A Whale of a Good Story Time

I've talked about polar bears, penguins, and other polar animals in the last few weeks, so it's time to break out the whale books!

Sure, I have a couple of old favorites: Baby Beluga is and always will be a winner, whether you read it or sing it or both, and Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale is still a hit with the kiddos, but I recently found some new favorites too!

  

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Breathe  What a lovely book!  The illustrations are gorgeous, and the spare text tells everything it needs to with only a few words.  When I read this aloud the children were fascinated - and calm.  I read it at a slow pace, taking a few moments to savor the words and pictures of different arctic animals on each page, and found the whole room taking a moment to breathe and slow down with me.  This beauty would be wonderful as a calm down story in a hyped up classroom - haven't we all found ourselves needing to take a few deep breaths and calm the room? - and it is perfect for a snuggle up bedtime read aloud.  I will definitely be reading Breathe again!

Following Papa's Song is my other new favorite! The illustrations absolutely glow, and like Breathe, there are just enough words on each page.  The children were hanging on to every word by the end of the story, waiting for little whale to follow papa's song and find his daddy.  Without making a point of it, this book surely taught my little ones that whales migrate and sing to communicate, while celebrating the close relationship between parent and child.  I don't think I'd read this one as a bedtime story because I did have one child quite worried that little whale was lost, but for the classroom or library story time it's a winner!

Here are a few more whale books that I've enjoyed reading with children.  The Gift is a little longer, more suited to early elementary grades - or at least to children with a longer attention span.  Barbara Lavallee's illustrations are gorgeous as always, and the story feels like poetry.

The Whale's Song tells the story of Lilly doing what her grandmother used to do, and waiting at the end of the pier for whales to come.  Again, this book feels like poetry.  I would read it with kindergarten and first graders, and it too would make a lovely bedtime story, sending animal loving little ones off to sleep thinking about meeting a whale.

The Snail and the Whale almost made the cut for story time, but with time for only 3 books, I left it out this time.  Snail and whale reminds me of Aesop's Lion and the Mouse - you might think there's nothing something so little could do to help something so big, but you'd be wrong. 

   

 

Don't forget I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean when you're looking at whale books!  Sure, the focus is on a giant squid, but look where he ends up!  Yup, your kiddos will definitely remember that the squid is NOT the biggest thing in the ocean after reading this one!  I blogged here about an activity my students enjoyed with this book, and created an ocean themed measurement center that can be used with it too.

Finally, another book that I almost chose for story time: The Whale In My Swimming Pool.  This one will appeal to children (because sure, they imagine things like this all the time!), and parents (because we know our children imagine things like this all the time)!  There's a surprise ending, which I won't spoil - you should go grab a copy and check it out for yourself!

I hope you enjoyed this round up of whale books!  Is there something you'd like me to blog about, or a book topic you're looking for?  Let me know, maybe I'll write about it next! 

Happy reading!
Paula

Teacher Things We Love Giveaway

Happy Valentines Day!  There are many things that make teacher's hearts pitter pat: watching the light bulbs go off in our students' heads, drinking our coffee while it's still hot, long lunches (you know, like more than 10 minutes)... and then there's these things!

 To say "THANK YOU!" to teachers everywhere, I'm participating in giving away ALL these fun resources to one lucky teacher!  Scroll down to enter!

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

Prize: Things We LOVE prize pack including: Mr. Sketch Markers, Flair Markers, Personal Laminator, Dry Erase Pockets, Dry Erase Markers, Astrobrights Paper, Ticonderoga Pencils, and a $50 Teachers pay Teachers gift card.

Giveaway Organized by: Kelly Malloy (An Apple for the Teacher)

Co-hosts: An Apple for the Teacher, A Plus Kids, Smart 2 Heart Creations, TheBeezyTeacher, Teach & Play with Mrs J, Pint Size Learners, Star Kids, Think Grow Giggle, It's Kinder Time, The Fun Factory, The Chocolate Teacher, Kelly McCown, Leah Popinski, Mickey's Place, The Literacy Garden, Little Owl's Teacher Treats, Priscilla Woodard - Tasked 2 Teach, Right Down the Middle with Andrea, Sugar Cube Learning, Paula's Primary Classroom, and The Froggy Factory.

Rules: Use the Rafflecopter to enter. Giveaway ends 2/21/20 and is open worldwide.

Are you a Teacher Blogger or Teachers pay Teachers seller who wants to participate in giveaways like these to grow your store and social media? Click here to find out how you can join our totally awesome group of bloggers!



