Author: hossackp (Page 4 of 5)

Ode to Living on Earth

Good morning!

The sun is back again!

I hope you all had a wonderful Earth Day yesterday and had a chance to get outside. I went for a rainy walk through a beautiful, flower-filled park with my daughter and basked in the scenery and the company. 🙂

Oliver Jeffers, another favourite author, had a bit of a different day. He recorded a Ted Talk and I’d like to share it with you here.

 

I hope you enjoyed Oliver Jeffers as much as I did.  He says,

“As we watch the wheels of industry grind to a halt, the machinery of progress become silent, we have the wildest of opportunities to hit the reset button. To take a different path.”

Please think about what this means and how you could take this opportunity. When life gets back to “normal”, what “different path” could you take that would show your kindness to our Planet Earth?

Drop me an email or comment below with your ideas or thoughts…

Be kind,

Mrs. H.

Happy 50th Birthday, Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!

Fifty years ago today, on April 22, 1970, 20 million people celebrated the Earth in the United States, where Earth Day began. Today, at least 193 countries celebrate Earth Day and billions of people realize the importance of learning about and caring for this planet we all call home.

Just in case you’ve forgotten how beautiful our planet is while you’ve been safe at home, take a look:

Aren’t we lucky to live here? You can also watch a live-action version of that video just outside your front door. It might not be so grand or sweeping (and you’d have the chirping birds instead of the music!), but it’s just as awe-inspiring. Take the time today or tomorrow…or today AND tomorrow…and just sit for 15 minutes and observe. Use all your senses…inhale the fresh scents of Spring, touch the grass beneath your legs, look at the vibrant colours and shapes of flowers and leaves on the trees, listen for the sounds of new life…taste is the one sense you might want to wait to use until your veggie garden grows! 😉 Enjoy all our planet has to offer…

If you’re looking for other activities after you’ve soaked up the beauty of nature, here are some websites that offer ideas and information about respecting our planet.

50 Earth Day Activities for Kids on Tinkerlab.

A different view of our Earth can be seen on space.com .

National Geographic Kids is a great site to explore and it can be found here.

Finally, Earth Day’s gone digital with The New York Times.

As always, feel free to comment below to tell me about what you observed outside or just say hello!

Happy Earth Day, Clinton Thunderbirds!

Mrs. H. 🙂

Poetry and Song

Good morning!

As I write this blog post, the sun has come up and there is another beautiful, blue sky outside my window. Haven’t we been lucky to have such amazing weather to enjoy all the signs that Spring is here? I can picture the beautiful cherry tree outside Clinton school…:)

I also have some music on and I’m enjoying listening to poetry. Did you know that the songs we listen to are poetry set to music? Songwriters are poets? April might be poetry month, but you are listening to poetry all year long!

Below you will find a poem by Jane Yolen that has been set to music and it becomes…a song! Enjoy the sunny day and perhaps you will be inspired to write some poetry of your own to thank our Earth. Of course, please share it with me if you do!

Mrs. H. 🙂

Superworm!

Good Morning!

I have a new read aloud under the Read A loud page…you will need to ask your teacher for the password. 🙂

I wish I could have read Superworm  byJulia Donaldson with you…it has such great rhyme and rhythm. It’s a wonderful combination of poetry and lots of creatures on Earth! That fits in nicely, as April is not only Poetry Month it’s also Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22!

Watch below as Kwame Alexander talks all things poetry…enjoy!

Poetry Lessons from The Write Thing – | Teacher Created Materials

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Fun

Good morning, Clinton Thunderbirds! 🙂

One of the most circulated books in our Clinton Library is Where’s Waldo! Wouldn’t it be fun to have your own hunt for Waldo and friends at home? Candlewick Press  (the publisher of Where’s Waldo books) has made it possible! Print out your own Waldo Character Sheets to get started. They can be printed with a colour printer or you can print them and colour them yourself.  You could even draw them yourself! Ask an adult to hide them for you or you and your siblings could take turns hiding them for each other. Good luck! That Waldo is a tricky one…;)

 

Click here to check out some other Where’s Waldo activities such as a word search, colouring page or matching game.

Happy hunting!

And happy weekend! 🙂

Mrs. H.

