Family Love
On Hat Day.....
We Get Mail! 
What a Wonderful World

 

Most of these books were ideas shared by Kim Lenging. If you have any questions regarding the booklets, please contact her at lengning@adelphia.net . 'Family Love'  was created by Pat Schar. She may be contacted at wschar@zbzoom.net for questions regarding her book.

 

Family Love

As this is the first book we make, I do MUCH of the prep work! Find, print, and photocopy for each child, computer generated art of father/child, mother/child, brother/child, sister/child, family, and (I found)--child in bed with teddy. These pictures were on my Greetings Workshop CD. Each child will need a heart shape with the title words, "Family Love" in it. Also, using Comic Sans font, type the following sentences and photocopy them for each child.

The Pages:

1) My father loves me. 
2) My mother loves me. (Model gluing the precut father picture and the precut father words on the page. Distribute the pictures and sentence strip.)
3) My brother loves me. 
4) My sister loves me. 
5) My family loves me. 
6) I am loved. 
 

Students may glue pre-cut hearts on the pages to decorate making sure to NOT cover the text.

The text and pictures are photocopied for each student. I also have available many pre-cut (with a large paper punch) hearts from pink and red designed paper from the scrapbook store. Because this is Book #1, I cut around the pictures and the sentences for the students, and distribute them as needed.

I have the books prepared.....2 sheets of colored copying paper, folded and stapled. I draw a small smiley face on the cover, and write the number 1 in the middle of the first page, 2 on the second, etc on the 6 pages. This, quite frankly, is time-consuming, but reaps mega-benefits on the 7th day of school!! The smiley ensures that all have their book opening the proper way, and the numbered pages ensure that you're all 'on the same page'.

The Cover:

Students color and cut out the title heart and glue over the smiley face.  They .may decorate the rest of the cover as they wish. The pointer is a popsicle stick with a heart sticker glued on the top

On Hat Day...

Send home a letter advising that a particular day will be designated as "Hat Day" and the children are invited to bring a hat. Encourage a wide variety of hats to make the book more engaging for the students and interesting to write.

If lice is a real concern, make sure to have enough plastic grocery bags on had in which to store each hat separately.

Take a picture of each child wearing his/her hat. Take a group picture for the book cover. After developing the pictures (quickly, while interest is "hot"), create a master that will become the class book copy. The text along the bottom will read, "_____________wore a ____________hat." As with the other class books in this collection, two pages of text fit onto one paper. The paper will be cut in half after duplication. Place one student picture on each text page...one page/picture per student.

There are two options for creating this book...

#l: Duplicate the pages so that each student has a copy of the book with pictures of each classmate. This method requires that each child is expected to handprint his sentence in each book. This will take 4-5 days for completion in small groups.

#2: Allow each student to write his/her sentence with a marker on the master copy. (Jason wore a blue hat. Kayla wore a monkey hat. Eric wore a Dr. Suess hat.) After all the sentences have been completed, photocopy the whole book and cut the pages in half.

Staple together inside a decorated cover with the class picture in the center. The sentence strip title, "On Hat Day....." may also be glued.

The pointer is a popsicle stick with a hat sticker glued on.

The children really love to this book because it is about them.

We Get Mail!

The pages have the text along the bottom, and a corresponding cut-and-pasted blackline images from a 'community worker' book.

The Pages:

1) Firefighters get mail. 
2) Postal workers get mail. 
3) Police Officers get mail. 
4) Doctors get mail. 
5) Road workers get mail. 
6) Teachers get mail. 
7) __________ gets mail. (student writes name and draws a self portrait. There is a small envelop glued, address side down, so the flap is accessible. Inside is teacher's valentine to the child.) 
8) But, __________ do not get mail! (student draws and writes the name of an animal.)

The Cover:

The title, We Get Mail!, can be cut out and glued onto a royal blue construction paper cover. The cover can be decorated with canceled postage stamps the students bring from home. Attached to the spine of the book is a (red, white, or blue) string with a little envelope attached that will 'follow' the reader to each page and help mark his place.

 

What a Wonderful World

This is a special "performance" book. It has been used for graduation celebrations and school board performances. This idea has been modified from a workshop with Valerie Welk. This book is also a good music connection to Black history month.

Creating this book is not an instant process. Suggested time allotment is 1-2 weeks to finish the book. To "perform" this book, or just to have the students read along, you will need to purchase a copy of Louis Armstrong's song, "What a Wonderful World".(CD) The students can be introduced to the song using a book with the same name by Ashley Bryan.The book is bound with a book binding machine , using the thicker binding combs along the 12" BOTTOM of the book. If it is bound along the bottom, the students can manipulate the pages easily. If you decide to use sentence strips, they will have to be placed along the top to be clear from the binding.

Supplies needed for this book are, 9x12 manila pages, black, light blue, royal blue, and white construction paper, tissue paper in 'sun colors', and 3 or 4 simple blacklines of a world map. You CAN use the same map for all four map pages, but this get to be a bit tedious for the students. You also can use 2 round maps (looks like a globe), and 2 flat world maps. Make sure that the students have see several versions of world maps as well as a globe before you attempt to have them color their maps.

Each world map can be finished in a different way. One can be painted land forms are green, and water is blue. The second can be colored with green and blue crayons. The third is colored with green and blue markers or colored pencils. And the fourth is done with every color in the box, with each country a different color! The water, of course, remains blue.

To "perform" this book, the students stand before the audience, turn the pages as Armstrong sings, and sing along with him. As the song finishes, the students return to the front cover. As Armstrong sings his famous "Oh Yeah!" at the end, the children put out their right hand, palm up, and sing it with him. A nice touch is to follow up with "It's a Small World".

The Pages:

The other pages are each a different medium to match the words of the song:

"I see trees of green....." (Students use brown construction paper to make tree trunks and branches, a green sponge paint the leaves.)

"Red roses, too. I see them bloom for me and you....." (Students make red roses. One way could use green yarn for the stems and leaves, and red yarn for the rose. Cut the yarn into managable pieces. Another idea to make the flowers is to make red construction paper roses--a circle cut into a spiral.)

"And I think to myself, what a wonderful world." (One of the maps is placed here.)

 "I see skies of blue...." (Use light blue construction paper or white paper covered with blue watercolors, or blue and white crayon resist.)

"Clouds of white....." (Royal blue construction paper covered with a few fluffy, cottonball clouds glued on.)

"The bright blessed day....." (Trace a large circle on manila art paper. Students use liquid starch and paint brushes to affix sun colored strips of tissue paper inside the circle. Use some reds and whites, but mostly yellow and orange. Encourage the students to make sun rays.)

"Dark sacred night....." (Use black construction paper, diluted white paint, and white or clear glitter. Allow the students to spatter the white paint onto the black paper, creating stars, then sprinkle with glitter.) 
"And I think to myself, what a wonderful world." (Another map page.)

"The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky....." (Draw an arc onto white construction paper. The students glue small squares of red paper on the arc, then follow with an arc of orange, yellow, blue, indigo, and violet. The rainbow created is a mosaic one.)

"Are also on the faces of the people going by....." (The students use multicultural crayons to draw and color faces and their features.)

"I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do....." (Students draw friends shaking hands.)

"But they're really saying, I Love You....." (Trace and cut out the students hand. Glue this to a page , folding and gluing down the ring and middle finger to form the ASL sign for I love you.)

"I hear babies cry, I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll ever know....."(Students draw a baby. A teacher directed method could be used for this drawing.)

"And I think to myself, what a wonderful world." (Another map.)

 

The Cover:

The covers can be a rainbow variety, with the colorful map and the sentence strip "What a Wonderful World" glued on.