Waking up the Blog

Hey y'all! I'd been toying with the idea of making a return to blogging for a few weeks, and came to look at my own blog for the first time in about three years. I'm shocked to see anyone is giving it page views, let alone still following it. So, thanks for not removing me! Here's what's going on...

Where have I been for the last few years?

Pregnant. That's where I've been. Pregnant and back a couple times, and I have two young daughters to show for it. I was a working mom for two years, but now I'm home full time. This fall is my first time in many years to not be setting up a new classroom! I miss school terribly. But, as my friend Kim told me, "You haven't stopped teaching, you just have different students." And aren't my pupils cute? I love spending my days teaching these two...

(Yep, I waited outside my local Target for 30 minutes before opening and then ran through the store at 7 months pregnant to snag that little Lilly for Target shift. I have no pride.)

Where is this blog going?

As I've taught over the last several years, I've become increasingly passionate about quality literature...Sadly, I've seen some poor literature in basal readers and other leveled texts, and I feel that there is too much great literature out there to spend time on what is not quality.  I have loved children's literature my whole life, and now it means even more to me as a teacher and a mom. I am so excited to spend a good portion of this blog writing about children's and youth literature. My goal is to inspire teachers and parents to share quality reading with the children in their life! 

However, there are a few cardigans (and dresses and bows and other things) to blog about in my world, and I'll be sharing those, too. Thanks for following along! 

Fascinating Blog and Hilarious Science Videos!

I got nominated for a "Fascination Award." What a nice honor! You can click here to vote for me...I was nominated for my post about my Sensory Details and Bacon lesson!

And in other news, the Science STAAR test is coming up! Here's a secret, I LOVE my job, but I REALLLLLY miss teaching science!! So, I've been sneaking in some science lately to help my team get ready for the test coming up this week! We've done several non-fiction reading activities with science books.

But, what the kids and I love most of all is sneaking in some Mr. Parr science songs from Youtube! They are perfect to throw in here and there for a little song break! If you haven't checked these out, you must!! Each video is a pop song with the lyrics changed to be about science topics. The vocabulary and depth of the concepts are definitely grade 5 and up! Here are some of my classes favorites:

There are so many more, so I hope you check them out! Hope you all are having a wonderful weekend!

Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Color

Here is a book that I've come to love. It is new to me, but it was published in the 60s, so many of you have probably seen it. Okay, on first looks, I definitely judged this book by it's cover. I thought it looked a wee bit hokey. I was totally wrong! This is a very neat poetry book. Each poem is based on a particular color and lists words, nouns feelings and associations that go with that color, all done with beautiful poetry. My kids enjoyed this book very much and loved guessing what color we would do next. I would HIGHLY recommend it for poetry grades 3-6!

The new state assessment in Texas (STAAR) now has poetry listed as an objective that could be tested. So here is a long list of concepts we worked on/activities you could do with this amazing book!

- Predicting: Each poem lists many things that are a color. So, for example, to hook them into the lesson, you could share with them the color of the poem before you read and have them predict what words or items of that color would show up in the poem and see who gets the most correct.

-Imagery! The "What is Red?" poem has some great images!

-Internal Rhyme--"What is Grey?" poem contains internal rhyme! (This is eligible to be tested as well.)

-Figurative Language runs throughout.

-Sensory Details and onomatopoeia examples come up frequently.

-"Sketching through the text" as they visualize the poem could be used with any color.

- After you have read some of the poems, you could have them write their own poem with a color you haven't read about!

These are just a few ideas you could incorporate into a poetry unit using this book! I hope you enjoy!