Reading, Pinning, Doing (6)

Reading
I was planning on starting The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor..but it's not available via Kindle, so I had to rethink my next read. Instead I downloaded Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (also from my Personal Reading Challenge.), and I am really liking it right now. I'm almost half way through it and the characters are starting to get more developed and the plot is progressing.

From Goodreads:
On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is editor of the newspaper The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister.

In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life. A sharp contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comic novel, Amsterdam is "as sheerly enjoyable a book as one is likely to pick up this year" (The Washington Post Book World).

With my wee one, we've just been reading good ol' standbys. We read, Do You Want to Be My Friend, By Eric Carle tonight. A little mouse tries to be friends with all sorts of animals, but in the end, makes friends with another mouse. This book didn't jive well with me and I was surprised by the message.
I like this review from trumpetguy on amazon:
was anyone else confused by this book? Now don't get me wrong I don't expect War and Peace in a children's book, but a little more dialogue would have been nice. As it is, there are 2 possible conclusions I can draw from this book:
1. The mouse is asking each animal to be his friend and they are all saying 'No', which makes them all very mean and not worth talking about or, 2. The mouse is only asking the other mouse at the end of the book, ignoring all the other animals completely.  Either way, here is the message I walk away with: Mice should only be friends with other mice (people should only be friends with their own kind). Is this what we want to teach our children?

Pinning

I am excited to start using this Look/Say/Cover/Write/Check template from fresherschools.com with my students this week. I do dictation with a couple of my phonics groups weekly, and this form allows students to practice the spelling words daily, as they prep for dictation at the end of the week. The words I choose will be based on the sounds and high frequency words my students are learning, and will be lifted from the books they're currently reading.  Check out the link to download theis form: http://www.fresherschools.com/documents/look__say__cover__write__check.html. And make sure to become my follower on Pinterest. I'd love to follow you back to share ideas and resources.

Doing
Last week was a busy one! I meant to post...but life got the best of me! Here are some photos from the week.

My daughter reading to her dolly. Love it. She's already internalizing the joy of literacy and passing it on to others! This is how readers become readers! Notice how dolly has her own book too.

My brother and his wife came over and we played One Up (I'm so glad that my knowledge of phonics patterns helped me to create new words). The game is pretty fun.

My daughter is becoming quite the puzzler-- this Alphabet Out Loud is one of her favs.

We went to the Oakland Zoo today with some friends. Don't you love that they were holding hands as the tromped through the zoo? You may think that this is straying from the theme of this blog- but it isn't! I always marvel at how my daughter's experiences at the zoo are reinforced in her books and visa versa. I think the zoo is the perfect place for the curious. I have learned so much about animals since becoming  a teacher and mom!

Hope you have a great week! I am on intending to be a better blogger this week...we shall see what come of my good intentions!

I'm linking up at Mouse Grows Mouse Learns and Learning ALL the Time!!: