Count and See

Last week I read the book Count and See by Tana Hoban to my little ones.  It is a very simple book that uses only black and white photos and numbers.  I have wanted to make a similar class book since I first saw Tana's book.  On Friday, we went out to our playground and then walked around the college campus where our school is located.  There was LOTS of counting as the kids pointed out things I could take pictures of for our book. I used my iphone to take the pictures and then used the free iphone  app A Beautiful Mess to make the photos black and white and to add numerals and text to the photos.  It was incredibly easy. I can't wait to share the resulting book with the kids.  I love it.  Here are a few pages:

I think we may have to share this book with the younger classes at our school.

I can read here or there, I can read anywhere!

                                          
        I love making class books.  A few years ago, I made a class book with my kindergarteners and our reading buddies from 2nd grade.  Our book was titled I Can Read Anywhere!  First I read Green Eggs and Ham to the whole group.  We then talked about writing our own rhyming book and decided on a reading theme because that is what we did together (and because I steered the enthusiasm that way:)  We then came up with a really long list of places we could read (I figured that was a good exercise in and of itself). Although we had initially planned to have the kids draw pictures of reading in rhyming places, the kids suggested that we use photographs of them reading.  Although this made the book a little harder because we had to find rhymes that we could take pictures of around our school, I think it made it easier for my kindergarteners to read the very predictable book.  The result was really cute and a favorite in our class library.

Summarizing the Year with Our Pre-K ABCs

      This is yet another idea that I got from Dr. Jean.  During the last week or two of each year, I work on an ABC book with my kiddos.  For each letter of the alphabet be try to think of several people or Pre-K activities that start with that letter.  This year I did the book a little differently.  I decided to only include things that we had photos of (other years we've included favorite books and songs).    Because I wanted to print the book in color, I printed 2 pages per page and then cut and folded the pages so the fold was on the outside which made for a very study little book.  The kids loved reading their ABC book and can't wait to share it with their families tonight. 

I went back and added captions to each picture by hand before copying the book. I was having too many problems typing the captions on the crowded pages.

Today the kids brought home their pre-K portfolios.  Very exciting!

Alvin, The Very Sad Dragon

             

Alvin the Dragon

As a final wrap-up activity for our Fair Tale Unit, we wrote a class book titled "The Very Sad Dragon."  We started by reviewing the elements of a fiction story.  We then generated a list of ideas.  I wish I had remembered to take a photo of our list.  I told the kids that I wanted to use photos to illustrate the book so that limited us a little.  We agreed right away that the characters would be our class and a dragon - the kids love our dress-up dragon (and I'm good at putting ideas in their heads :). We came up with lots of possible dragon names and then voted on our favorite....and Alvin the Dragon was born. 

The cover of our book.