How to use this Page

*Picture book for preschoolers through 2nd graders
*Mr. Tiger as the main character

*Rating: Mr. Tiger Goes Wild is a super, cute picture book that sends the message to children that they need to listen to their heart and become individuals. It’s also okay to miss your friends and love them for whom they are! I was lucky enough to see Peter Brown in person in St. Peters, MO, at a library presentation. He is a very funny speaker and a talented artist. It was a great night. Although my husband said to him at the book signing: “Now my daughter is going to want to take her clothes off and run wild in the jungle.” Oh, so not true–but Peter did apologize. My daughter is now in love with this very cute book.

Short, short summary: Mr. Tiger is bored and grumpy in his regular outfit and acting prim and proper in his village all the time. He decides to go WILD one day and walk on all four legs instead of on two legs. Then he decides to go swimming and shed the clothes–now he’s like a real tiger! So Mrs. Elephant tells him to go be wild in the wilderness, and off to the jungle he goes. At first, he is having a marvelous time, but he misses his friends-even the prim and proper ones. So, he goes back to his village, and he realizes that he can be an individual there, too, and his friends will still love him. And his uniqueness might just have worn off on an elephant or two.

Buy Mr. Tiger Goes Wild!

So, what do I do with this book?

1. What do children think about what Mr. Tiger did? Do they think he acted in the right way? How do they feel about Mr. Tiger’s friends? Why do they think he got lonely? These are the types of discussion questions you can have with young children when you are reading this book with them.

2. You can do an easy sequencing activity with this book. You or even children can draw Mr. Tiger at different stages of the book–each on a separate sheet of 8 1/2 “  x 11 ” paper. So, you would have a drawing of him at the beginning grumpy and bored, then on all fours with his clothes on, then swimming, then no clothes, then in the jungle, etc. As a whole group activity, mix up the order and have children come up and put the drawings in the right order to retell the story.

3. Ask children to draw an illustration of themselves “going wild” and write a sentence about it. You should probably discuss this first–so you don’t get too many naked pictures. HA! But you can make a list like: they could dress up in funny costumes, do a silly dance, wear clown makeup, etc.

Easter books for preschool kids and primary students can be fun and give you several activity options to welcome spring!

*Picture book for preschool through second grade students
*Our favorite, old-eating-everything lady as the main character
*Rating: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick is another fun book for young children in this wonderful series.

Short, short summary:

So, what do I do with this book?

1. With this fun Easter book for preschool kids and primary children, you can either order felt board pieces for a retelling of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick, or you can make your own. Children love to be a part of telling the story, and they can help you manipulate the felt board pieces and retell the story.

2. Lucille Colandro has written another great book that can help young children work on sequencing skills. After you have read the book a few times, ask students or your children what does the old lady swallow first, second, and so on. You can even ask students questions such as: “What happens first–the old lady swallows the straw or the candy?” or “What does she eat after she swallows the Easter egg?” You can extend this discussion by providing a worksheet with pictures of the different objects the old lady swallows out of order. Students would cut these objects out and glue them onto a separate sheet of paper in the correct order.

3. Students may want to write their own class version of this fun Easter book for preschoolers. As a shared writing activity, you could either stick with the Easter theme or switch to another theme such as summer or Independence Day. You will want to help students with the format, such as writing on chart paper ahead of time: “There was an old lady who swallowed a _______________. I don’t know why she swallowed a __________.” and so on. Once you have written a version as a class, you can assign different students to illustrate different parts of your class book. If you do this as a home school project, you and your children can work together to create the book.

Do you have a favorite There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed. . . book?

When I taught remedial reading to second graders in Boonville, Missouri, I loved the week we spent reading this book. Some of the kids had heard it read to them before by kindergarten or first grade teachers or librarians, but many of them were experiencing it for the first time. They LOVED when the monkeys stole the caps from the peddler and how cheap the caps were! After all, this was published in 1938–prices have risen since then.

One of the best things about this book is how easy it is to read once children do a book walk and a read through because the pictures can help with the more difficult words AND there’s plenty of repeatable text. Struggling and beginning readers need fun books like Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina to gain confidence and find enjoyment in reading. After all, reading attitude is at least half the battle.

We used to do a lot of activities in my remedial reading class with Caps for Sale. I would have students sequence the events using pre-made sentence strips that I photocopied and they cut out. Another fun activity was for students to act out the peddler’s and monkeys’ story while one or two other students read the text. Finally, we made advertisements for the peddler’s caps, so he didn’t have to go out, peddle, get so tired, and take a nap. Fun activities that work on writing and reading skills plus a great timeless book equals great reading lessons!

