Over the weekend, we went to Pittsburgh for my birthday and had a lot of fun. While we were there we went to see Mary Poppins -- which was wonderful -- and did a lot of other fun stuff as well.
One of the things we did was to visit Ikea, which is fast becoming one of my favorite places to find fun stuff for the school library. And boy did a find some awesome treasures this trip!
Last week, I read Library Mouse to my kindergarten, first and second graders. It was, as always, an absolutely enchanting read for everyone. The kids adore the story, and love to think about a tiny little mouse being an author because that translates so well to them being an author, too.
After I read the story to one class, I caught a little boy peering around the baseboards trying to find the library mouse hole in our own library. Too cute!
My idea for this week's lesson plan was to make some one-page books for the kids, so that they, too, could write a book and illustrate it just like Library Mouse. You can find some easy directions to make a one-page book here. I'll be making more than 60 of them over the next couple of days.
Too cute, right? Just you wait.
In the book, Library Mouse, he makes a box with a mirror in the bottom so that the kids at the library and the librarian can "meet the author." I had been planning to make my own similar box for this week's classes, but I instead stumbled onto this cool mirror at Ikea:
Isn't that just absolutely adorable? It looks like the window in a castle or some pirate treasure chest that you open, it is soft and easy for little hands to grasp, and best of all it is a child safety mirror so I don't have to worry so much about broken shards. Hooray!
And at $19.99, I'll be using this mirror for lots of other things in the years to come. It is absolutely precious and I think my younger kids are really going to love it.
I've made a little sign that says "Meet the Author!", which I will attach to the top of the mirror with two pencils and some tape, just like Library Mouse does in the book.
Also while we were at Ikea, I managed to get some of those tiny little pencils (that look like golf pencils) for the kids to use to write their books. Additionally, I found an adorable tiny stuffed mouse that I'm going to have peeking out from behind some books in the library -- only 99 cents! Too cute, and at that price, I could not pass it up!
I wrote a note to the kids from "Library Mouse" and signed it with two little mouse track paw prints:
I used Bradley Hand ITC TT as my font, from my iMAC's Pages word processing program. (I used the same font for my "Meet the Author!" sign so it would look like Library Mouse wrote both in his own handwriting.) I found the mouse paw prints here.
Everything looks really cute, and I think the younger kids are going to get a huge kick out of it.
The big worry is that I won't get the little books done in time -- it may be a sprint between now and then to get them all ready to go. They are fairly easy to make, though, so I am hopeful.
We'll also be reading Library Mouse: A Friend's Tale this week as our storytime tale. It's the next book in the series and I think the kids will love it. Later in the year, when we start to talk about what a "reference book" is, we'll read Library Mouse: A World to Explore.
Daniel Kirk -- who is both the author and the illustrator of these books -- does a wonderful job of making these stories come to life for the kids. Huge thank you to him for these books -- they really are a treasure in our library.
I hope the kids enjoy their own stories in their very own books coming to life as well. Should be a fun week!
UPDATE: For more on how this lesson plan worked in the classroom, see Lessons from Library Mouse.
Blogger disclosure: Links in this post may include links to my Amazon account. Purchases made through these links on this blog contributes a few pennies to me, which are then used for purchases for the school library. Thanks so much for all of your support!
(Photo taken in my own library by Christy Hardin Smith.)
No comments:
Post a Comment