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Polar animals: beyond penguins and polar bears

Sure, we all love penguins and polar bears - they're adorable, exotic, kids love them, and they make it so easy to include science learning along with reading, writing and math.  So why doesn't every child learn about moose... mooses?... could that be the hold up right there?  What about lemmings and fur seals and narwhals, oh my?

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase using one of my links, which helps to support the blog.  All opinions are my own and I only promote brands and products that I have used myself and truly love.

I talked about Pebble books from Capstone Press a couple of weeks ago, and have to mention them again.  Life in a Polar Region is beautiful, with full size up close photos of many polar animals, and simple but meaningful text. If you're teaching about non-fiction books you'll appreciate that it includes a table of contents, index, glossary and even on-line resource recommendations, but even if you skip over those text features, you and your children will get a lot out of this book!

 

Where's Walrus and Penguin is a fun book for younger children who'll love looking closely at the illustrations (there aren't any words) to discover how walrus and penguin blend in.  I see a lot of opportunity to talk about the pictures, and a fun read together session!

To add a walrus and a few other fun polar animals to your math learning - because really, why wouldn't you - check out these Polar Animal Tangrams.

Every child ever has probably dealt with a sibling or friend copying them to be annoying, so Don't Copy Me!, with a puffin as lead character, will have wide appeal.  I wish this one had been around when my children were going through this stage - I would have enjoyed it even more than them!

 

 Then there's the moose books!  I don't know about you, but I had no idea how HUGE moose can be until I did some research for a moose themed story time!  They can be almost 7 feet tall at the shoulder, with antlers extending even further.  It's little wonder that Ernest the Moose Who Doesn't Fit  doesn't fit into this book!

So surely it must be easy to find a moose?  Not in Looking for a Moose ! There's evidence of moose on every page - if you know what to look for, but on a first read children seldom notice them.  This book invites a second reading, and maybe a third one too... so you know that makes my teacher heart happy!

 

While we're looking at moose books, we have to include Margie Palatini's Moosekito and Mooseltoe.  This slightly goofy moose.... okay, this very silly moose... runs into all kinds of problems, but with ingenuity and moose know-how he gets through it all.  I love Palatini's humorous style, and if your children can sit through a slightly longer story, they will too.

I read Mooseltoe to a group in December, and we all had a lot of fun making our own moose antlers covered in Christmas bits and bobs.  I raided my old Christmas decorations and wrapping supplies, added a few red, white and green craft supplies, and we went to town!  F. U. N!

Read the Book, Lemmings! is adorable!  First, it has lemmings.  Second, they jump off everything.  Even though lemmings don't really.  Which you'll learn, if you just read the book!  Trust me on this one, your students are going to laugh, say "Oh no!", and ask you to read it again.  What more could we ask of a book?!

Want more lemmings?  I created this Arctic Animal Measurement math center to practice non-standard units of measure during our polar animal unit - and what could be more non-standard to measure with than lemmings?!  It's available for download in my TeachersPayTeachers store, along with many other polar learning activities!

Mama, Do You Love Me? is an oldie, but a goodie.  Children will learn a little bit about many different Arctic animals in this book, along with native culture and Inuit words.  It's a beautiful book for mommies and little ones to snuggle up and read together, and the message is universal. 

Finally, I'm including Narwhal Unicorn of the Sea - even though it's a graphic novel better suited for early elementary rather than preschool / kindergarten - because it's so awesome to have books about narwhals! Children love the dynamic duo of Narwhal and Jellyfish, the graphic novel encourages children who might not otherwise read, and each book includes "sea worthy" facts.  Check one out at your library!

Brrrrrr! Chilling with Polar Bears

The last time I wrote about polar bears I found very few children's books to include in my post.  This time I found a LOT, and plenty of songs and rhymes too. 

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase using one of my links, which helps to support the blog.  All opinions are my own and I only promote brands and products that I have used myself and truly love.

I absolutely fell in love with Sea Bear!  This beautiful new book couples stunning illustrations with some of the most poetic language you'll find - and it's simple enough for young children to understand and connect with.  It starts, 

"Polar bears are patient beasts, as patient as glaciers.  We know how to hope and how to wait.  I learned to be patient long ago from my polar bear mother - "

The story follows a polar bear as it paddles across open ocean, searching for ice or land to stand on.  As the journey goes on, you and your little ones will find yourself aching for land along with the polar bear.  Without ever mentioning conservation, this book absolutely lends itself to further conversation about it.  The text and illustrations show many other Arctic animals along the way, from orca and seals, to narwhal, walrus and sharks.  I cannot recommend it highly enough!

This book also provides a perfect lead in for talking about how polar bears are insulated against the cold by their blubber and fur.  Making a blubber glove to insulate little hands from ice water isn't difficult - and there are instructions for it in this previous post.

If you're reading to young children, you'll also love Polar Bears!  Like the other books in this series, it couples beautiful photographs with simple but meaningful text.  Each 2 page spread includes just 1 - 2 sentences about polar bears, which are closely tied to the photographs.  The close text and picture connection is perfect to support emergent readers as they retell or read the pages.  My teacher heart also appreciates the table of contents at the beginning, the labeled picture of a polar bear, and the vocabulary page in the back of the book.  I would absolutely use this book with preschool, kindergarten and first grade.

If you want a take home reader about polar bears, check out this craft and booklet I created.  Like Polar Bears (above), each page includes 1-2 simple sentences about polar bears, but with black and white line drawings it's suitable to make a copy for each child to have their own.  (The finished crafts also make a very impressive bulletin board!)

Polar Bear Night and the companion book  Polar Bear Morning are also lovely for young children!  Once again the text is simple and short, and the linocut pictures are easy to see from a short distance - important if you're using it for a story time with a big group.  These books also include other Arctic animals, which I think is important for helping children build their schema of the Arctic.  


I've written before about including tangram puzzles in my teaching, and of course I have a puzzle for polar bears!  This little sweetheart is part of my Polar Tangram set, which makes it easy to incorporate some math learning along with our polar fun.

All my tangram puzzles include the shape outline form so my youngest children can manipulate the shapes to match the picture, and a colorful picture version that offers far fewer clues.  I've used these with children aged 3 - 8 and their parents, and it's amazing how engaging and challenging they can be for all ages.

My kiddos also enjoyed Please Bring Balloons.  This lovely fantasy story isn't about polar bears per se, but features a beautiful carousel bear that comes to life and transports Emma to a carousel bear rumpus!  I think the only other children's book with a "rumpus" is Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, and I can see turning on kid friendly music and having a rumpus of our own after reading this book.  This book also makes me want to get out polar bear shapes and a variety of craft materials for children to make their own carousel bears.

If you're like me, just reading about something isn't enough - you want to sing and dance and create and extend the learning, right?  I went looking and found some adorable songs and rhymes to share with you, and I have one of my own to share too. 

I wrote this little song a few years ago because so many children (and adults) don't realize that polar bears and penguins don't live in the same place.  Penguins live south of the equator, mostly in the Antarctic, and polar bears are north of the equator, in the Arctic.  Click on the picture to download a printable song page, or click here to hear me sing it on YouTube.com.

 I also found these on YouTube.com :

Here's Grizzly bears are big and brown (with verses about grizzlies, polar bears and teddy bears) from JBrary,
and
Rachel Rambach has an original song and motion rhyme Polar Bear.


For a polar bear variation on Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, check out the Johnson County Library blog, and check out Storytime Hooligans for a beautiful felt and rhyme.

I want to end today's post with a few more book recommendations.  I've focused on books I use for story times with young children, but there are many more lovely books out there!

 

 

Until next time,

Paula

The best of penguin books

I don't know about you, but for me January means penguins and polar bears and all things polar.  I don't combine them all into one theme, oh no! I can get at least 3 weeks of fun and learning out of it.  This week I thought I'd focus on penguins.

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase using one of my links, which helps to support the blog.  All opinions are my own and I only promote brands and products that I have used myself and truly love.

I'm really excited by all the new (and new to me) books I've found about them!  There are so many I've broken them out into categories (insert a happy book dance right here)!

These are my current picks for the youngest crowd:

10 Little Penguins is too darned cute!  I love the thicker pages - this book is going to be read over and over again, so I'm glad it's sturdy!  Kate Toms has done an awesome job with the simple rhyming text, but what blows me away is the illustrations.  Every picture is a fabric collage, with a little ribbon and felt thrown in for good measure.  I found myself running my hands over each page as if to touch the fabric.  Add in the counting down element of the story, and you have a winning book for young children!

I had a delightful surprise when I opened Flora and the Penguin by Molly Idle - it's a wordless picture book with flaps on each page, and it is wonderful!  Readers (children!) must narrate the story for themselves by reading the pictures - and that makes my teacher heart sing.  By looking closely at the pictures and talking about what they see, children learn that good readers use the clues in the pictures as they read, and they gain confidence in their ability to enjoy books, even before they can read them for themselves.  Wordless books are so good for building narrative skills - story telling - and for promoting book talk between parent and child. If you love this one, be sure to check out the rest of the series too!

