Johnny Appleseed by Steven Kellogg

Title: Johnny Appleseed

Author: Stevel Kellogg

Genre: Traditional (tall tale)

Scholastic

Johnny Appleseed is a sweet, very well known story that deserves to be told! This is a story of a little boy who loves the outdoors. As a young kid he loses his mother and brother passed away before he was two years old, and his father left for the Revolutionary War. John's father remarries and ends up having quite a few siblings, but that does not stop him from being his own person. Johnny proceeds to love the wilderness and once he grew old enough, he left his home and began his journey in the forest. Johnny had a deep love for an apple orchard that was nearby, he would pick the apples for the Chapman family and they would make sauces, pies, and many different things with the apples. Johnny carried apple seeds everywhere he went just so he could plant an apple orchard if he got enough land to do so. On his journey in the forest Johnny was friendly to all of the animals and that led him to staying in the forest and loving it so much he never wanted to leave. He began to chop down trees so he could create enough land to plant multiple apple orchards around him. Families began to come and visit what we can now call "his land". Eventually it got too crowded for him so he left and began another little farm of apple orchards and again, people came around to get some go John's apples and everybody loved him and his stories. The visitors are the ones who began his nickname, Johnny Appleseed. He embraced the people after he got too old to keep on moving and restarting a life on his own. He had created a meal supply for families and what had become friends! When Johnny got older he got sick for the first time ever, and passed away at a settler's cabin. The story lives on today about Johnny Appleseed and his love for apple orchards and the wilderness.

This is a great tall tale to read to your students and have a discussion about! I think that with the story line and the illustrations provided throughout the story that this story could tell a lot about your students and if they are into this book or not. It is amazing to think that YOU as a teacher can start a child's journey of love for books. I think that it is books like Johnny Appleseed that begin the love for reading. Johnny Appleseed was fun, loving, caring, outgoing, strong, compassionate, and so much more: ALL things that we should strive to be every day!!

Who Took The Farmer's Hat? by Joan L. Nodset

Title: Who Took The Farmer's Hat?

Author: Joan L Nodset

Illustrator: Fritz Siebel

Genre: Fiction

Scholastic

This is a cute book that is basically a run around for a farmer that loses his hat in the wind. The wind blows it all over while he is chasing it around like a wild man. The resolution ended up resulting in the man getting a new hat after all. Once the farmer caught up to his hat he saw a birds nest that had been created in his hat for the bird to hatch some eggs. The soft hearted farmer decided to let the birds keep his farmers hat and he went and got himself a new one and loved it just as much!

This story can teach the students kindness, sharing, and also it can show that losing something is not the end of the world! There are replacements for materialistic things that get lost and sometimes students, especially the younger ones, forget that. 

Anansi the Spider by Gerald McDermott

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Title: Anansi the Spider
Author: Gerald McDermott
Scholastic
Award: Caldecott Honor Award
Genre: Traditional (folk-hero)

This is the story of Anansi the spider getting lost far away and having the spiders six children use their strengths to find him. One of the six can see trouble, about was a road builder, another was a river drinker, then a game skinner, and a stone thrower, and lastly there was a soft one called Cushion. The story begins with Anansi getting lost and swallowed by a fish and See Trouble sees him and tells the other five siblings. They use each of their talents to help save their father. Road Builder builds a road to get to him, River Drinker drinks all of the water form the river so they can find his fish, Game Skinner then skins the fish and they get to their father! Next, a falcon comes and sweeps up Anansi and Stone Thrower uses his strength to throw a stone to make the falcon drop their father. Finally, Cushion runs underneath his father to catch him and give him a soft landing. Finally, they can all go home safe and sound!

This book can give an extremely important lesson to students in school! I love the team work that Anansi's six children used to search, find, and retrieve him. I think it is so important for students to learn how to use teamwork, and to learn that everybody is different and have different strengths and weaknesses, while realizing that everybody can play a huge part in so many things and that it is okay to share the spotlight! Sharing is caring!

Why Ducks Sleep on One Leg by Sherry Garland

Title: Why Ducks Sleep on One Leg
Author: Sherry Garland
Illustrators: Jean and Mou-Sien Tseng
Ages: 3-8
Scholastic

Why Ducks Sleep on One Leg is typically a vietnamese cultured book. The book offers a lot of cultural intel and interesting facts! The story begins by announcing the leader of the "world", Ngoc Hoang, the Jade Emperor.
Meanwhile, this leader made a mistake when creating three little ducks. The ducks were each born with one leg a piece. Throughout the story Sherry Garland expresses the struggles the three ducks are put through, such as struggling to swim to catch fish, or to get to worms fast enough, and water buffalo stepping on them because they can't get out of the way fast enough. All of this is happening because the ducks were minus a leg each.
The three sibling ducks decided they had had enough and they were going to write the Jade Emperor a letter to ask to receive their second legs so they could have a better chance at surviving. They even have trouble with that so they end up asking a hen, and then they take it to a friend of the Jade Emperors so that he can pass it along, but he denies.
Fortunately enough, the ducks overheard the Jade Emperors friend having a conversation about throwing out three legs. The ducks did not know what kind of legs they were, but they heard three and they heard legs, and they wanted them. So they asked for those legs and it turned out that they were golden legs being thrown out! The Jade Emperors friend, Thanh-Hoang, agreed to giving the ducks the three legs so they could have two a piece at last. The gold legs were beautiful and the ducks get warned to be careful with them because they could get stollen. While the ducks wear the perfectly fitted legs on themselves, they show them off proudly. The ducks can finally swim and run and eat all they can catch up to, like any other duck around! The story ends with the ducks being extremely happy with their lives and they end the big day by going to sleep and tucking their gold leg underneath so no one will try to steal them in the night!

