Small Reads for Brighters Days
Let’s talk about fall—my favorite season! It’s the perfect time to break out some knitted goodies, like these fingerless gloves I made in the spring. And you can use If You Want to Knit Some Mittens for discussions about the process of getting from sheep to mittens, along with chats about friendship and the value […]
[Still off the grid, but I’ll be back next week!] Wow, did I have a loony summer. That’s because Yvonne Pearson (author of Little Loon Finds His Voice) and I teamed up for 14 Minnesota storytimes about loons. FOURTEEN! Whee! Here’s a quick photo gallery, and I want to give big thanks to Yvonne, Cortney […]
Welcome, teachers, to the first Classroom Connections post of the new school year! I’m so glad you’re here! First things first, I have to tell you—I’m NOT here. I’m off the grid for the first half of September, but I hope you’ll enjoy these posts anyway! :>) So many educator friends have talked about the […]
I am SO delighted to be featured on children’s author Judy Bradbury’s blog today! She’s featuring We Belong and focusing on some ideas to support social-emotional learning. I hope you’ll visit! [My Classroom Connections posts share a way to connect one of my books or poems to a classroom topic–often something timely that you might […]
I’ve done library storytimes for years, but it’s usually just an occasional event here and there. This summer, though, picture book author Yvonne Pearson and I are teaming up to do loon storytimes at ALL 14 branches of the East Central Regional Library in Minnesota! We’re calling it For the Love of Loons, and we’ll […]
Back in 2020, a librarian in Walker, MN, reached out to various authors and asked us to share what libraries mean to us. My essay just appeared last month. You can click on the image below to read it in .pdf form. Thank you, librarians of all kinds, for all you do to create safe […]
It’s been a couple of months since We Belong came out, and I’ve been remiss about sharing a few nice things. A Kirkus review: “The overarching message that all are equal and belong on this beautiful planet Earth is enhanced by the final observation that when we learn from each other, we grow. Aguilera’s […]
I love seeing student equation poems—they always make me smile when I see them on social media. Unfortunately, after I reply with enthusiasm, I usually just move on. What I should be doing is sharing them here, so that other educators can see how to use Snowman-Cold=Puddle as a mentor text. I’m vowing to get […]
Today, for Classroom Connections, I decided to use my Lion of the Sky poetry collection as a starting point for my sticky note poem. I picked a riddle-ku and used the N+7 exercise to swap out the nouns. (I used this online children’s dictionary, since I don’t have a print dictionary at hand.) Here’s the […]
On Wednesdays (when I share tips for educators related to my books) for Poetry Month, I’m planning to share poetryactions–that’s what I’ve called poems that use some book as a starting point for my inspiration. Usually I write these poems inspired by other people’s books, but this month, I’ll do a few based on my […]
