The Art & Stories of Leo Lionni

Since it is Picturebook Month, I decided kindergarten and 1st grade would study an author or two who has written several picturebooks.  I also wanted kid friendly videos to introduce the author and fun centers for students to enjoy.  I searched through several authors and decided to go with Leo Lionni.

To introduce my students to Lionni, I played two videos from the Random House site: "Why Leo Writes" and "Leo Makes a Mouse".  These are the perfect length for younger students and they ALL loved watching Lionni create a mouse from pieces of paper.  

Right after the videos, each table of students had a different activity center.  They rotated through these centers every 8 minutes.

Centers:
Draw like the Illustrator bookmark:  Cut copy paper in thirds to be the size of a bookmark (for little hands) and provide crayons.  Each student looked through a Lionni book and modeled his illustration style.  

Mouse Shapes: Using Lionni's mouse books (Frederick & Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse), students took shape blocks and formed them to look like his mice.

Little Blue and Little Yellow 'picture': Provide students with white paper and blue and yellow crayons.  They draw a picture in blue and then color over it in yellow, therefore turning the picture green.

A Color of His Own 'create a chameleon': Students are given pipe cleaners and asked to make a chameleon.  The idea came from this site.

Leo Lionni Books: Students were given tablets to listen to Leo Lionni stories on via Youtube Kids.

Students LOVED these centers!




Image from randomhousekids.com

Hammering In Dewey Decimal

That's how I feel when I begin teaching my students Dewey Decimal.  At first, they resist and only want to hear the Dewey Decimal rap.  This year for library centers, I wised up and put WAY TOO much time into making a Promethean Board flipchart with containers and sounds that ended up being a Dewey Decimal matching game and voila, it's fun!  I provide students with a portable Dewey Decimal guide (laminated pages held together by a ring) and they go to town.  Since they have only 8 minutes, I don't even care if they make all the matches, I just wanted them to understand how to use the guide and then to start to see how the numbers connect to subjects.  

There is another library center where students look through Dewey Decimal scavenger hunt cards** that say clues like, "You have to list 50 words in German and what they mean," they need to figure out which section (using the guides pictured above), and where the section is located.  Most only find one or two books, but they were able to make the connection between subject, section number, and number on spine label of books.


**I would give credit to the person who created these, but have lost the name.

Let's Test This Puppy Out! My Library Center Concept

It took some trial and error, but library centers are good to go! They occur during checkout day for my students. Students rotate with their color table teams through 3-4 centers each checkout day (7-8 min)--kindergarten and 1st grade stay at their seats for a few centers (exception: computers) and 2nd-5th rotate to tables/computers. I worked on a flip chart for the rotations management and tweaked it till each class had a specific amount of centers depending upon class size. 

There are 12 different centers, but only 5-7 are made available at a time (switch out the center signs above). Since students only get to visit 3-4 centers, they pick up where they stopped off last time (marked by the highlighted bar above). This makes it fair for computer use since there are two consistent computer centers. 

Here is a list of the centers:

Library Skills

Reading Comprehension

Author Study

Fact Finder

Word Work

Checkout

SQUIRT

Listening Center

Online Reading Comprehension

Book Game

MakerSpace

Rotating Center (holiday related or paper puzzles)

Most centers and their supplies are contained within plastic magazine holders I got from the Target dollar section.  Nothing fancy, but they are portable and get the job done. I am lucky that my school's library has enough tables for students to travel away from their own seating area. Although, these centers work with students staying at their tables (since that is what my younger ones do).

I could go on and on about centers, but that's what future posts are for!

Come Listen To This Book!

I've been listening to audiobooks on the way to work for about 2 1/2 years now.  This is a great way to stay up to date on books I'm considering purchasing for my school's library...also helps me to catch up on books I've been meaning to read--an endless task.  I have made it through 7 audiobooks this school year and just keep going back to the public library for more.  Listening to audiobooks on a consistent basis lets me realize what power they hold. Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, was more authentic while listening to him read than had I just read the physical book.  Many nonfiction books are easier for me to listen to on audio then they are to read.  

The above combined with research I knew and have been reading about in regards to audiobooks in the classroom made me realize how essential I should make a listening center in my library.  This year, I set up 4 book CD's in the computer and prop the book up by the tower, so students could see their choices. This listening experience spans kindergarten-5th grade.  This past week, all the grades got to enjoy audio during centers.  Even the preschoolers listened to the audio of a book as a class while I turned the pages.  To them, it was a whole new way to listen to a story.

  

All grades listened to the books, Hot Rod Hamster by Cynthia Lord, Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin, Jr., Bear's Loose Tooth by Karma Wilson, and When I Woke Up I Was a Hippopotamus by Tom MacRae.  That's right, every grade listened to these picturebook audiobooks. My goal is to change the audiobooks once a month since they have library centers only twice a month (during weeks they checkout).  The offerings will only expand to older picturebooks and short story or poetry collections since they only have 8-12 minutes at the center.

Students will have a choice to listen to another audio once the current audio they have is done or fill out a review of the book they just finished.  These reviews will be hung up by the listening center for other students to read.  I'm not requiring them to do this because I want the listening/reading to be enjoyed and not another area where they have to fret about something to write out.

In addition, I purchased multi-headphone splitter for students to listen to the same book and I recommend doing this if you only have one or two electronic platforms to offer students to listen to audio. This type of splitter is available via this link.

"Headphones on books" image courtesy of renjith krishnan/freedigitalphotos.net