Book Character Day is Great Fun!

Book character day is always great fun at my school and this year was no exception.  Here I am dressed up as Wyatt the Wonder Dog. What a great time I had making friends with other dogs in the building! All three Wyatt books make great classroom lessons that you can access here.

 Each of the grade levels picked a book to represent.  Here they are by grade:

Kindergarten picked Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

First Grade picked The Cat in the Hat.

Second grade picked one of my favorite books of all time: Pete the Cat.  I like this book so much I've actually blogged about some of the great lessons you can develop around two of the Pete the Cat books.  You can read about it here  and here.

Third grade

 

Fourth grade's rough bunch and they picked The Best Christmas Pagent Ever.

Even the front office and administration got in on the fun by dressing up as Madeline

Kudos to our principal for dressing up as Miss Clavell!

 

 

We had guest readers that included former students:

 

One of the kindergarten teachers even came down with a bad case of The Stripes

The day was a huge success and as Dr Seuss says:

I've put together a great parent and teacher resource with lots of books and tips for common parenting concerns.  You can receive it by email for free by signing up for my email list here.

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Lots of Fun Activities for Kids at the Decatur Book Festival!

Labor Day Weekend, I attended the seventh annual Decatur Book Festival.  Billed as the largest book festival in the south, it has a lot of child friendly activities and I would definitely recommend it for parents with young children.  It is held every year over labor day weekend in downtown Decatur.  The festival begins with a parade which this year was led by Kevin Henkes and Lily of the Purple Purse fame.  There is a stage designed to appeal to the younger attendees along with a stage for young adult authors and adult authors. 

There were of course lots of books to buy.

And more books to buy...

There's the usual face painting for the kids.

There's a great fountain that kids can enjoy.  It pretty much screams, "Climb on me!"

There's a shady place to sit and read called the Kudzu Retro Reading Lounge..

Of course if you can't wait, you can just sit down anywhere and dive in to that new book. It's a book festival, after all...

There are clever child friendly things to buy or just look at.  Pictured below is a personal library, painted by the illustrator of the Pete the Cat books.  It was part of a silent auction and bidding started at $750 for this one.  It was a little out of my price range...

If you wanted to bring your pet or do a little surprise birthday/Christmas shopping for your pet, there was even a booth selling dog treats.  Wyatt would have been so excited!

Would I go again?  Absolutely!  It was a fun adventure.  Maybe next year I will invite Wyatt along...

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Pete The Cat says, "It's all good"

Cover of Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes

I love discovering new children's books and this one introduced to me by a first grade teacher at my school is a real gem.  It's called Pete the Cat and it chronicles a day in the life of Pete who wears white sneakers and is constantly stepping in strawberries, blueberries and other assorted things that turn his shoes a rainbow of colors.  Each time he finds himself with shoes of a different color the author asks "Does he cry?" To which the answer is "Oh my no!" Apparently Pete is not only an easy going cat, he is also  a musical cat because he sings as he walks "I love my white shoes".  The grande finale involves Pete stepping in a bucket of water which washes his shoes clean but leaves him with wet shoes.  Of course he continues singing that he loves his shoes and finishes the story with the statement, "It's all good."  This story is not only all good it is excellent!  Not only does it teach children colors and a catchy song but it also is a great lesson on the value of flexibility even in the face of problems.  You could even make a case for how our perception of a problem influences our feelings.  Quite an adorable book with a great lesson inside!