Canine Companions Storytime - Special Needs - Virtual

 Stories that celebrate the bond between people and their dogs...

A pup just for me / A boy just for me by Dorothea Seeber & Ed Young ( rhyming story about a boy who is offered every kind of pet except the puppy he wants. When the book is turned over, the story is told from the dog's point of view.)

Flannel board based on the book Any Kind of Dog by Lynn Reiser

Rrralph by Lois Ehlert (Would you believe that Ralph the dog can talk? Yip, yip, yip--it's true With bestselling author Lois Ehlert's simple, funny, call-and-response text and bold, playful collage illustrations, this fresh, young book is sure to get little ones laughing (and talking to their dogs )

A Place for Grace by Jean Davies Okimoto (With the help of a hearing-impaired man, a little dog finally manages to graduate from a training school for hearing dogs.)

Action Song: Do Your Ears Hang Low? illustrated by Jenny Cooper 

Bark George by Jules Feiffer (When puppy George is asked to bark by his mother, he manages to produce a range of animal sounds including a "meow" & a "moo," but never an "arf." -- Asked at the end, "Who's inside George now?!")

No time for:

Martha Speaks by Susan Meddaugh (alphabet soup gives Martha extraordinary communication abilities)

How Smudge Came by Nan Gregory (Cindy, who lives in a group home, wants to keep the stray dog she finds on her way to work...)

6/12/22 - Dover Nicole's class (Special Needs)

Butterflies Storytime - Special Needs - Virtual

 A celebration of individual differences, life-cycle, nature and change. Combines fiction and non-fiction, a sensitive look at disability.  More ideas at https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Caterpillars%20%26%20Butterflies

Bubba & Trixie – Lisa Campbell Ernst Bubba & Trixie – Lisa Campbell Ernst – (An adventuresome ladybug with a damaged wing who cannot fly befriends an apprehensive caterpillar and helps him learn to enjoy life and be happy with what he is and what he becomes.)

Alternatively can use this shorter book with a similar theme (checked out 2022)  Bob and Otto – Nick Bruel (Otto the worm is saddened when his friend Bob the caterpillar becomes a butterfly until Bob reassures him that his role in digging through the earth is critical in this story which beautifully combines earth science and the power of friendship.)

Sign Language Song(s):  Let's Take a Little Walk and/or  Look up Look Down (alt: ) -from Pick Me Up: Fun Songs for Learning Signs (with CD) – Robert Berg, et. all 

Becoming Butterflies by Ann Rockwell J595.789 ROC (a schoolroom witnesses the metamorphosis of monarch butterflies in this clear concept book) and/or Traveling Butterflies by Susumu Shingu (simple, beautifully-illustrated picture book of the monarch life-cycle)

If at First You Do Not See - Ruth Brown (clever turn upside down book -- vegetation becomes faces...inspired by the works of the 16th c. Italian painter Guiseppe Arcimboldo

Could share related:  Hello Fruit Face 759.5 STR  -- kids will adore seeing his amazing paintings -- images online at: http://www.giuseppe-arcimboldo.org/  or go to  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Arcimboldo for more links and info.) more info on a related program: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/art-science-flutterby-butterfly.html

Butterfly Boy – Steven Kroll (A boy and his disabled grandfather eagerly await the return of the butterflies in this gorgeous & moving story from Mexico) 

Other possibilities: (no time 2022)

Waiting for Wings  by Lois Ehlert  (short rhyming text, glowing illustrations and pages that literally expand as the caterpillar hatches into a butterfly ) 
DVD: Waiting for Wings (on Weston Woods PPR DVD "Spring Science” is a beautiful musical version of the story, great to act out with scarves

A Butterfly is Patient 595.789 AST (wonderful book in the An Egg is Quiet and A Seed is Sleepy series).great info. – this middle-aged librarian learned a lot (e.g. the difference between a chrysalis and a cocoon - the latter is spun of silk, the former is a kind of exoskeleton formed from the caterpillar's skin; also that butterflies can fly a mile in 3 minutes (faster than a human can run).some classes could research speed of animals and graph this.)  Related: Steve Jenkins'  book Just a Second; A Different Way to Look at Time  529 JEN. 

