4th May International Respect for Chickens Day

I read about this day online and thought how appropriate as it is a subject I have needed to source books on over the years. The preschoolers and Year 2 at school often have eggs in incubators as part of project based learning or a unit of inquiry that studies life cycles.  see my pinterest page for some of the myriad of books on this topic. Year 1 does a unit on fairy tales and to accompany this in the library we look at chicken and fox stereotypes in narratives.

Chickens are common characters in children's stories and they usually behave in common ways so they are easy to study and make generalisations about. The classic Rosie's Walk is well known to most children and because it is humorous they are very willing to come up with adjectives to describe the hen and the fox. It is the perfect book to start with. Then we look at the traditional story Chicken Licken, (also known as Henny Penny and Chicken Little). You must look at the Emberley's Chicken Little. The illustrations and language will make you smile all day. Which adjectives on our lists apply to the chicken and fox here? Then we compare this chicken with the chicken in The Cock the Mouse and the Little Red Hen. The illustrations and language in this story make the stereotypes very obvious and tap into how fairytales are about good versus evil. These stories also allow for discussion of why sometimes the hen dies and sometimes it doesn't and the same with the fox in the second story. The rich vocabulary allows for discussion of why sometimes the fox lives in a den, sometimes a lair or even a cave. Next I look at the story of Chaunticleer from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales by using Helen Ward's beautiful The Cockerel and the Fox. From here there are so many other stories where a gullible or enterprising chicken takes on a cunning fox.

See:

 


• Henry and the Fox by Chris Wormell
• Hattie and the Fox by Mem Fox
• Albert and Lila  by Rafik Schami
• A Very Proper Fox by Jan Fearnley
• The Chicken Thief by Beatrice Rodriguez

21st March World Poetry Day

As preparation for World Poetry Day this year I put lots of poems on display for students, teachers and parents to read. The main location was on a large pinboard just inside the front door. It was a good location because it is probably the highest traffic area at school as it is near the toilets. It made me smile when I saw parents reading to their children before and after school, when I saw a teacher stop to read to her class when they were on there way to or back from a specialist lesson such as PE or music. At lunchtime I saw students taking poems out of the pocket and reading to each other. See the photos below of the board.

As well on the day teachers planned their own activities with their class or grade. In the library we had a week of poems, with every class enjoying at least one poem. I was surprised to see that poems I assumed the students would all have heard, like The Owl and the Pussy Cat and The Adventures of Isabel, they didn't appear to know, but once introduced they joined in with gusto.

6th February Lame Duck Day

I was reading today and happened to notice that it was Lame Duck Day and that made me think that I hadn't written about ducks or Duck Day on this blog. Of course being a Lame Duck has very little to do with ducks, but given how many picture books feature ducks I got to thinking about them. Well there's Rubber Ducky Day ( January, 13th), Donald Duck Day (June, 9th) and even Dead Duck Day (June, 5th) but there does not appear to be World Duck Day or International Duck Day. What a shame. There are so many endearing ducks in picture books, starting with my all time favourite Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.

The children I teach are aged between four and eight so their introduction to 'ducks' in picture books is usually a version of Five Little Ducks,  but very quickly they move to the series about ducks that we have in boxes in the library. There is
• Daisy Duck by Jane Simmons
• Duck and Goose by Tad Hills
• Baby Duck  by Amy Hest and Jill Barton
• Duck in a Truck  by Jez Alborough
• Sarah and Duck by Sarah Gomes Harris
• the madcap duck in What is Chasing Duck? in the Giggle Gang by Jan Thomas
• the zany Katy Duck by Alyssa Satin Capucilli and Henry Cole
• Duck Duck Dinosaur  by Kallie George and Oriol Vidal
• Duck Duck Porcupine by Salina Yoon.

Of course there's other ducks to fall in love with such as
• Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury
• Just Ducks  by Nicola Davies and Salvatore Rubbino
• Alexander in Alexander's Outing by Pamela Allen
• Ben and Duck by Sara Acton
• The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese, and the newer
• Duck!  by Meg McKinlay and Nathaniel Ekstrom
• I'm a Duck  by Eve Bunting and Will Hillenbrand
and if you are looking for a serial for this age group there's always Meg McKinlay and Leila Rudge's
• Duck For a Day  and Definitely No Ducks
And if this isn't enough duck books, look here.

2nd February Sled Dog Day

According to this website sled dogs have been in existence for over 3000 years. If so, they do need a day off to celebrate! On the news at the moment we are hearing about just how much snow some places in the northern hemisphere are experiencing, but the only way most Australian children will experience this sort of snow and the role dogs can play in it is to read about it. Last year I had bought a wonderful husky puppet and put it on display with two books about Akiak and Balto, and then I was being asked lots of questions by a group of my Year 2  and they wanted even more books. When I looked I was surprised how many books there were about the Iditarod race and individual sled dogs who had done very heroic deeds.

2nd February Hedgehog Day

Hedgehog Day interests me, even though I've never seen a hedgehog,  because they seem so endearing.  This makes them ideal characters in so many children's picture books. Think Beatrix Potter's Mrs Tiggywinkle,  Isaac in Rosie Wellesley's The Helpful Hedgehog series, Little Hedgehog in M. Christina Butler's series of picture books, Horace and Hattiepillar in Hedgehugs or Hedgehog in Jonathan Emmett's Mole and Friends series and Max in Hodgeheg,  the novel by Dick King-Smith.

When I first read these books to classes, I did not have any factual books about hedgehogs in the library and we do not have them in Australia so like me, most of my students had not seen one. It is much easier now to share facts with classes because of the internet and I have purchased some good expository texts, the most recent being from the exemplary Nature Storybook series. It is called Say Hi to Hedgehogs! and is written and illustrated by Jane McGuinness. If you are looking for books to display see here.

1st February Wear Red Day

The first of February is Wear Red Day, a day to think about our hearts and the blood that makes them healthy, but to celebrate,  the books I recommend here have nothing to do with hearts and much more to do with the colour RED. School starts this week for the students I teach and the kindergarten teachers this week have been collecting books for their classroom libraries. Each of the classes has a colour, KRed, KYellow etc and each teacher has a small collection of books about that colour to read and talk about. Some colours are easier to find books about than others, but Red was easy. As well as The Red Book, Clifford, Little Red Riding Hood and The Little Red Hen, here's what I put in their box:

29th January 2019 Curmudgeon's Day

I love the word 'curmudgeon'. I 'm not so happy about what it implies, especially the references to 'old', but many definitions also say 'male' so maybe it is okay. Nevertheless I like the fact that there is a day for them. I have written about this day before here, but there is a new book about to arrive that has a title with more great words to discuss...The Unbudgeable Curmudgeon. It is about young siblings, not cantankerous oldies so it has more to discuss than just the wonderful vocabulary. Can't wait to buy it.