Book Review: Lucky New Year

I bought this book to add to my curriculum during our week of learning about Chinese New Year, traditions and festivities. This book was really neat. It was colorful and easy to read to the children. Its interactive features made learning a fun experience for them. It had flaps, a turing wheel, an orange to smell and shiny fire crackers they could touch. The finale was a beautiful pop-up dragon at the end of the story! I give this book a 4.5!

Fun Activity: Chinese Lion

*Photos coming soon*

With the coming of the Chinese New Year, Year of the Tiger, our class had a little fun learning all about Chinese traditions and festivities for the new year. I bought a really cute book, "Lucky New Year," by Mary Man-Hon. The book had flaps, pop-ups and other sensory activities they could explore. They enjoyed the book as well as some different chinese outfits we borrowed from other classrooms. But the REALLY fun project was making a lion for our lion dance parade. I found a cute video on Youtube of a lion dance. They loved the video and it gave them an idea of what to do with their own lion. For our lion, we:

1. scrunched and rolled a long sheet of yellow paper (2 yards). (teacher assisted)

2. stuffed the paper with plastic bags to make it thick. (teacher assisted)

3. glued colorful feathers onto the body of the lion.

4. attached three handles onto the body (teacher)

5. glued orange strips streamer onto a paper plate (Lion head) and tail of body.

6. glued picture of traditional chinese lion head on paper plate.

After our lion was complete and dry, we went for a parade around our center! It was fun!

*Note, the lion body was a bit heavy for my students (one year olds). They ended up dragging the lion instead of holding it up. So, if you have young students, I suggest you don't add plastic bags to the body. *

top Five! Books!

Greetings teachers! Do you love to read, write? I do! I'm a teacher by day and a writer by night, noon, afternoon and fall! :D Last year, I did something I never thought was possible, write a novel length story! Short, children's stories are my passion, but this was a whole lot of fun too! While I'm in the long process of editing and revisions, what better way to improve my own understanding of what a good novel is than by reading good novels. So this year, I will do my best to read one novel a month (or two, I don't want to set myself up for failure!) Now, I love mystery novels, sci-fi novels, and historical fiction novels. However, my top five books I would like to read this year are:

1. Messenger of Truth, A Maisie Dobbs Novel ~ Jacqueline Winspear

2. The Gift ~ Zaipah Ibrahim

3. The Tale of the Hawthorne House ~ Susan Albert

4. Atlantis ~ David Gibbins

5. Nefertiti ~ Michelle Moran

10 Tips to Inspire Young Readers

I read this really nice article, "10 Tips to Inspire Young Readers" by Suzan Woodard. It has some really good tips, most I use in my classroom of one year olds. I believe, it is never too early to inspire a love of reading in children. Books are wonderful! Grab one today and read it with your child(ren) or student(s)!

Happy reading!!

Sick Day!

Here in the NorthWest, we have fun days, off days, snow days and holidays. We also have, what we call in childcare, sick days. Sick days are unique in that each teacher takes them as they need them. Today was my sick day. There are lots of colds going around these past couple of weeks throughout the toddler and infant classrooms. I even had a child in my classroom go home with a low grade fever. Up until yesterday, I bravely fended off the spreading germs and viruses. But this morning I woke up with not only a really bad cough, sore throat, stuffy nose and head, but I also a fever! So, I took the day off to rest and get better. I hope to be better tomorrow to continue fending off colds for the remainder of the NorthWest winter!