"Ultraviolet" (Butterfly Poem) from Butterfly Eyes & Other Secrets of the Meadow 811.54 SID (a "guess the answer" poem collection, also shared page on milkweed & butterflies - introduced vocabulary/science: toxin, predator, pollination, ultraviolet) omitted 2017, no time
Here's an article on why butterflies may have evolved UV vision: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100216140301.htm
and some UV pictures of flowers: https://natureodes.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/see-like-a-bee-ultraviolet-flower-photography-2/

Butterfly House – Eve Bunting  (A girl and her grandfather hatch butterflies, whose annual return continue to bring joy to her, even after her grandfather is gone.) 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar – Eric Carle (Pop Up with flannel chrysalis and puppet)

We’re all Wonders – R.J. Palacio (a young spinoff on the amazing chapter book Wonder) expresses the hope that maybe "people can change the way they see"

additional songs at http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/preschool-storytime-flutterby-butterfly.html

School Age Storytime: Women’s History Month

 

Girls Can! Determination Succeeds.

A storytime for grades K-3 encouraging girls and boys to go beyond their comfort zones,
to take risks and make history!
Featuring women who overcame gender, racial, and religious prejudice and even powered through disability to do things that they were told they couldn’t.

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman 
(Grace loves acting out stories. Told by her classmates that she can’t play the part of Peter Pan because she’s a girl & black, she learns that she can do anything she puts her mind to.)

“Grace is a fictional character (book in Picture Book/Easy Fiction section) but many real women overcame prejudice…(the next books all in the Biography section – non-fiction (true))”

Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors? The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell by Tanya Lee Stone

(Elizabeth Blackwell gets 28 rejection letters but perseveres and when a medical school accepts her,  overcomes the teasing of her classmates and hostility of the townspeople, studies hard and graduates first in her class -- becoming the first female physician in America!)

Asked how many have a woman doctor? (about 1/2)
“next book is about a girl who would have to have many encounters with doctors…”

Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman by Kathleen Krull Newer title Go Wilma Go! by Amira Rose Davis & Michael G. Long.

(Splendidly written inspiring story of a tiny, sickly black girl stricken by polio who overcame her disability and ended up winning 3 gold medals in track at the 1960 Olympics!) 

“Wlima made her mark on the race course. Ruth has made it in the court house…”

I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsberg Makes Her Mark by Debbie Levy

(Debbie Levy’s wonderfully-written new biography of America’s first Jewish woman Supreme Court Justice vividly shows young readers how Ruth’s early exposure to racial, religious, ethnic and gender prejudice made her decide to become a lawyer and become a lifelong trailblazer and leader in the courts to fight for those rights. It also notably includes Ruth’s lifelong friendship with Antonio Scalia and how their deep disagreements over legal issues did not keep them from talking about these issues and traveling together around the world. It is a message of talking tolerance deeply needed in these divided times.)

My Name is Not Isabella: Just How Big Can a Little Girl Dream? – Jennifer Fosberry

(Over the course of a day, a little girl pretends to be Sally Ride, Annie Oakley, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, Elizabeth Blackwell, and her own Mommy – concluding “It’s me Isabella, the kindest, smartest, bravest, fastest, toughest, greatest girl that ever was”…dreaming about who she would be…tomorrow.)  
Great book to use to see which of these women the kids recognize – and as a lead in to a show and tell of other biographies for them to read themselves.

More ideas for Women’s History Month: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Women%27s%20History%20Month

3.2018 Bedm.

School Age Storytime–Let’s Go Ride a Bike!

