Week 7

The Little Red Hen by Barry Downard

Read to: Pre-K

Skills: Elements of a Folktale

This week with Pre-K we continued discussing different types of stories. Last week we read and talked about nursery rhymes, so this week we read a folktale. This is one of my favorites. I love that the animals throughout the story are dressed in clothes and doing things like playing pool and sunbathing, so that is why they are too busy to help the little red hen. The kids also caught on quickly that one must do their share of the work in order to benefit from the final product. Yay!         

Discover More Dinosaurs

Digging Up Dinosaurs by Aliki

Parts of both books read to Kinder and Primer
Skills: Features of Nonfiction texts

With Kinder and Primer we continued our discussion of different types of texts. This week we focused on Nonfiction texts.  We browsed through these two different books, looked at some of the different features of a nonfiction text, and read a few facts about dinosaurs. I shared these two because I wanted to emphasize that a book can still be nonfiction even if the pictures are drawn. This is sometimes a tough concept for kids to grasp. We then played a game where I passed out both fiction and nonfiction books and together with a partner they had to browse their book and tell the class if it was fiction or nonfiction and why. They did an excellent job with this and had fun with the game.      

Nocturnal Animal Research Project
Collaborative lesson with 1st grade

This week the first graders began working on their nocturnal animal project. The first grade teachers collaborated on this particular lesson because our library has some great research tools we wanted the kids to learn how to use. In class they each chose an animal they wanted to research. Then each class visited the library. Using our books and some of our databases such as Pebble Go, Facts 4 Me, and Encyclopedia Britannica, the kids found and took notes on four different questions about their animal. These questions included where the animal lived, what it ate, what it looked like, and cool facts about their animal. 

It was so neat to watch them be so curious about a topic. I can't wait to see their final product. Overall it was a great success!       

Finally with 3rd and 4th grade we reviewed how to access our library ebooks. Several of this years' Bluebonnet books are accessible as ebooks in our collection so I wanted to review this concept with them.  The kids love knowing that they have access to library books 24/7 and my hope is that they take advantage of it!