Two Book Give Away: Animalogy and Hey Diddle Diddle

Early elementary-aged children will enjoy this rhyming and catchy tale about the food chain. A beetle is eaten by a snake. The snake is eaten by a hawk: He snatched that snake right off the ground. Gobbled him up without a sound and sang, "Hey diddle diddle - I don't ask why I've got feathers to help me fly." The book has a "For Creative Minds" section in the back that includes 4 pages of additional activities such as "Herbivore or Carnivore," "Predator or Prey" and many more. Even more related activities and links are found at the Sylvan Dell Publishing Website.

Animalogy is a book of, what else? Animal analogies of course! Beaver is to build as spider is to spin. Reptile is to snake, as insect is to bee.  The detail in the illustrations is captivating. This is a great book to teach analogies as well as animal behavior. The book may also be helpful for young ESL students trying to learn the concept of analogies. The book concludes with a 6 page activity guide that extends the learning presented in the story. Sylvan Dell Publishing also has a free 48 page Teaching Guide available.

Here is how you enter to win these two books:

Go to this blog post, Literacy Challenges of At-Risk Boys, and answer one or both of the following questions by November 5, 2011.

1. What are your communities doing to address the specific needs of at-risk learners? 
2. What reading programs or other resources do you know of that cater to the interest of boys?

One winner will be randomly selected to win BOTH books using www.random.org.

BOOK OF THE MONTH: A is for Autumn

Autumn Activities:

• Try some of these great corn activities from Preschool Express.
• Fingerpaint with yellow and red paint to make orange.
• In the sensory table, add hay/straw and toy tractors, pumpkins, and other fall items.
• Make fall colored play dough (orange, red, brown).
• Make leaf prints by painting the vein side of a leaf and pressing it onto paper.
• In the art area, fill the collage jars with fall colored scraps of paper, tissue paper, yarn, ribbon.
• Visit Preschool Express for lots of pumpkin activities.
• Try this easy pumpkin muffin recipe.
• Make a "Fall Bingo" game (see sample) by making a blank Bingo Grids in a word processing program. Find pictures/images on the internet and insert fall pictures (such as acorns, leaves, pumpkins, etc). Depending on the size of the class, you will want to make 5-8 different cards. Print on cardstock and laminate.

Find many, many more Fall activities in these Autumn Posts:

• Apples and Pumpkins
• Autumn Trails
• Monster Mash