This story is precious. I think this book would be a fun interactive class read aloud because the students would enjoy the characters in the book and the details provided. It could also provide a pretty awesome awareness that everybody is different, and that its okay to be different. The ducks wore the gold legs PROUD. People are different in their own ways, and I think that is something children need to learn to accept at a young age.

The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle

 

Title: The Tiny Seed
Author: Eric Carle
Scholastic
Genre: Non-Fiction/Informational

The story of the Tiny Seed begins with mentioning the season, Autumn. It goes on to explaining that the win is blowing flower seeds everywhere: up and down and side to side. One seed goes so high up that it burns from the sun, another goes so high up that it lands on a frozen ice mountain where it cannot be planted through the ice, another crosses the ocean and does not fly high enough to make it across, one of the seeds drifts off to the desert and cannot grow because of the dry heat, another seed gets eaten by a bird! Meanwhile, there are still seeds left flying around in the wind when the season changes to Winter. Another flower seed gets eaten by a mouse underneath the snow, the tiniest seed is still surviving because it is so small! Later it turns to spring and the weather starts to heat up and the snow begins to melt which results in the seeds being able to plant and begin to grow! There are ups and downs throughout the Spring, but the tiny seed begins to grow into a plant finally!! The seed was so tiny that the plant is tiny and growing much slower than the rest, which means that the tiny seed gets to stay alive longer. Finally, Summer comes along and the tiny seed that turned into a tiny plant is all by itself, it gets rained on and the sun shines on it every day which causes it to grow and grow! With time the tiny plant grows taller than houses and it is so spectacular that the flower brings in visitors to come see its true beauty! Autumn comes back around and with time, and the changes of weather all over again, the huge flower that started as the tiny seed begins to lose its petals and eventually the flower's seed pod opens up and releases new tiny seeds that begin to soar in the air as that flower did before it planted itself and bloomed! And the cycle starts all over again! 

This story is SO cute. I love this story especially for an elementary classroom because children love learning about the outdoors. I could create such fun activities based upon this book because of the season of the year. There are different weather patterns during each season of the year and it is always fun to teach kids about the fun things such as flowers being planted and blooming during the Summer. This is just an awesome book to do as a read aloud to teach the students the seasons, and then creating hands-on activities after the lesson. This book makes me so excited to begin my teaching journey!

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Title: Wonder

Author/Illustrator: R.J. Palacio
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Age: 8 and UP
Awards: Major Awards: Texas Bluebonnet nominee, Texas Lone-star Reading list, New York Times best seller, Maine Student Book Award,Vermont's Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award, Mark Twain Award, Hawaii's 2015 Nene Award, Junior Young Readers Choice Award, and many more!!

The book wonder has so much insight to give. It is story of a 10 year old child that has a disorder called Mandibulofacial Dysostosis, which is also known as Treater Collins Syndrome. Mandibulofacial Dysostosis is a genetic disorder that the little boy, August Pullman was born with. The disorder caused his face to have a type of deformity that he did not like at all.

August, otherwise known as Auggie, was homeschooled all of his life because he hated going out in public, overtime he would go out in public he would wear a space helmet. The helmet was the only thing that made him feel comfortable in public, because yes people would be looking at him, but they would be looking at him because he had a "cool" space helmet on, not because people thought his face was weird. The helmet gave Auggie a type of confidence that he couldn't have with it off.

I could go on and on about the story, but I will try my best to stick to the main points (in my opinion).  When Auggie was 10, his mom decided to convince him to join a real school, instead of being homeschooled. She decided that it would be good for him to get out of the house and make friends with people, even though he was terrified of what people would think of him. Ague began school in as a fifth grader at Beecher Prep. However, right off of the bat pretty much he was able to have a few friends that didn't care that he was a little bit different. But later on in the story, Auggie caught his best friend that he had made, Jack, making fun of him behind his back. He was completely torn and did not want to go to school anymore and frankly it just made him angry at everyone. Auggie has an awesome personality, he made jokes, he played with his friends, he made good grades (better than most of the students grades), and he just couldn't understand why people had to be so cruel, especially someone he thought he could call his friend.

With many ups and downs, the book starts to climax when the class goes to camp. At camp Auggie still has not accepted Jack back as a friend just yet, until a group of older students start to pick on Auggie and jack steps in to take up for him. This was the first time someone besides Auggie's family had stood up for him like this. Jack gave a sensor apology once he realized what he had done wrong, and they were able to rekindle their friendship.

Auggie grew tremendously in his first year of school Beecher Prep. We can learn a lot about what Auggie went through in the book. We can also learn a ton from the side stories provided in the book, such as his sisters struggles through out the book. She felt left out a lot and did not feel like she was seen or important to her parents. We could say that communication is a big thing we can learn from this. For example, if Via (Auggie's sister) would have communicated her feelings with her parents sooner, they could have been giving her attention that they didn't know she needed at the time. Another huge take away from the book is to have confidence! It is okay to feel scared or insecure at times, but the important part is that you step out of that comfort zone and you make the choice to grow from your insecurities, especially the ones that you can't change.

Always stay confident, people love you and people have your back, even in the hardest times when you can't see it.

Introduction Post

Hello, welcome to my blog!

I am looking forward to this awesome semester full of learning and fun.
Before we get too far into my blog page, I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself!

I come from a small town north of Houston, I am one of three children. I have a younger brother and an older sister, along with two happily married parents.
They are my reason to strive for greatness! They make me want to be a leader in everything that I do in life, which is one of the reasons I am looking forward to being an elementary teacher.

My hope is that whenever I begin my teaching career, wherever God leads me to do so, that I leave a positive impact on my students lives and that they leave me with all of the knowledge that they need to succeed after my year with them is over.