Story Time this week: Edward in The Jungle

Last week I started my first story time of the year. Since my "theme" for story time this year is "Where Can Books Take You" I decided to start the year off "taking" the kids to the jungle with the book Edward In The Jungle by David McPhail.

My activity with the book for Kindergarten was for them to color a jungle animal mask that I had already cut out for them, then I helped them glue on a craft stick to the bottom so they could hold it up to their face like a mask. My activity for first grade was the same, except that I had the students cut out the mask (I cut the eyes for them, and I found this AWESOME tool at Michaels that lets you cut out circles perfectly!)

For my second grade students I decided that I wanted to jump right into research with them this year, so after the story we talked about fiction and non-fiction and I had non-fiction jungle animal books out on the tables for them. We talked about the parts of a non-fiction book (table of contents, title page, index) and I passed out bookmarks that I had made with the name of a jungle animal on them. They then had to find 3 "cool" facts about their animal, using the table of contents and the index, and then write their facts on the bookmark.

The kids loved the book and both activities worked out great.

To end my week last week I had some good news, I had been selected as the Teacher of The Year for my school - it is an awesome honor, especially because the two other teachers who were finalists are just AWESOME teachers (and I am not just saying that...they really are!)

Check out our story time last week!