Monday Made It- June 23

Well I'm back and linking up for a Monday Made It, my first post in quite some time... I must admit that things got away from me this last year, but I am really working on taking the time for things I like to do, like work on this blog!




 

 

Ok, here goes!

 

In April, my class was just getting ready to start our animal research projects when I looked at the lesson plans for the day and discovered that I had forgotten to get a nonfiction book for us to read together. Now, if I am going to write about an animal with the kids, it's got to be a flamingo! Unfortunately, there were no flamingo books to be found. So after some quick research and speedy typing, I had a "book" to read.

I was a bit nervous about reading it to the kids, but they absolutely loved it! (after the usual cries of "not more flamingos!") Anyway, I added some pink paper as a background, laminated it and put it in to production to be bound. Then I thought, as long as I am at it, I might as well write about a few other animals that the kids didn't know much about- so I put together a book about aardvarks and another about sloths. They were an instant hit!

I didn't want to keep using the school's resources for my books, so I got a comb binding machine!

I am addicted to using it!

I have been writing nonstop since I got it in May and have since written 22 books for the classroom! It really warms my heart to see that they are the most popular books in my classroom library, even beating out the Elephant and Piggie books!

Here are a couple of books I have put together this week- I like to pick animals or subjects that aren't very familiar to most kids so I picked the kinkajou, pangolin, and aye-aye.

 I really like the brightly colored backgrounds, they really pop in the library tub.

Each book has between 13 and 20 pages and includes basic information as well as some interesting facts about the animal.

I also ran some youtube videos through safeshare.tv to remove the ads, then made them into QR codes so the kids can scan to see some video clips!

I also had to throw in a book about Maggie the cat, my library wouldn't be complete without it!

 This is along the same lines as the books I've been working on, but this one is a tool to help the kids during writing.


It includes all of the high frequency words from our word wall as well as seasonal words that they often use in their writing. I have made 8, which gives me enough to put 2 at each table. I used the pictures to help my ELL friends, I am hoping that this will help to boost their confidence in writing.

Well, that's it for this week! I have such a long list of projects for this Summer, I will get to them as soon as I can get myself to put the binding machine away...

Victoria

*Update*
The writing helper book pages are now available for sale in my TPT store!
Check them out here: