Mock Caldecott Finalists - Batch 1

Each January, the American Library Association awards the Caldecott Medal to the artist of "the most distinguished American picture book for children." Who will win in 2016? Well, first- and second-graders are going to make their pick in library, and we'll see how our choice lines up with the national award. After reading six books so far, the following two titles will be moving on to the final vote:

simonandschuster.com

We Forgot Brock!
Carter Goodrich

Just looking at the cover, several kids were able to figure out that Brock might be an imaginary friend ... which he is. But to Philip, he is as real as can be. So real that he gets left behind at the big fair. Will the two reunite? Almost every single student I read this to voted to keep it on our list. They LOVED it.

Goodrich, a RISD graduate and artist who was the lead character designer for Brave, Ratatouille, and Despicable Me, has a lot of the artwork from this book posted on his web site. Many picture books these days are 32 pages, but this one is 48; most of the pages only have a couple of sentences, while the artwork tells a lot of the story. In fact, this could probably work without any words at all.

bethanybarton.com

I'm Trying to Love Spiders
Bethany Barton

This book was a fun combination of fact and fiction - we learned that spiders are related to ticks and scorpions; that they can eat up to 75 pounds of bugs in a year; and that they liquify their food and slurp it up. We also got to SMASH the spiders that appeared every few pages and freaked out the narrator. (One student was so enthusiastic that the page ripped, but it was easily taped up.)

Ms. Parenteau and Mrs. Breton do a spider unit every year, and this will make a great addition to the stack of books they check out for their classrooms!

Don't Let the Pigeon ... with AM K

AM K also met the Pigeon this month; we read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! and then watched a video version of the former. The kids were QUITE adamant about NOT letting the pigeon drive (photo below from encore viewing):

The students then came up with their own rules for the Pigeon:

PM PreK Snowmen and Faces

offtheshelf.typepad.com

After reading All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle (illustrated by Barbara Levallee) and Snowballsby Lois Ehlert, PM preschoolers had a choice of activities.

They could color their their own snowmen or play with a game called About Face. This game has the kids create silly faces by combining hair, eye, nose, and mouth playing pieces that feature everyday objects (like the ones that Ehlert used to decorate her snowmen in the book - see pages to the right).

Room 11 Dewey Detectives Part 2

And here is Room 11 during their second Dewey challenge. Photos from the first one are posted here.

Room 10 Dewey Detectives

The Dewey Decimal system is a way of sorting nonfiction books. I don't expect my students to memorize specific numbers; that's what the online catalog is for. I do, however, want them to understand how certain topics go together. At least according to how Mr. Dewey thought they did.

Each table of fourth graders got a stack of books from a "hundreds." They had to work together to figure out how the subjects could be classified under one major label. Can you solve the puzzles?

• 500s: planets, electricity, magnets, weather, dinosaurs, bugs, ecosystems, animals
• 700s: movies, art, photography, music, sports, jokes, crafts
• 900s: maps, ancient civilizations, countries, states, wars, explorers

Here are the successful Room 10 students:

The next week, using what they knew about the categories, each group had to assign a stack of topic cards to the correct "hundreds." Room 10 did a great job; even if the students had something in the wrong place (like dinosaurs in the 900s), they were able to explain their reasoning (dinosaurs lived a long time ago, in ancient history). I love that they were using their brains!

Don't Let the Pigeon ... with PM K

In case you haven't been introduced to the Pigeon yet, he is the star of a series of books by Mo Willems; the first one is Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! We read that and Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! in PM K, and I am happy to report that MOST students resisted his arguments (a few were willing to be bought off by his promise of five bucks).

Then the kids came up with their own rules for the Pigeon ... I especially like that one student (see last photo) doesn't want to let him read, because he will probably just ruin the books. Which is an excellent segue into our next lesson, when the kids will teach the Pigeon book care rules as a prelude to their first checkout.

He is not allowed to go to Toys R Us.