Tooling Around: Crafty Creatures and the Tools They Use

On Saturday, I read Tooling Around: Crafty Creatures and the Tools They Use to the grade 1/2 science club that I lead for our Biodiversity Day. They really enjoyed it. It has beautiful images and verse, and very interesting examples of animals using tools,

I am Blop!

I read Hervé Tullet's I Am Blop! with the grade 3 student who I tutor, and he absolutely loved it. After reading it, we made our own stories about Blop. This book is engaging, colourful, and a wonderful way to connect art with language arts.

Since I will be working with French Immersion classes, I was delighted to find that it's also available in French: Moi, c'est Blop!

Mo, Mo, Mo!

Pigeon puppet made using a popsicle stick & cardstock

Mo Willems is one of my favourite authors! His books have been a hit with all of the grade 3 and 4 students that I have been tutoring since September. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus seems to be the most popular. Other favourite titles include Knuffel Bunny and The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog.

Mo Willems' books are great for practicing reading fluency. We had a lot of fun changing our tone and thinking about how punctuation affects meaning.

The artwork and writing is very accessible, so we used it as a mentor text to create our own picturebooks. We've put them on the shelves alongside the other books. It's so empowering to be an author!

Science Verse

Science Verse by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith is a phenomenal book. It combines poetry, art, science, and puns. It would be a great fit with grade 5 body science curriculum.

Primary students love it, too. I read/sang it to the grade 1/2 science club I work with. It also comes with a CD of the music, for the more reluctant singers.
 

These wonderful authors also wrote Math Curse.

Stuart Goes to School

A grade 3 student who I tutor recommended this book to me for my bus ride home last week. Stuart Goes to School by Sara Pennypacker is absolutely hilarious. The protagonist, Stuart, worries his way through his first day of school. It's an engaging, imaginative book with great pictures. It has a similar style to the Captain Underpants books, but without the same... subject matter.