One of my favorite things about books is how they prepare us to handle real life. I think illustrations, in particular, can be super helpful in promoting emotional awareness and helping kids learn how to decode facial expressions and body language. Here’s a downloadable activity sheet that illustrator Kayla Harren
Whee! Oskar’s Voyage, my first book of 2024, published yesterday, so little Oskar is not only exploring a giant boat, but he’s also making his way around the world (hopefully). I am sososososo excited! The fantastic illustrator, Kayla Harren, and I are doing a FREE ZOOM for classrooms (or individual
Brrr! Winter is well on its way here in Minnesota (some say it was on its way back in August–haha), and the animals have figured out how best to survive it. If you read Snack, Snooze, Skedaddle with your students, you can follow it up with this memory game to
It’s mitten season! It’s the perfect time to read If You Want to Knit Some Mittens! Illustrator Angela Matteson made some really cute activity sheets to go with If You Want to Knit Some Mittens. Here’s a little craft project for your students! You can give Sheep some wool, just
Author Patricia Newman has such an extensive collection of great LitLinks posts, all connecting books, science, and language arts. What a great gift for teachers! I’ve shared activities there before for Snowman-Cold=Puddle and If You Want to Knit Some Mittens. Today I have a new post up there about weather!
Sometime in early spring, most states celebrate Severe Weather Awareness Week. If you’re talking with students about weather and storms soon, you might like to use this activity sheet for the life cycle of a thunderstorm. I made it to go with my forthcoming book (March 28), Zap! Clap! Boom!
Fall is my favorite season, when I get to enjoy cooler weather and gorgeous leaves here in Minnesota. For my book A Leaf Can Be…, I have a gazillion (well, not a gazillion, but 30+) downloadable reading and writing sheets tied into common core ELA standards for grades K‑2. Here’s
My biggest hopes for We Belong are that it gets used to spark good discussions and to create community. So I’ve created a template for you to use with your students to write a classroom or family poem. I used this template at the book launch and on some recent
I love wordplay (no surprise there), and I’m always surprised at how many idioms I come across related to any topic I research. When I was writing If You Want to Knit Some Mittens, I toyed with the idea of putting a bunch of sheep and knitting puns and idioms
April 2 is World Autism Awareness Day. I used to work as a personal care assistant for young adults with autism, and that impacted my creation of Clover, the main character in Clover Kitty Goes to Kittygarten. She shares some characteristics with some kids on the spectrum—most notably her sensitivity
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National Poetry Month projects through the years
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