After a quick reading of the book, a 6-year old spontaneously practices, is able to chant a section, and has made up some dance moves to go with it.   RahRahRadishesOutLoud

Here I teach the new chant to a large group, line-by-line. Rah Rah Radish youngauthorsconf. I teach word-by-word and challenge a group:  Teaching Insect Chant.  Here I perform a high speed version of the Fish Chant End . An older student rhythmically reads Bird, Bird, Bird_ A Chirping Chant.

Rah, Rah, Radishes: A Vegetable Chant is being released by Beach Lane Books/Simon & Schuster on June 16th, 2011 but can be pre-ordered at  most stores/sites now. Order from your local independent bookstore at IndieBound. I highly recommend that preschools and early child care organizations order from the folks at The Book Vine For Children. They are experts on books for ages 0-6 and they ship nationwide.

Another activity is to divide up into teams and have each act out a stanza of the chant. I wish I had video of what creative teachers did performing Ant, Ant, Ant: An Insect Chant during a recent inservice!

This book is about vultures. But did you notice it was about something else? Physics. It told us a little bit about air. The sun warmed the air. Now, warming air goes where?

(Up, up!)

Cooling air goes where?

(Down, down!)

Now let’s learn about another physical part of our world; dust. Have you ever thought about dust? Let’s read…

Activities are available in the activities section. 

Other books to pair with these include:

Shadows, which is out of print but available in many libraries and used book stores.

Also, look for these physical science picture books by author Lola Schaefer:

This is the Rain

An Island Grows

What’s Up, What’s Down

I have teamed up with Charlesbridge publishing, the publisher of this book, and created the Be a Stream Hero contest. The winner of the contest wins a school visit from me.

In fact, in honor of Trout Are Made of Trees, Charlesbridge publishing staff spent a day cleaning up the Charles river! This was featured in Publisher’s Weekly. But here’s a few photos of the day on their blog: 

http://charlesbridge.blogspot.com/2008/06/practicing-what-we-publish.html

A good book to tie in with Trout Are Made of Trees is Jim Arnosky’s The Brook Book: exploring the smallest streams.

For older readers, I have heard about but not read a novel written by the great Jean Craighead George: The Case of the Missing Cutthroats (Ecological Mystery) paperback. Perhaps some older fish-loving readers might enjoy this one, which has to do with habitats and native fish.  It’s older but was re-released in paperback.

Here’s an organization, River of Words that has a yearly contest for kids’ creative writing about nature. In 2008-2009, the contest is about watersheds!

http://www.riverofwords.org/contest/index.html

Worksheet Simple Math

Worksheet II Intermediate Math

Worksheet III Advanced Math

Margaret Goldsmith and Margaret Serenevy also contributed the following activity plan to use with One is a Snail, Ten Is a Crab.

one_is_a_snail