The conference runs Nov 15-19th. 397 sessions from 62 countries!

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I just wanted to send you a quick note to let you know how my presentation went last night. Everything went well and my class was very excited to hear about you.  I must admit, it was so easy to talk about you and your books.  I chose to do my activities on Hush Little Puppy, Stars Beneath Your Bed, and Splish, Splash, Animal Baths.  I did a phonics activity with Hush Little Puppy and focused on rhyming.  I made rhyming charts and students would have to match pictures on one side of the chart with its rhyme on the other side.  I attached yarn to one side and had velcro on the other side for the yarn to be attached.  I did a word study activity for Stars Beneath Your Bed and picked vocabulary from within the book.  I then used fun foam and cut star shapes and on one star I wrote the vocabulary word and another star contained a picture.  The students would then flip over all the stars and play a memory game to match the picture with the word.  My last activity was a comprehension activity with Splish, Splash, Animal Baths.  Students would fill out a KWL chart using this book.   Before the students read the book they would write what the already Know about animal baths.  Then they would write what they Want to know about animal baths.  After reading the book, students would record what they learned about animal baths.

I really enjoyed reading your books to prepare for my presentation and it was wonderful researching your background and getting to know more about you.  You definitely seem very passionate about what you write about and that is so exciting.  I really enjoyed planning classroom activities using your books.  Also, to motivate my class and engage them in the lesson I told them we were going to take a trip to Panama and I followed that with reading Army Ant Parade.  This really grabbed everyone’s attention and gave them a sense of your writing style before I even started my presentation.

This was the first time I’d seen activities for the new Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out. There were turtle shape poems which looked like ancient, beautiful style art. What about these wild pine cone birds for Bird, Bird, Bird? Extraordinary.

What a lovely school. The science teacher, Ms. Wildfong, showed me the science building. They have lots of animals. It really feels like a science-in-action place.

The music teacher, Ms. Wilson, shared the use of Bird, Bird, Bird: a Chirping Chant. She was teaching kids the half and quarter notes and how to use the staff by getting them to sound out and choose among a few notes to set this book to music.

The art teacher, Ms. Knoop was a wonder. Love her! She’s made a creative space, complete with old plastic toy color wheel, great supply drawers, and projects galore. She partners with another teacher to do a whole big unit on fibers. Ms. Knoop brings in wool from her sheep and they dye it with natural plant dyes and spin it. Wow. Hands on science and history and art all at the same time.

Thanks, Seven Hills, for an inspiring day. Your students and staff are great! Lunching with with these joyful, dedicated educators was a pleasure. Their ideas popped like popcorn. Really, it was like being in some of the great creative meetings I had at National Geographic. You walk away uplifted and refreshed.

Christmas Tree Worms. One of the early scenes in the fantasy part of the movie shows the characters walking through the forest and touching some large feather duster type organisms that, when touched, disappear into the ground. These are very much like Christmas Tree Worms, which are much tinier organisms found on coral reefs. I’ve seen them while diving in the Caribbean. Like the ones in the movie, these organisms retreat quickly into their holes when touched.  There are also plants that react when touched…sensitive plants, on land.

Bioluminescent fungi. One of the best scenes in the movie is when the characters walk through a glowing forest. Parts of the forest light up as they walk. Bioluminescent creatures abound in nature. Look up bioluminescent bays and bioluminescent fungi. On land and in the sea, creatures glow. It’s not just fireflies!

The Great Tree. The forest in the movie reminded me a lot of the rain forest landscapes we have seen in the tropics. The tall, widely spaced trees that shade the forest floor are reminiscent of primary, lowland rain forest. The largest trees reminded me of the emergent trees. The emergent layer of the rain forest features particularly large trees that jut out above the canopy layer, ie the rest of the trees.  Brazil Nut trees in Peru do this. The vines, trees, and other structures in this movie are a good starting point for understanding rain forest structure  in general.

The Floating Mountains. These reminded me of the tepuis of Venezuela. These mountainous structures don’t float in mid-air, of course. But they are so remote and mist-shrouded that they have been barely explored.

Update: It’s been a week since I made this post. Lo and behold, I see an article “Inventing the Plants of Avatar” in the Los Angeles Times! Link here

Perhaps this resource will help. It is a checklist for evaluating the literacy value of storytimes.  It is provided by ALA and is based on the literacy work of Elaine Czarnecki and Gilda Martinez and John Hopkins University, Center for Reading Excellence. It’s not written as tips, per se. But you can work backwards to see what techniques enrich the reading experience.

Another thing that set the tone in this school was the welcome boards outside each room. Something about having that personal note, right at the door, seemed even more welcoming than the usual note on the blackboard in the classroom. The kids pause, see what’s up for the day, and enter the classroom in a more focused way. Plus, the signs lets other faculty/staff know a bit of what’s happening in each room.

Students use ink pens to color parts of coffee filters, then fold each filter into a pie-piece shape.They dip the end of the “pie piece” into water. The water will travel up the filter and spread ink pigments to the far edges. Unfold the filter and find a beautiful sunrise or sunset color pattern with rays of color. Let the paper dry, and you have art!

If you want to tie in even more science, use this activity to introduce a wonderful scientific lab technique: paper chromatography. Many chemicals can be identified by placing a colored sample (a dot) of the substance on filter paper, then dipping the end of the paper in a solvent. The solvent moves through the paper and carries the chemical (the dot) a certain distance, based on its structure. By seeing how far the color travels, a scientist can figure out what chemicals are in the sample. This process is paper chromatography. (Check Wikipedia to see the entry on this.) Some inks can be separated into their component colors in this way.

Harrison School

Students near Columbus, OH, map their neighborhood after reading It’s My City.