The Snowy Day | Ezra Jack Keats | Book Companion | Literacy Lessons

The Snowy Day - Book Companion

Book Companion and Spin-Off Lesson to use with The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats, This book companion provides thinking and writing opportunities after reading this entertaining picture book. This book truly is a favorite. Children relate to Peter on the first page and want to know more about his snowy day. These pages make it easy for you to diversify instruction. Assign this book companion for distance learning as an independent reader response or school-at-home.

35 pages include:

• comprehension questions
• writing prompts
• graphic organizers
• making new words
• thinking about story events
• making connections
• write a story
• sequencing
• templates for art and crafts
• cutting practice

• handwriting practice
• spin off lesson - snow experiment
• ”What is Snow?” reading booklet
• “Snow” read and review
• pages for diversified instruction

This teaching resource provides students with an engaging way to respond to their reading. These reader response pages provide many opportunities for thinking and writing about the text.

*** Spin-Off Lesson*** is a perfect way to engage students in a literacy activity. A spin-off lesson, a science experiment about snow, is included in this resource. In the story, Peter puts a snowball in his pocket and he is surprised later when it isn’t there. The children find this amusing and Peter a bit silly, but it is a perfect place to spin-off to a science lesson about snow, weather, matter, liquid and gas.

What is snow? And why does it melt. Included in these pages are some simple science lessons about snow. Your class can also make a graph. Class discussions about weather and snow come naturally after reading this book. Students start to see the life lessons in literature when you dig a bit deeper into the text. This “spin-off lesson” is engaging and fun; there are several pages to get you started… ask and answer questions, hypothesize, make predictions and conclusions. See snow melt! And if you are not in a place where there is snow… did you know you could make your own? Enjoying literature in this way teaches young readers to read and write with conviction. Thank you for previewing this teaching resource.

Teacher Tip: Place this book companion and a copy of The Snowy Day in a bin. Label this bin "For the Substitute Teacher". Your Substitute and your students will be delighted to enjoy this reading and writing activity.

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Authentic Writing Experience After Winter Break - Christmas Thank You Cards

Find Your Set of Thank You Cards HERE

Say all your Christmas 'thank yous' with these fun Christmas Thank You cards that provide an authentic writing experience. There are 24 cards total. Each card is printed on standard size 8.5 x 11" paper. Print on both sides. Fold in half. Children write, color and say thank you to all the people who made their Christmas merry and bright.

Focus skills include:

writing complete sentences
fine motor skills
showing good citizenship and good will
recognizing community members
showing gratitude

Total of 24 thank you cards with Christmas and snowman theme. Line art and color included. Fun and educational !  Get these today and be ready with an authentic writing experience after your winter break.  

Learning to say "Thank You" shows gratitude in social circles.  It doesn't take much time and makes both the giver and receiver feel better.  This simple courtesy is a skill that will make anyone's day better and peaceful.  Be the reason for someone's smile.  Talk with your students about their holiday vacation.   Give some time at morning circle to share stories of giving and receiving.  Talk about why saying 'thank you' is important.  Download and print out these 

thank you cards with a Christmas theme... play some classical music and give your students the opportunity to show appreciation of all those who make their days brighter. 

Teaching Resources for Christmas

Academic practice pages with a Christmas theme. 

These 7 pages give practice and review for literacy and math ...

Focus skills include:

• capital letters at the beginning of a sentence
• capital letters for proper names
• addition facts
• writing short stories
• writing captions for pictures

All seven pages have a Christmas theme. Fun and educational !

These pages can easily be assigned for distance learning and school-at-home.

Other Christmas Resources You May Want:

Elf Cover Up [Addition Practice]

Reindeer Cover Up [Multiplication Practice]

Christmas Math Center - Write and Spin

Legend of the Poinsettia Book Companion

The Wild Christmas Reindeer Book Companion

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Happy Holidays !

Writing About Kindness and Joy at Christmas Time

Choose an environment that fosters an elf-like work ethic .  Work ethic is an attitude of determination and dedication toward one’s job. Those with a strong work ethic place a high value on their professional success. They exhibit moral principles that make them outstanding students in any and all classroom tasks. If you have a strong work ethic, you believe in the importance of your job and typically feel that hard work is essential to maintaining a strong character.