Do you remember reading Caps for Sale as a child? Anyone have an old, old, old copy (as in pre-Reading Rainbow) lying around?

**There’s still time to win one of Clara Gillow Clark’s Hattie books (middle grade historical fiction) by leaving a comment on Tuesday’s post. Contest ends at 8:00 pm CST today!**

photo by >>>WonderMike<<< www.flickr.com

Today, in East Central Illinois, I am surrounded by snow and wind and chilly temperatures. So what’s a better Timeless Thursday book to remember today than The Mitten by Jan Brett? I remember when I was studying to be an elementary education teacher in the early 1990s, and everybody raved about Jan Brett–especially The Mitten. In one of my classes, we had to do a cross-curriculum unit on a book where we created activities in various subjects such as math, social studies, science, and reading. I did Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco, but one of my classmates did Jan Brett’s The Mitten. And I was smitten.

One of the best things about this book is the art and the border around each page that Jan Brett has become famous for. Not only are her illustrations wonderful and something I could never imagine doing in a million years, the borders are clever and help readers predict which animals might enjoy the boy’s mitten next. For example, the text on one page is discussing how Nicki lost his mitten. The border is showing us mole tracks on one page and a mole on the next. Then the next page’s text is about the mole finding the mitten and resting inside.

This Timeless Thursday Jan Brett classic, which is 21 years old in 2010, can be used in the classroom in so many ways. Many art teachers use her border idea for art projects in elementary art lessons. Teachers use The Mitten to work on predicting or sequencing skills and read tales from other lands (this story comes from a Ukrainian tradition). Parents can share this wonderful book at bedtime, use it to develop an interest in knitting, and even to talk about responsibility with their children. I mean, how many of us have lost a mitten? I have! I should probably have mine tied to my winter coat as we speak.

The Mitten by Jan Brett is a great winter book to share with children at home or at school!

by GraceFamily www.flickr.com

Teaching habitats or teaching Christmas can easily be done with this remarkably clever and cute picture book: Who Would Like a Christmas Tree?

*Picture book for preschoolers through second graders
*Animals on a Christmas Tree Farm as main characters
*Rating: Who Would Like a Christmas Tree? is one of those children’s Christmas books that can actually be used any time of the year, especially during a science unit on teaching habitats or food chains/webs. Cute! Cute! Cute!

Short, short summary: Who would like a Christmas tree in January? What a great question to start off this book that goes through each month of the year, explaining the animals who like to live on a Christmas tree farm until a family comes and cuts down a tree in December. For example, black-capped chickadees like Christmas trees in January because they find their food there and roost in the thick branches. Who would like a Christmas tree in July? Well, the wildflowers do because they like to grow in the same soil as the Christmas trees and some of them like the shade the trees provide. Who would like a Christmas tree in November? Wild turkeys–of course, and I’m sure they’re hoping not to be Thanksgiving dinner. The author includes some notes from an actual Christmas tree farmer at the end of the book for more educational opportunities. At Christmas time, this is a great book for “teaching Christmas” without teaching anything about the holiday that might get some parents upset. Teaching habitats or food webs is a great idea with this book also! Each page provides details and facts about the animal/plant/human and why they like the Christmas tree.

So, what do I do with this book?

1. Make a calendar with the book. The picture for each month would be an illustration of the Christmas tree or Christmas tree farm with the animal/plant/human that would like it for that month. Children can illustrate the calendar, using Anne Hunter’s illustrations as an example. You can laminate these pictures and then put them together with a calendar for each month that you printed from your computer’s word processing program. This is a great activity for preschoolers, kindergartners, and first graders who are doing calendar math, learning the order and spelling of the months, and figuring out which months are in which seasons.

2. As mentioned earlier, teaching habitats is super-easy with Who Would Like a Christmas Tree? Once you’ve read this book, your students or children have learned a great deal about a forest/Christmas tree farm. You can then read a book like The Great Kapok Tree, and you can compare and contrast the two books. With The Great Kapok Tree, students are learning about a rainforest habitat, and they are learning the animals, plants, and humans that rely on the tree and make up the habitat around it, just like they are with the Christmas tree book.

3. Since this book has a pattern with repeatable text, children can read along with the book. By looking at the cover, they can also try to predict what animals might like a Christmas tree in a certain month, or they can also predict why. This is a fun read-aloud, and children won’t even realize how much they are learning about an environment!