Continuing with my Wednesday 6 +1 traits of writing lessons to go with my book, Finding My Place, today I’m going to talk about a lesson in sentence fluency, using Finding My Place. One of the writing skills you teach with sentence fluency is having sentences of different lengths that start with different words when [...]

Here’s a simple word choice lesson you can do with kids while reading FINDING MY PLACE: ONE GIRL’S STRENGTH AT VICKSBURG or really any historical fiction book. Word choice is one of the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing. One thing about the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing that I love is that these [...]

Today we are talking about the new, pretty-much WORDLESS, book from Mercer Mayer. But don’t forget to enter the giveaway for Meredith Zeitlin’s YA book Freshman Year and Other Unnatural Disasters and check out her book trailer here. Now. . .Octopus Soup *Picture book for preschoolers through third graders (really any level if you see [...]

One of my favorite 6 + 1 traits of writing activities for the elusive VOICE trait has to do with Martin Luther King, Jr and his sister’s book, My Brother Martin. I’m not sure if I’ve written about it before on here or not, but I always share it when I do 6 + 1 [...]

I had the best of intentions to do a blog post on this book: That’s My Dog before I went out of town. However, I’m still getting my stuff together and now my dear daughter is crying. So, I will do this book justice with three activities on another day, but I want to tell [...]

Before I post about this beautiful picture book, Back of the Bus by Aaron Reynolds, I wanted to announce the winner of Mari L. McCarthy’s journaling giveaway contest. The winner is J. C. Nierad, and she chose Mari’s Musefull Journalling book. Congrats, J. C. To everyone else, I hope you will consider going to Mari’s [...]

If you haven’t visited my picture book giveaway yet for Chickens on the GO!, please do so now. You don’t want to miss this SUPER CUTE picture book. Click here. Now on to this FUNNY, FUNNY picture book that dog owners EVERYWHERE have to check out–this is another one of those picture books that are [...]

*Author: Eve Yohalem *Publisher: Telemachus Press *Chapter book for readers 6 to 10 (actually it’s a collection of humorous short stories) *Bird and Grandpa as main characters *Rating: Kids will LOVE Grandpa Hates the Bird!. The stories have a great voice and are full of humor–a blessing in today’s kids’ lit! Short, short summary: “Every [...]

*Young adult, historical fiction novel *Teenage, African-American cowboy as main character *Rating: I’m so glad I found Deadwood Jones at my local library! It’s a great book about a very interesting topic and will really appeal to boys. Short, short summary: (FROM BOOK JACKET–sorry, busy weekend!): When Prometheus Jones wins a horse with a raffle [...]

*Picture book, fantasy for preschoolers through second graders *Bats (the animal) as main characters *Rating: The strength in Bats at the Ballgame is definitely the illustrative talent of Brian Lies–cute concept and some clever text, like Cricket Jacks! Short, short summary: Told in rhymed verse, Bats at the Ballgame by Brian Lies is the story [...]