Students with a strong work ethic exhibit a particular set of values and behaviors.   These characteristics make them stand out as highly coveted  members of the class and praise-worthy students.

reliability.   dedication.   discipline.   productivity.   cooperation.   integrity.   responsibility.   professionalism.  

Listen to the Elves and the Shoemaker HERE

You can find writing resources for Santa's elves HERE

get yours today for 50% off !

MrsQuimbyReads

Christmas Door Decoration

                          We decorated our classroom door and got 2nd place in our 

'winter wonderland' door contest!  

                  The key is to guide the children but give them the space they need to create ! 

Children were so happy to create, draw, paint,  make snowflakes;  and then a bit lucky to win.   It was great fun....first, we used green and blue inks mixed with gesso and sponge-painted the background... next, we looked at some real-life cardinals in nature.  Easy to find on the internet. Each student received a block of mixed-media paper to draw and color their birds.  Just colored with red crayons and a bit of black for beaks and eyes.  We talked about covering every white spot everywhere.  Dark, dark, red, red!  Then they made a branch for their cardinal to sit upon...  we placed the cardinals on our background of blue-green white sponge painting.  

And lastly, we made our snowflakes, so many.  This was snow-much fun!

It was easy to cut out individual blocks of cardinals, snowflakes and branches so each child could bring home their artwork to hang in a window at home.

Merry Christmas from Lucky Room 13!

How to Draw a Cardinal

Easy step-by-step directions to draw a cardinal... 

yet they all come out unique to the artist which makes your door perfect!

 Our cardinals were drawn on white paper, colored in and then cut out.  Background is the door backdrop which was painted before making the cardinals. Measure a sheet of white paper from that big roll for bulletin boards.   This backdrop was painted and made a couple days before.  

You can find these step-by-step directions on ArtProjectsforKids.org

and so many more drawings to do, too!  

Children's Stories for the Holiday Season

 

Bear Stays Up for Christmas, by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman. Book Companion to write about your reading. In this story, the forest animals tell Bear he must stay up for Christmas. Bear is sleepy but he says he will try. Read this book to discover how Bear finds the best gift for Christmas.

This book teaches the life lesson of being kind to your friends and the gift of giving.

This book is entertaining and these reader response pages can help young readers write about books and stories. There are pages for beginning writers as well as more challenging pages for those writers who need the challenge.  Find a book companion for this book HERE

Reader Response pages for the wonderful book, Trouble with Trolls, by Jan Brett. This book is truly a wonderful book to read aloud. Teach story elements and character traits, new vocabulary and word study. 33 pages to use with this picture book. These pages can easily be assigned for distance learning and school at home.

Reader Response Pages Include:

• Comprehension Questions
• Vocabulary Word Cards
• Writing about Trolls
• Finding evidence in the story about character actions and traits
• Drawing the story characters, Treva, Tuffi and the Trolls
• Make a sequencing booklet to order story events
• retell the story
• Study root words and endings, ABC order
• Illustrate the wonderful characters in the book
• make beautiful borders 'just like Jan Brett'
• complete a T-map about Trolls - "can, have, are"
• 30 word cards for your pocket chart
• Tips for teaching, introduce the book and ideas for this book

Find the book companion for Trouble with Trolls HERE

The Legend of the Poinsettia retold by Tomie dePaola is a fabulous book to read aloud when teaching the genre of legends and the value of giving. Enhance the reading experience and provide writing prompts and pages to write about reading. These pages can easily be assigned for distance learning and school at home. Teaching literacy and life lessons with children's literature.

Focus skills included are:

• writing prompts

• comprehension questions

• theme [giving]

• character illustration

• beginning, middle, end

• before and after

• favorite part

• what is the lesson of the story?

• word study pages

• compare and contrast

• retelling the story

• word study and vocabulary

Do you want the book companion for this book?  Click HERE

Christmas Resources for the Elementary Classroom

20 riddles for the month of December for your students to read, think, write and solve. These riddles are a great writing activity for morning seat work. Students settle right in with reading and writing. It is motivating because the children love to guess what today's riddle answer might be. You can easily assign these riddles for distance learning and school-at-home work.

Each riddle is a December - Christmas theme idea and contains many high frequency words. Your students read the riddle, think, and write a sentence that answers the question. Next, they illustrate the sentence that they wrote. This is a motivating writing-reading-thinking literacy activity that you may use for morning seat work, homework, for fast finishers or anytime. This resource includes teacher directions, bin labels and an answer key.