The Undefeated

The Undefeated

Winner of the 2020 Caldecott Medal (for amazing illustrations)
A 2020 Newbery Honor Book (for a powerful story)
Winner of the 2020 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award (for determination and courage to work together)

That’s a lot of awards! And very well deserved! Do you remember The Undefeated? It was on our library fireplace for quite a while, so I could talk to you all about it.  It was written by Kwame Alexander, one of my favourite poets/authors. If you’re in Intermediate, you might know Kwame for these books…

 

Booked (The Crossover Series)                  The Crossover (The Crossover Series)                      Rebound (The Crossover Series)

 

Kwame writes in verse (poetry) and we will be talking about poetry this month, as April is Poetry Month. Check back on our Library blog to learn more about poetry from Kwame himself. In the meantime, here he is reading/performing The Undefeated.

Enjoy! 🙂

Mrs. H.

PS…Congrats to Gokul who knew the answer was Seven!

I am an odd number.

Take away a letter and I become even. What number am I?

Leave your guess in the comments below or check back tomorrow for the answer. 🙂

 

Below you will find some students’ goals and drawings. Many thanks to Cara and Krystal! I love to hear from you all. Please feel free to comment below or just continue to send me emails. I miss you!

 

 

Happy Reading!

Mrs. H.

Happy weekend, Cool Beans!

Calling all Cool Beans!

Remember when we read The Cool Bean by Jory John and Pete Oswald? It was so fun to read with you and realize that what is really cool is to be kind. Our school is full of Cool Beans!

Here is a video of Pete Oswald as he talks to us about how he came up with the idea for the garbanzo bean and what he uses to do his illustrations. I had never heard of frisket paper before…I love learning new things! Watch below to see what frisket paper is and why Pete Oswald uses it to do his illustrations:

Jory John and Pete Oswald have also teamed up for a new picture book called The Great Eggscape! I have bought it for our library, so you can take it out when we get back to school. 🙂 In the meantime, here is a read aloud of the book below. You may be able to connect if you were hunting for eggs this morning! Happy Easter! And Happy Vaisakhi tomorrow!

Happy reading, too!

Mrs. H.

Story

Good morning, Lovelies…

I have been re-reading one of my favourite authors over the last few weeks. I very rarely re-read anything, as I have stacks of new books that are waiting to be read! But Richard Wagamese is different. He was an Ojibway Canadian author and journalist and has won many awards and even had one of his books made into a movie. I find his words to be so powerful and transformative. Here are some I want to share with you…

All that we are is story. From the moment we are born to the time we continue on our journey, we are involved in the creation of the story of our time here. It is what we arrive with. It is all we leave behind. We are not the things we accumulate. We are not the things we deem important. We are story. All of us. What comes to matter then is the creation of the best possible story we can while we’re here; you, me, us, together. When we can do that and we take the time to share those stories with each other, we get bigger inside, we see each other, we recognize our kinship – we change the world, one story at a time…

-Richard Wagamese

I hope you take the time to create the best possible story you can, especially under the circumstances.  I continue to miss you all and the stories we get to share and make together.  🙂

Mrs. H. (I would insert a heart here, but I’m working on figuring that out…help? 😉 )

 

I was wondering…hmmmmm…

Good morning, Clinton Thunderbirds! 🙂

Since I left you yesterday, I have been wondering about OK from THE OK Book and just how Tom Lichtenheld, the illustrator, came up with his idea. This lead me to do a little research and I found Tom’s site that was really fun to explore. If you’d like to explore it, follow this link

https://www.tomlichtenheld.com/childrens_books/

On the site, I found an interview with another children’s author and illustrator, Carrie Charley Brown. In the interview, Tom had these words of wisdom for budding illustrators:

“Don’t forget that illustration is as much about ideas as technique.”

I’ve got ideas, I thought, but I can’t even say I’m ‘OK’ on technique! 🙂

Thankfully, I know many illustrators who are helping us all with technique while we’re staying safe at home. You will definitely know these three, as we’ve read their books together at Clinton. Take a peek at these sites and get working on your own illustrations. As always, feel free to take a picture of your creations and post in the comments. Can’t wait to find the next Mo Willems or Carson Ellis here at Clinton!

First, Mo Willems:

Next, Carson Ellis:

 

Dav Pilkey draws Big Jim and Commander Cupcake! Dogman, too!

https://kids.scholastic.com/kids/books/dav-pilkey-at-home/

 

Have fun and keep reading, too!

Mrs. H.

 

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