Read Across America Plans? (+Freebie!)

Tonight's post is a bit random, but bear with me, because there's a freebie at the end!


Does anyone else make their children do things for their class/blog? My daughter is very artistic, so whenever I have something creative in mind for my classroom I usually turn to her for help. It usually goes along the line of, "Hmm, Daddy's putting the boys to bed right now Moira, BUT if you help me make a new leprechaun craftivity for my class I'll let you stay up 1/2 hour more!"

Or, "I know you want to watch the new episode of Glee tonight, but I can't come watch it with you until I finish this new color-by-sum worksheet and write a quick blog post...maybe if you colored the picture for me to make sure there aren't any mistakes I'll get finished quicker..."

She also loves to draw and is pretty good at it, so I'm considering buying her some software so she can make me my own clip art! Wouldn't that be great to have an in-house clip artist?! "Hey! I need some black-line drawings of rockets for my Space unit, no dessert until they're finished!"

What do you think - creative use of resources or child labor law violation??

Anyways, I had a good day at school today! We came back well rested and surprisingly unchatty from our 3 day weekend! Of course, it helped that my morning was spent with only 1/2 the class as the nurses took 1/2 the class at a time for their vision and hearing test. Amazing how much quieter it is when there are only 10 students instead of 20!

Oh! I am also desperately trying to remember where I found the Wrinkles writing prompts! I know I got it off a blog, but there's no name on the writing paper or on the prompts! If you know where I got this please let me know! It is a little dalmatian dog and there's a set of writing prompts that the children reply to. Today's was along the lines of Wrinkles breaking a toy while his friend was out of the room. The children then write a letter back to Wrinkles advising him what to do. My kiddos are LOVING this! They seriously buckle down and get so engrossed in writing him back. It's almost a little disturbing that they get so intense about writing to a stuffed animal...  Anyways, I am almost out of prompts and need to see if the blogger has made more or if I should go ahead and introduce a new "friend" and write my own prompts!

Tomorrow is picture day - I am already dreading it, but I am going to remember to keep my chin DOWN and hopefully the picture will turn out alright! Remember back in the day when the photographer had those little black plastic combs? I really wish they would bring those back, because I always stand and watch my kiddos get their pics taken and wish that I could straighten their bangs. Oh, and does your school let primary grades go first? Because mine doesn't. Which means we get our pictures taken after recess and lunch. Which means the kids always have stains on their shirts (picture day seems to always fall on spaghetti day!)  and dirty faces from wiping sweat off with dusty hands.

I still have to finalize my Read Across America plans. Our school is just a few blocks from the university, so we always have a ton of volunteers to come to read. I just have to figure out how many I want and plug their schedules into mine. I have a feeling we won't have a lot of time for "real" lessons that day, and that's just fine with me! I am also trying to decide on a final reading list. One book that I want to recommend, that doesn't seem to get a whole lot of love is "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?" This is definitely a great read aloud book! My mom got it as a present for my 1st Christmas (it was published the year I was born...please don't do the math!) and I can still remember her reading it to me when I was growing up. When I found it again as an adult I was thrilled that I remembered almost all of the pictures and scenarios!

If you haven't read it yet, go grab it because the illustrations are great and it even has a bit of a moral to it..."Some people are much more..oh ever so much more...oh, muchly much more unlucky than you!"

One of the things I will be doing that day is this color-by-sum picture that I made tonight and that my daughter just assured me was error free, although she did have a problem with not coloring the barbaloot bear brown, but I explained that Dr. Seuss is all about being colorful and zany so it was okay for me to decide that the barbaloot should be red, blue and purple instead! I am offering it as a freebie for anyone else who is working on addition. My students love color-by-sum worksheets, any excuse to color and they are on it! I think this one will fill in gaps between volunteers reading very nicely! Click the picture to download it for free!

Alright, I am off to watch tv and figure out a craftivity to go along with our Dr. Seuss festivities. Please rustle up a response below and tell me about your Read Across America plans!