Ferociously Good Fun with Tyrannosaurus Rex and Friends

I'd like to think I'm an innovative teacher, constantly learning new things and sharing them with the children I get to see, but recently I realized something dreadful.  I had sunk into a dinosaur rut!

Perhaps you've been there too - I have so many favorite dinosaur books that I stopped paying attention to new ones.  Between Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp, all the wonderful dinosaur books by Bernard Most, Bones, Bones, Bones, and Ten Terrible Dinosaurs, who had time for more?

Thank goodness I spent a little time recently rediscovering the dinosaur books available!  Now I have some new favorites to share, just in time for my dinosaur theme. 

Dancing with the Dinosaurs by Jane Clarke - so cute!  Who would have expected all the dinosaurs to have moves like these?  The ending shouldn't have taken me by surprise, but it did - and when I read it to my kiddos they squealed with joy.  I won't spoil it for you - go read it!

Dinosaurs Love Underpants by Claire Freedman.  I know, I'm really behind, the underpants series has been around for a while.  I have no excuse.  I do wish dinosaurs and cavemen weren't depicted together, but the way the children enjoy this one more than makes up for it.

Dinosaur vs. the Library (and all kinds of other things) by Bob Shea.  If this doesn't get your junior paleontologists excited, I don't know what will.  Simple pictures, lots of roaring, and an adorable dinosaur that every 3 or 4 year old will imagine being.  Prepare yourself for lots of roaring!

Chalk by Bill Thomson. OH MY GOODNESS!  This is a phenomenal book, as is Fossil, also by Bill Thomson.  The illustrations show extreme perspectives in a super realistic way, and tell the whole story in this wordless book.  You'll want to use this with pre-readers, but even adults will enjoy this gem.  I recently paired it with The Book With No Pictures to teach reading skills to kindergarten and first grade students.

I started by showing the children The Book With No Pictures, and enough of them had seen it before to know that it's a very funny book - of course they wanted me to read it to them!  Of course I obliged!  (Is there anything better than reading to kids?!)  One of the magical things about this book is the use of font size, color and type to show you how to read it.  Even children who aren't comfortable readers yet can analyze the way the text looks.  Big font = big voice.  Different colors?  Must mean different voices!  Text about a robot monkey is written in a very robot like font - so we read it with robot voices.  I love how expressive the children can be as we reread parts of the book with the font choices in mind!

Late in the book it uses the word "preposterous".  I like to reread that page, and then ask the children what they think that word means.  Have they ever heard it before?  No (at least so far no-one has), yet they all tell me more or less correctly what it means.  This opens up a discussion of context clues, and how good readers can figure out what words mean!

After reading The Book With No Pictures, we read a book with no words: Chalk.  This is important to me because at this age so many children realize the importance of print that they don't necessarily want to read the pictures - but it is such a useful part of decoding text for them!  As a reading teacher I've often told students to look at the pictures for clues, but I don't model doing that often enough, and I think many children begin to think of it as "how a baby reads", or not "real" reading.  By taking away all words, readers get to focus on the pictures and on how they tell a story, creating meaning and telling the narrative.  What great skills!

 It makes sense to follow up our reading lessons with some reading practice, so we work on dinosaur sight word mystery pictures.  Click on the picture and check out this pre-primer one.

My preschool and early kindergarten students also enjoy working on dinosaur words with this word building activity.  With 14 pages of dinosaur words to build, this is a fun, hands on center for letter learners - I slip the pages into sheet protectors (easier than laminating!) and put out our 1" letter tiles.  Ta-da! Instant literacy station!

If you read my blog very often, you know I like to include a free resource in my posts - and here's a free counting, sequencing, and addition activity.  Click the picture to go to my TeachersPayTeachers store and download it - and if you like it, please take a moment to leave feedback so I know to keep offering freebies!

There are a lot of other dinosaur learning activities in my TeachersPayTeachers store - I hope you'll stop by and check it out when you're prepping your dinosaur unit.  Until then, thanks for stopping by!

Paula

Here's Hoping You Have a Wonderful Valentine's Day!

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February is upon us, and for teachers that means another busy month of learning, and of excited kiddos who are more interested in candy and fun than whatever plans we might have.  Just as we are recovering from the triple hit of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas / Hanukkah, here comes Valentine's Day to throw us off our schedules again.  What is a teacher to do?!

We outsmart them!  When we know our students have a lot to say about something, we harness that energy and turn it into a learning opportunity!  Thinking about candy?  Okay, let's graph that! 

While we're at it, would you rather have Valentine's cookies or candy?  Did you make Valentines Day cards this year? 

Who could resist?!  As we follow up our graphs with questions about how many, how many more/fewer, which is most popular, etc., we're covering lots of math skills just talking about the holiday. 😉

We also read a LOT of books.  Reading together is probably my favorite part of being a teacher!  I love sharing my favorite books, and it's so thrilling when students unlock the magic of reading for themselves!

