4th May Firefighters Day

International Firefighters’ Day is observed each year on 4th May. On this date you are invited to remember the past firefighters who have died while serving our community or dedicated their lives to protecting the safety of us all. At the same time, we can show our support and appreciation to the firefighters world wide who continue to protect us so well throughout the year.

Young children are fascinated by fire engines, the noise they make and the fire station they live in. Preschoolers go on excursions to the fire station. Young students sit very attentively when fire fighters visit their school.

Whenever I need a quick lesson where students can innovate on text, learn about verbs and titles I turn to that versatile poem Fire! Fire! Cried Mrs McGuire. It is also a great provocation for any discussion about fire, and firefighters.

Here's the poem in picture book form, but it is in many poetry anthologies too. 

Any library display devoted to firefighters is quickly decimated. Here's some books that are specifically about firefighters:

Newer books that are for slightly older audiences and that treat fire where you may get a different view of firefighting very differently are:

Too Wet March

Well in February we sweltered because it was too hot. Now in March it is so wet and very often humid as well. The weather in Sydney has certainly been extreme. Just as well we have lots of books about 'rain'. Even without doing floods or any other extreme weather events we managed to find 30 books for a display. There are two exceptionally good new ones Rain by Sam Usher  and Watersong by Tim McCanna. Both of these are for very young children. They both feature stunning illustrations.
Watersong is a celebration of onomatopoeia. Rain is a narrative about Sam and his grandfather's adventure in the rain. If you are teaching preschool combine these with Who Likes Rain? by Herbert Yee. If you have older students revisit Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault's  beautiful word images in their poem Listen to the Rain. 


The children I teach often ask where do the animals go when it rains, so books such as Gerda Muller's  Where Do They Go in the Rain? and Harriet Ziefert's Where Does Kitty Go in the Rain? help address this question.

Just when the students start to whinge about not being able to go outside it is time to share Rain School by James Rumford and if you can find a copy, Children of the Yangtze River by Otto S. Svend because they will then appreciate their own school and ability to stay dry. These two stories show children as capable problem solvers, hard workers and useful in a time of difficulty.

7th June Butterfly Day

In the UK today is designated Butterfly Education and Awareness Day, a day to make people aware of the role of butterflies in pollination and what they can do to ensure there are butterfly habitats close to them. Butterflies are certainly fascinating creatures because of their beauty and delicacy.

Many children's books focus on butterflies, but the ones here, I have included because of their illustrations and/or stories rather than their factual information. They will certainly cover a wide range of uses.

1. Butterfly by Petr Horacek.
2. A Butterfly is Patient  by Dianna Hutts Acton and Sylvia Long.
3. Caterpillar Butterfly by Vivian French and Charlotte Voake.
4.  Caterpillar and Butterfly by Ambelin Kwaymullina.
5.  Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jnr and Lois Ehlert.
6.  I Wish I Were a Butterfly by James Howe and Ed Young.
7. Velma Gratch and the Way Cool Butterfly by Alan Madison and Kevin Hawkes.
8.  Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian by Margarita Engle and Julie Paschkis

For more butterfly titles including expository texts see Pinterest here.

19th March

No birthday today, but there are four tomorrow so today I want to write about Bill Martin Jr whose birthday is tomorrow. What would a kindergarten classroom be without Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Every child learns to read with this book and every child believes they can read because of the very strong correlation between the rhythmic, patterned text and the bright Eric Carle illustrations which allow them to participate successfully in the reading process. Having read this book, they very quickly read Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?; Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?; and Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?

If you read Bill Martin's biography he talks about growing up in a house without books and not reading a book for himself until he was in college. He does say though that, " a blessed thing happened to me. I had a teacher who read to me. Miss Davis never missed a day reading to us...She turned my ears to literate language, to the voice of text." Every teacher needs to hear this and know that they should read to their class every day too. We are so much luckier than Miss Davis, there is just so much quality literature to choose from. We have no excuse!

Bill Martin Jr has left such a wonderful legacy and teachers need to know about it and ensure that we heed what he has said. You also need to listen to how wonderfully he reads Brown Bear on Youtube. Really he almost sings it, he is so enthusiastic about it.

Also, another of his books worth looking at as we come up to Poetry Day is Bill Martin Jr Big Book of Poetry which is also illustrated by Eric Carle. It is thick and heavy but packed with poems!