makes with her first-grade class each year.   Each child makes a bird for this beautiful mural. You may not be able to tell from the picture, but this takes up a big white board in her class.

This mural is made out of clay.

I always ask her, "How did you get the birds to look so good?"

Here are the steps.

First, she has the kids make their bird on a piece of paper and outline with a Sharpie marker. 

Kids can outline with Sharpie if you teach them how. 

Next, she puts a piece of wax paper over the picture.

Finally, the kids then get their clay to fill in their bird. The results are beautiful!! 

Thanks for sharing Laura! 

Nancy Carlson Books

I love Nancy Carlson books! They are the perfect stories for young children. We finished our school year reading all of her books. 

Here are some of my class favorites.

What we notice about Nancy Carlson books...

Many of her characters are animals.

The setting takes place at school.

The animals have a problem.

The problem could really happen.

Nancy's books always have happy endings.

She makes THINKING/DRAWING BUBBLES in her books.

You can find familiar characters in many of her stories.

The kids wrote books inspired by Nancy Carlson.