Small Reads for Brighters Days
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! I’m sharing about weather journals […]
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! Just click, and a downloadable […]
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 an example. Just click here […]
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 author visits with K-1 classes. […]
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 into the book. I didn’t […]
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 you! You can give Sheep some wool, just like a real sheep grows new wool after it’s sheared. I’d love a couple of photos of completed sheep, so if you […]
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 to sensory input. (I share […]
One thing first: Tonight’s the night! I’m hosting one more Write Alone Together: today, Wed, Mar 10 at 6pm Central Time, for one hour. Click the image for the free registration page. Feel free to share with anyone you think might be interested! Now…on to Classroom Connections! All around, you can find signs of animals […]
I so love it when kids (or grown-ups) do their own writing inspired by something I wrote! A virtual book club of 2nd graders at Spradley Elementary in Frisco, TX, read Lion of the Sky and wrote their own zoo-ku in response. Aren’t those fabulous? Can you guess the animals? I love seeing how students […]
A leaf is a leaf. It bursts out each spring when sunny days linger and orioles sing. –Laura Purdie Salas, from A Leaf Can Be… Up here in Minnesota, it’ll be a while yet before spring comes. But those of you in other areas might already be seeing buds on trees and shrubs that […]
