WILD about books!!!

Yesterday was a busy, fast-paced day! We accomplished a lot...for starters...the classroom library!!! Here was the library before we organized the books.

I asked the children how they would like to see their library organized and here are some very interesting thoughts...

After reading Kevin Henkes for 2 weeks, the kiddos thought we could organize all his books together. Then they thought Dr. Seuss and Mo Willems could have their own categories too. So after organizing some books according to popular children's authors, we moved into characters. We founs several Amelia Bedelia, Curious George, and Arthur books. Next, someone suggested we separate all our animal books based on sea creatures, African Animals, zoo animals, and pets. After all that hard work, I asked the students about some of their favorite books they have known since they were little. Books they could tell with their eyes closed, stories they know deep in their hearts. And I got.......blank stares! When I pulled a few books out of the pile I then heard a lot of excitement. FAIRY TALES!!! So it went until we came to this BEAUTIFUL, easy- to-see, library.

I have several reasons why I spend class time arranging the library with the students:

1.  It tells me a lot about what kids know of libraries and books
2. They students take ownership and responsibility over ALL the books in the classroom
3. The students know how to quickly find a book when they need/want a specific subject or author
4. It ignites a passion for reading as the students leaf through each book on the tables as we search for categories
5. The students become familiar with all the books in the classroom

We also checked on our flowers from last Friday. We found that only one flower had turned the color of the water, the shortest flower. So the kids thought we should cut all the flowers to make the stems shorter so the water had less distance to travel. Here is what he have so far!

We also made ENEMY PIE!! Through the book Enemy Pie ,by Derek Munson, we found out to make an enemy go away all you have to do is make a disgusting pie....We listed some of the most yucky ingredients we could think of in our journals. Then we combined ideas for a class list...

and made our own ENEMY PIE!

When we read the end of the book we found out that the best way to get rid of an enemy...was to make him your friend!! So to the dismay of some of the kids, we threw our enemy pie in the trash :(

Here's to making all enemies, our good friends!!