Goldfinch Work, Part II

It's busy times in the library during Goldfinch Award book "season." :) We've paired additional books and have had thoughtful, creative work from our students. Recently, we read The Little Shop of Monsters and Fright Club.

Students quickly picked up on the mood of the books and enjoyed the unexpected "scariness" of the cute little creatures in Fright Club and the silliness of the monsters in The Little Shop of Monsters. 

As an extension of the day's readings, students at South Prairie visited The Little Shop of Monsters website, where they watched a video first and then designed their own Pocket Monsters. 

Students at Heritage Elementary and Dallas Center Elementary used iPads to design their own monsters using the apps Doodle Buddy and Monster Moogle Maker.

Both apps allowed students to choose a background and design a monster, usually an animal that they then modified to include physical features and accessories to create the perfect, scary monster!

Another pairing of Goldfinch Award books has been The Night World and Sleep Like a Tiger.

Author Mordecai Gerstein's note at the end of The Night World is a great place to start with students as you prepare them for the read aloud, and the sleeping animals on the last page are a wonderful transition to Mary Logue's Sleep Like a Tiger. We also watched a video called Animals at Rest to gain some background knowledge or reinforce what we already know about sleeping animals.

Students then designed their own night worlds on black construction paper using light-colored crayons and colored pencils, or they wrote and illustrated a page showing the animal they most resemble when they sleep.

With Goldfinch Award voting not happening until March, stay tuned for more read aloud pairings and ideas! 

Getting a Start on Goldfinch Books

We've recently begun reading some of our Iowa Goldfinch nominees and completing different follow-up or extension activities. We began with The Bear Ate Your Sandwich and Bear & Squirrel are Friends.

Before listening to the two stories, we watched a PebbleGO video about black bears. We learned that 2 of us kindergarteners lying head-to-toe are likely as long as a 7-foot black bear, and 4 or 5 kindergarteners in a group weigh about as much as one!

After the stories, students completed this handout, choosing two more animals that probably aren't "friends" in nature, but like Bear & Squirrel, maybe they could be friends!

Our look at Goldfinch nominees continued with "the crayon books"--The Day the Crayons Came Home and Frankencrayon.

Kindergarteners got creative and designed their own scribble "monsters" using an activity from Greenwillow Books.

First & second graders focused on two crayons from The Day the Crayons Came Home--Estaban and Neon Red. Acting like travel agents, first graders decided which world tourist destinations Estaban visited once he finally made it out of the house. After choosing destinations, students then wrote a postcard in Estaban's voice, describing something from his travels.

Finally, second graders helped Neon Red visit European landmarks that he may have missed as he made his way back to Duncan. Using Google Draw, students dragged an image of Neon Red to one of several destinations--check out a few of the class examples below:

Stay tuned for more activities and ideas related to our Goldfinch books!