Also there are covers if you wish to make an 'December Riddle' booklet.  It is appropriate for grades 1 -2 and homeschoolers.  Find your Morning Riddles for Christmas HERE

Solve and Color Christmas pages for Holiday fun.... Learning Multiplication. These pages are NO PREP and give multiplication practice while coloring in fun Christmas pages. Students solve the multiplication fact and color the products using the code on top of the page. This math assignment can easily be assigned for distance learning and school-at-home.

You can find these pages HERE

Read on to find more teaching resources for the 

Holiday season. 

Create some merry and bright Christmas math stations

Bear Says Thanks - Teaching Resources for November

Respond to this book, Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson & Jane Chapman. In this story, forest friends help bear solve a problem. This book entertains the reader and the listeners and 

teaches good manners and the importance to say 'thank you'.

Read this book aloud and choose these reader response pages to enhance the reading experience.

Grab Your Book Companion Here

This can be a delightful read aloud just before your Thanksgiving break.  You can find this read aloud at my youtube channel HERE 

Listen to this entertaining story and then have your students 

write about the book using the pages from the book companion.  

Click and go today !

November Resources for the Elementary Classroom

The November Reading Challenge inspires your students to read more books in the month of November. The November Reading Log will keep a record of how many books are read. There are two challenges for readers, one for beginning readers and another for more experienced readers, so it is very easy for you to diversify instruction and reading tasks. Students feel a sense of accomplishment and enjoy good books for the entire month of November and longer! You can grab your November Reading Challenge HERE.

Perfect for distance learning or homework assignments!

In November - Book Companion

In November by Cynthia Rylant...

Read, write, do, and learn. After reading this wonderful picture book about November, these reader response pages will engage primary readers in literacy skills. 

16 pages for reader response and writing prompts that allow writing about this book and the author’s message. These pages can easily be assigned for distance learning and school-at-home.  Click below to get your book companion for In November.

Arthur's Thanksgiving -
Book Companion

Everything you need for your readers to respond to this book,

 Arthur's Thanksgiving by Marc Brown. Everyone loves Arthur! He is the director of his class' school play about Thanksgiving, and he runs into a problem or two. These reader response pages will enhance the reading experience. You might read the book aloud to the entire class, use it in a small reading group, or assign it to an independent reader. Also included are Thanksgiving bookmarks for your students.

20 November riddles for your students to read, think, write, and solve. These riddles are a great writing activity for morning seatwork. Students settle right in with reading and writing. It is motivating because the children love to guess what today's riddle answer might be. You can easily assign these riddles for distance learning and school-at-home work.

Each riddle is a November theme idea and contains many high-frequency words. Your students read the riddle, think, and write a sentence that answers the question. Next, they illustrate the sentence that they wrote. This is a motivating writing-reading-thinking literacy activity that you may use for morning seat work, homework, for fast finishers, or anytime. This resource includes teacher directions, bin labels, and an answer key.  Also, if you wish to make a 'November Riddle' booklet, there are covers.  It is appropriate for grades 1 -2 and homeschoolers.  Grab your November riddles HERE

This project is a study of Early American life, specifically the story of the Pilgrims' adventure to America. Reading and writing about the Pilgrims' adventure encourages collaborative group work. There are materials for five groups to study this part of American history—Thanksgiving.

Groups start this project by reading about their part of the story in history. 

The 5 groups are:

Old World to New World
Mayflower Journey
Wampanoag Village
Pilgrim Village
Harvest Feast

Each group has a reading passage to start. The reading passages include questions for them to explore and find the answers. Included is a graphic organizer for writing a paragraph about their topic. The organizer includes a topic sentence, interesting details, and a concluding statement. Also included are other graphic organizers, real photographs from the time in history, and illustrations to visualize and learn about the ways and customs of the people. A map of the journey to America. Then, students create a diorama or poster board display to represent their part of history.

The goal of this group project is to present their display and reports. Also included is 

a parent -family invitation if you want to invite families to the class presentations.

This is a high-interest and motivating project. Teacher guidelines and directions are included. It would be helpful if you had other resources, i.e., books about the pilgrims and Wampanoag, access to the computer, etc.  You will need to provide materials for students to create their dioramas or posters.  This would be appropriate for Grade 3.  Grab this resource for a collaborative project on Pilgrims- Wampanoag HERE

Happy November .... reading and writing!

Find more teaching resources for November HERE

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