First Graders Learn about Staying Healthy through Mo Willems' books

First graders learned about Mo Willems and listened to Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus via YouTube. They then created their own illustrations for A Healthy Me is Drug Free Week in which they had to keep the pigeon healthy. Here is a Voicethread of them showing their drawings and recording what they wrote. Mrs.Werking's Class: Mrs. Brown's Class Mrs. Beiting's Class Ms. Huntington's Class

Helping Kids to Imagine

I was introduced to an amazing book called The Adventures of Beekle:  The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat.  Inspired by a Reederama blog that I followed I read the book to my 1st graders and encouraged them to think of an imaginary creature they would like to meet.  We then added pictures of their imaginary creatures to large cut-outs of Beekle.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Adventures-Beekle-Unimaginary-Friend/dp/0316199982

Students watch a book trailer on the book.

Here are the results of our Beekles.

Inspired by another blog...Reederama

Ok so I am in love.  I finally found a librarian that does a fantastic job incorporating books with technology.  This has been a long struggle of mine.  Since my role as a librarian has evolved into more of a technology/media specialist over the last five years I have struggled with maintaining the true reason I went into this profession....sharing my love of books with children.  Reederama is a blog of an elementary school librarian who does a great job of this.  Now before I get people fired up and saying "there are lots of us out there doing this" I want to say that I agree with you but Reederama does a marvelous job of sharing her ideas on her blog, which is why I was so glad to discover her blog.  She has inspired me to share what my students are doing.  Many of my projects I have adapted to incorporate ideas pulled from her blog and some of my posts are identical to her lessons because they were so good there was NO need to reinvent the wheel.  I hope my blog will inspire you like Reederama has me.  Enjoy, copy, comment....I want this blog to be part of something big....something where we are learning from each other.