Today, my students and I are celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday and Read Across America Day! I love this day! It started last night with making a shirt for my student teacher to wear today.
This morning includes a trip to Mrs. Smith's incredible breakfast of green eggs and bacon (instead of ham). She is one of our amazing 2nd grade teachers who makes marvelous treats to spoil her students, parents, co-workers, and family. We gather, eat breakfast, drink some coffee read each other's shirts, laugh and celebrate that we made it to Friday, March 2nd!!!
My next goal for our day is to fill it full of words by reading, blogging, and sharing our love of story! After the bell rang, we snuggled into our Friday routine of working on our stamina. My fourth graders read for one hour, 26 minutes, and 23 seconds. At the beginning of the year, their time was 5 minutes!! We have come a really long way!
Since it was a day to celebrate reading, I invited various adults to join our group of learners to share their favorite stories. Chris and Tenille Shade are two of my favorite people! They brought love, laughter, and magnificent sentences in the forms of a new picture book called Love by Matt de la Peña and an old favorite, The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog by John R. Erickson.
If you haven't experienced this book, go get a copy and read it right now! Hearing my precious friend Tenille share the beautiful pages and her personal story brought smiles, some tears, and joy to my heart. Mr. Chris is an entertainer, so I was thrilled that he decided to share a couple of chapters from The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog by John R. Erickson. He delighted our ears with sound effects and peaked our curiosity of the life of a cowdog.
This afternoon, Ms. Morrison came to share her love of reading with us and our kinder reading buddies. Kathy is another one of my favorite people who loves sharing words with our students, so she brought many books! She read Dr. Suess and practiced our onomatopoeia, a book about being brave, inspiration came from a book about a boy architect, but the bit hit was Whose Nest? By Victoria Cochrane. The kinders and fourthies loved guessing which animal was represented by the nest, clues, and illustrations.
I am so thankful that these wonderful people gave some of their time to share words with our kids!
After they left, we got back to our blogging. My kids get time every Friday to blog about their reading, life, and learning. They love blogging days. Tenille said she would read their words, so my kids were excited to share their words with her. I love reading their blogs. They aren't usually very long and wordy, but many times I find out more about my students in the few words that they share on their blogs.
I am thankful for days of celebration!
I am thankful for educators who give more of themselves than we can even imagine.
I am thankful for words that are written, spoken, and shared.