Cuddle up with your favorite little ones to read I Am Small by Emma Dodd. The lovely illustrations and simple text make it clear what all the adjectives mean (deep, long, far, high, etc.) and the touch of silver on most pages will enchant both adults and children.  If your children aren't already in your lap when you start this book, they will be when you read the last page, snuggles are required!

There's always room on the bookshelf for a sweet getting ready for bed book!  While the focus of this book is not on the penguins - there are animal parents and babies on each page - you're not likely to make it through this one without a few snuggles, kisses, belly rubs and other loving gestures.  Save Maybe, My Baby for last if you're looking to calm your little ones down for sleep.

Of all the books so far, this one is my favorite!  Britta Teckentrup includes flaps on each page to illustrate all the opposites in the book - pause and let your children predict what's behind each flap as you journey with little penguin to see his friend.  This one is perfect for a classroom or story time setting - pair the book with colorful scarves so children can act out the opposite pairs.  Don't have scarves?  Try giving students a piece of tissue paper or even a tissue - these quiet props won't interrupt the story, but will let children move about and act out the concepts in Up & Down.  

If you're looking for some simple penguin activities to follow up these books, you may like this rhyme, book and finger puppets I put together - you can check it out here or watch the song on youtube.com here!

I also found lots of books for slightly older children, the preschool and kindergarten crowd:

If you're looking for some silliness (and when are preschoolers not?) I'd like to introduce you to Chongo Chingi the penguin in Penguin Dreams.  He dreams about flying, but doesn't limit himself to flying like other birds do, he dreams higher and higher to outer space!  The illustrations are bright and busy, with lots to keep your little ones interested.  I'd recommend this for a parent or caregiver rather than a large group, so children can be close and see the pictures.

Penguin Problems by Jory John and illustrated by Lane Smith is cute and fun!  Did you spot the odd penguin out on the cover?  Can you imagine what kind of problems penguins might have ?  The narrator of this book is a little penguin with some big problems!  Everyone looks the same to him, there are things in the ocean, he can't fly.  He's pretty sure his life is rough.  If your children are having a rough day and need a little attitude adjustment, they're going to love this book!

This is a cute story about friendship, a toy penguin, and a lion, and I found the ending quite unexpected.  Penguin by Polly Dunbar is not too long, not too short, and will appeal to adults almost as much as their children.  If you're like me and always looking for an excuse to read children's books, grab a child and read this one - you're almost guaranteed to hear, "Read it again!"

Do you love the Pebble books for young children?  Oh my goodness!  They combine simple text and beautiful close up photographs to teach children, and I can't recommend them highly enough!  Every primary classroom should have some of these books, I haven't yet met one I wasn't impressed with!

The true story of two male chinstrap penguins living in the Central Park Zoo, and tango makes three explains how Roy and Silo became dads when a zookeeper gave them an egg that would not have otherwise been hatched.  You could use this book to talk about non-traditional families, or just enjoy the sweet story.

A Penguin Story is about Edna, a penguin who thinks there has to be more to the world than the black, white and blue she's used to seeing.  This book lends itself to a color story time, but I included it for slightly older children because it also lends itself to learning about scientists learning about penguins.  If you're teaching and learning about penguins, do your students ever wonder how we know about arctic and antarctic animals?  If you have any deep thinkers in your group, they're going to appreciate this book in ways the rest of the class might not, and the same can be said for your young artists. 

To extend the learning for this slightly older group of students, I like to get out my polar animal tangram puzzles.  I've written about tangrams before - they're a really fun open ended puzzle made up of 7 simple shapes that turn out to be not so simple.

To make it easy to differentiate for my students, I've made tangram puzzles that include both the shape outlines (for matching size, shape and orientation), and more challenging finished pictures.  We use plastic, wooden and paper tangrams depending upon what my goals are.  Exploring with a group of children at school or the library?  Inexpensive plastic sets are great.  For a gift or at home?  I have a lovely wooden set my husband gave me.   For showing our parents what we've learned by gluing down and taking home, paper is the answer.

One of my favorite all time penguin activities is to have students take care of an "egg" or "chick" on their feet - you can see the blog post about that here, along with even more book recommendations.  What are YOUR favorite penguin books and activities?  I'd love to know!


                                                                                                   Paula