Hello, Hello!

As I was looking around in a first grade classroom today, my eye spotted the book, Hello, Hello! by Miriam Schlein.  The gentle faces of the lions intrigued me.  I love finding new books and this one is a keeper.  Children love animals and have so many questions about them.  Miriam Schlein shared information about the animals through a question and answer text structure.  It’s a great mentor text to show your students who are interested in nonfiction.  Miriam narrows her focus from an all-about nonfiction book, that many of our children like to write, to just about their greetings.  Fascinating!

Daniel Kirk’s illustrations are delightful.  He uses a two page spread to capture the animal characters.

Savorings for reading and in writing for Hello, Hello!:

• Voice
• Onomatopoeia
• Question/Answer text structure
• Comparison
• Ellipses
• Possessive nouns

Dr. Seuss Day

Today, Dr. Seuss Day means laughter, closeness, and moments together. 

“Let’s read the Foot Book, Mommy!”  My now sixteen year old son use to ask me to read The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss every night.  Ohhhh, I couldn’t just read the book once.  No,I had to read it over and over and over.  Every time we would chant, ‘left foot, left foot, left foot, right’, I would raise his foot up.  He would giggle.  I loved every minute of it!

When my now thirteen year old daughter was born, my son would say, “Let’s read the Foot Book to her, Mommy” and we would.  He would lift her feet as we would read the delightful rhyme over and over.   He began to read.  Reading time was fun.  But more importantly, our learning grew together.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!  Happy Birthday to my memories!