Newton and Me – Forces of Motion

This week we  read Newton and Me  by Lynne Mayer, illustrated by Sherry Rogers .  Students are studying forces and motion in their classrooms.  This book is a fun way to learn about pushing and pulling as well as gravity and friction by following a boy and his dog, Newton as they go about a day in their life.  Prior to reading the book we talked about Sir Isaac  Newton who the dog is named after.

This book won the Outstanding Science Trade Book Award, 2011 by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA).  We looked at some other books that have won this award.

Additional Activities:

Featured Books – Outstanding Science Trade Books

Coloring Page/ Word Search –  Newton and Me

Video – Push and Pull

Finding Winnie – Caldecott Winner

This past  week we  read Finding Winnie, by Lindsay Mallick, Illustrated by Sophie Blackall.  Finding Winnie is this year’s Caldecott Medal Award winner, which is given to the illustrator of the best children’s book published in the previous year. Finding Winnie is the true story of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Prior to reading the book, we talked about the characters in the story of Winnie the Pooh, which include Christopher Robin and others.  We talked about the research that authors and illustrators do when writing and illustrating a book.  In Sophie Blackall’s blog she describes the research she did on boats of that era and how she  initially included the wrong Canadian flag on the boats but then realized that it was not adopted until later.

Extension Activities:

Featured Books – Caldecott Award

Coloring Page – Winnie-the-Pooh, American Black Bear

Video – The bear who inspired Winnie-the-Pooh

Additional Resources – Finding Winnie

Biographies – President’s Day

This week  was right before President’s Day and second graders were going to start their biography unit next week, so we read Looking at Lincoln by Maira Kalman.

We talked about biographies, where they are located and how they are organized in the library (in alphabetical order by their last name). We talked about searching for information about people by their names in the catalog (Subject , Contents and Summary of a book) and by categories or what they did (Broader Topic – President, Civil War, etc.).

Additional Activities:
Featured Books – Abraham Lincoln, Presidents

Coloring Page – Abraham Lincoln

Word Search – Abraham Lincoln (Printable), Abraham Lincoln (online)

Video – Looking at Lincoln

Little Roja Riding Hood – Pura Belpre Award

This past week we listened to the 2015 Pura Belpre Award Winner- Little Roja Riding Hood by Susan Middleton Elya and illustrated by Susan Guevara.

We talked about this award, which is given to an author and illustrator whose work best portrays and celebrates the Latino culture.  Before reading the story, we summarized the traditional version of Little Red Riding Hood. Since there were many Spanish words in the story, we talked about how to figure out new words when we are reading (look for clues in the pictures, context in the sentence, similar to words we know) and how we could use these same strategies when reading this book.   We listened to an audio made by our ESL ( English as a Second Language) teacher, who speaks Spanish.

Additional Activities:
Featured Books – Little Red Riding Hood

Printable – Little Red Riding Coloring Page

Video – Little Red Riding Hood – Story Time with Miss Booksy (Cool School)