Big Pumpkin Story Sequencing Cards

I love the story- Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman. Its a great book to read aloud during Halloween and is perfect for practicing retelling skills. The repetitive text makes it easier for young children to comprehend the story. Its  also a fun story to enact during assemblies or class presentations.

I made a set of sequencing cards that goes perfectly with this book. Use it during guided reading or simply place them in your literacy center.

Encourage young children to look at the pictures, arrange them in an order and retell the story in their own words. Emerging readers can even attempt to read the simple sentences written on the cards. 

Get the cards from my TPT STORE.

Weekly Wednesday Book Talk

This weeks book is "The rainbow Fish" by Marcus Pfister. 

It is a well known children's book and I am sure most of you must have read this book to little children. I love picking up this book when I want to talk about the concept of sharing and of course no ocean unit can be complete without this amazing book.

You can also use this book

 to talk about the parts of a fish and it also goes well with the introduction of letter r.

In the story, the rainbow fish has a lot of pretty shiny scales which he doesn't share with anyone. As a result the fish in the ocean doesn't want to become his friends. At the end, the wise Octopus guides the rainbow fish and helps him to win over some friends. It is a simple story which children would love to hear.

We did some literacy activities after reading this book.

First the kids told the story in their own words using sequencing cards.

Then they completed a story map.

They also drew an illustration of a fish and labelled its body parts.

And lastly, talked about their favorite part in the story.

You can get all the above activities from my Rainbow Fish Literacy Pack.

Weekly Book Talk Tuesday

The book that I am going to talk about  this week is called "That's what Friends Are For " By Florence Parry Heide. It's a delightful book about friendship and teaches children that lending a helping hand to their friends is always a good idea.

The book has lovely illustrations and repetitive text which is great for building reading skills in little kindergartners. I personally love books with repetitive text as it allows children to anticipate words and helps beginning readers to decode difficult words. Such books also gives children an opportunity to participate in read aloud sessions and kids love that.

So if you are doing a unit on friendship, this book is a must. The book revolves around an Elephant who gets hurt and is feeling sad because he can't go and meet his cousin who lives at the other end of the forest. His friends give him all sorts of advice which he really can't use until an Opossum talks some sense into the heads of other animals and asks them to actually help the Elephant instead of just giving advice.

I made some story sequencing cards to go along with this book which you can download by clicking on the link below:

Story Sequencing Cards

The link up is with Mrs Jumps.