Working on rhyming?  Read Some Things Go Together by Charlotte Zolotow, and have your students make up their own rhymes of things that go together.

Passionate about pop-up books? I adore Love Bugs by David A. Carter.

Kindergarten - third grade students with a sense of humor?  Sam's Surprise by David Pelham has a sister making chocolate covered icky things for her brother's birthday - and gets kids laughing and intently listening to figure out the rhymes!

Do some of your students struggle with being kind to each other?  Of course they do, it's part of learning and growing.  Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink by Diane deGroat might be just the thing to help students make better choices.

Those of you who know me have to be expecting a Pete the Cat book on this list - and sure enough, I enjoy reading Pete the Cat: Valentines Day is Cool with my kiddos!

Another beautiful book that's worth mentioning is The Invisible String.  I found this beautiful story when I was looking to comfort some of my little's who had lost a pet - it's perfect for that, but it's not the focus.  The invisible string is the love that holds us in each other's hearts, even when we're apart.  If that doesn't speak to Valentines Day, what does?! 

My students and I also really love 100 and 120 chart mystery pictures, so of course I made them for Valentines.  They love figuring out what each mystery picture is, and I love that they're engaged, that it's easy to put them down and come back to them later (what classroom doesn't deal with interruptions?!), and that they're ready to print and go.  Win, win, win!  I've had several teachers tell me they use these in the time leading up to class parties, and that it helps keep their students focused.

In the last year or so I've started using a variation on my hundreds charts: 100 POCKET charts.  Oh. My. Goodness!  This is a game changer too!  Now my students can get hands on practice in small groups during math centers - and they WANT to complete the pictures.  This is what these puzzles look like - and if you catch yourself wondering what the picture is going to be, chances are good your students will too!

What are your favorite ways to enjoy Valentines with your students?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!  Thanks for stopping by!

                                                                                                 Paula

Books and Activities to make this the Best Chinese New Year

Happy New Year everyone!  While Chinese New Year doesn't begin until February 5th, we teachers like to start early to gather books and materials - so I thought I'd share some of my favorites!

This Next New Year, by Janet S. Wong:  (links for your convenience, I am not an amazon affiliate).

I like this book for several reasons.  First, it's told from the perspective of a young boy, and is simply told.  Many Chinese New Year preparations and traditions are explained by him, so young children will easily understand them.  I think it's also important that the narrator talks about people from different cultures celebrating lunar new year - this holiday isn't limited to China!

 Dragon Dancing, by Carole Lexa Schaefer:

 Dragon Dancing is also told from the perspective of a young child.  A beautifully diverse school group learns about dragons, then creates their own dragon in art class.  They work together to dance their dragon all over, imagining it's actions through various settings.  This book really sets the stage for imagining and mimicking dragon actions, and is likely to inspire children to cooperate to make their own dragon.  This book absolutely begs for participation from readers!

The Runaway Wok by Ying Chang Compestine

This story is longer than the other two, but the fast pace will keep children listening!  This one has elements of Jack and the Beanstalk and the Gingerbread Man, but is a very different story.  The emphasis is on sharing and being fair, something children usually have strong feelings about.  It talks about Chinese New Year foods and activities, and has a satisfying moral at the end.  If you are able to follow up by serving traditional foods and showing children a real wok, they'll be fascinated! 


My very favorite activity to do for Chinese New Year is tangrams, an ancient Chinese puzzle with unlimited possible answers.  Tangrams look deceptively easy: the puzzle is made up of only 7 simple shapes, but even adults often struggle to make a basic square with them!

Working on spacial awareness, and manipulating 2D shapes are important mathematical concepts, so I like to offer my students both the challenge, and an option to get clues, so they can choose the right level of difficulty for themselves.  Check out this short video explanation:

 If you'd like to use my tangram puzzles, you can find them in my TeachersPayTeachers store here.

There are a couple of lovely story books about tangrams: Grandfather Tang's Story, and The Tangram Magician are both great for introducing the puzzles, and using literature to bring math into your classroom!

I've written before about Chinese New Year sensory bins, painting, and the story of the Great Race, and about making a Chinese New Year dragon blower, today I'd also like to share how to make an egg carton dragon.


 Egg Carton Dragon
You'll need half of the bottom of an egg carton, red paint and a brush, scissors, pipe cleaners, wiggle eyes and glue, and a push pin:

 Paint the egg carton red:

 When it is dry, use the push pin to poke holes for the pipe cleaners to stick out of the dragon's head.  Glue on wiggle eyes.  If desired, use a marker to add facial features!  You can also use yellow, orange and red paper scraps to help your dragon breath fire, or add sequins to  make it sparkle.

Next time I'll talk about fun ideas that are specific to celebrating the Year of the Pig.  Please follow my blog to be notified when new posts are ready.  Until then, Happy New Year!