 

K-3 storytime featuring bicycles – includes text to text connection to a well-known Aesop fable (“The Tortoise & the Hare”), visual storytelling via a wordless book, books on perseverance (earning the money for a bicycle rather than having it given to you), generosity (worldwide bike donation program)  and overcoming disability, as well as some fun songs & flannels.

Stella & Roy by Ashley Roy ---- “Who do you think would be faster big girl on a trike or baby brother on a scooter? – see if this reminds you of another story (text to text connection: The Tortoise and the Hare.)

“This next story (The Girl and the Bicycle by Mark Pett) is also about a girl and her little brother, but it is told entirely in pictures – so you’ll need to use your eyes to figure out what is happening… let’s tell it together…” (Girl helps a neighbor with chores for a whole year to earn enough to buy the bicycle in the window but when she goes to buy it, it is gone! Instead she uses the money she earned to get a tricycle for her brother and then receives the bike she wanted from that neighbor – along with a beautiful hug.)

Sally Jean the Bicycle Queen by Cari Best (Another beautiful story of self-reliance: When Sally Jean outgrows her beloved bicycle, she has to figure out a way to get a larger bike since the family can’t afford to buy one.)

Action song: “Bumping up & down in my little red bicycle…  the front wheel’s off and the axle’s broken ..Sally Jean is gonna fix it with her pliers…bumping… the back wheel’s off… Murray’s gonna fix it with his hammer…bumping…”

The Red Bicycle: The Extraordinary Story of One Ordinary Bicycle by Jude Isabella. (told rather than read because the text was too long for our audience)  “This is another story of a red bicycle…it is the true story of a boy in Canada who earned money to buy a bike.  Later he got too tall to ride it, but instead of giving it to a sister or brother, he donated it to an organization that sends bikes to places around the world where they are needed. His bike went along with 4000+ others on a truck, then a ship, then another truck all the way to Africa…where a girl got it so she could go to school since it was too far to walk, then it became a bicycle ambulance so a nurse could take sick and injured people to hospitals”…. showed pix in the back: a bike being used as a mobile bread shop, and ones carrying huge loads of wood and bananas.   Booktalked: My Rows & Piles of Coins by Tolowa Mollel -- another book about a kid in Africa trying to earn enough for a bicycle so he could help his family.

• Bikes for the World, Washington DC USA.  www.bikesfortheworld.org, info @bikesfortheworld.org *.  The do a lot of their collections around DC, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. BfW Video
  "As of 2007-2014 the largest, on an annual basis, of the international recycling organizations and is building a national movement to collect and distribute used bicycles for productive use.  Since beginning in 2005, it has delivered more than 90,000 bicycles to programs serving low-income individuals and their communities across the globe.  In 2013, Bikes for the World delivered 13,650 bicycles to more than a dozen selected service organizations, focusing on Africa and Central America, but with significant numbers going to the Philippines and community groups in the eastern U.S."  More groups: http://www.ibike.org/environment/recycling/recycling-orgs.htm

“Here’s another true story from Africa…what do you notice about the person on the cover?” (He’s riding a bicycle but only has one leg.)

Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson (A disabled boy in Ghana overcomes prejudice and poverty – ultimately going on a 400 mile bike ride to change his country’s attitudes and laws on disabled people.)

Showed pix from Gretchen the Bicycle Dog by Anita Heyman (636.7538 HEY) – (dog from NJ who lost the use of his legs found mobility again through an innovative set of wheels). Some classes: mentioned Mama Zooms by Jan Cowen-Fletcher

“Here’s another interesting set of wheels…”

Flannelboard: Mrs. Armitage on Wheels based on the story by Quentin Blake.  Mrs. Armitage continually adds “improvements” to her bicycle (horns, bucket of water for cleaning her hands after fixing the chain, a toolbox, a seat for her trusty dog “Breakspear”, a picnic basket & music box, umbrellas to keep off the rain and finally a sail for extra “oomph” – until the wind sends the whole contraption down a hill and turns it into a pile of junk…but that doesn’t phase Mrs. A.  She has a new set of wheels: roller skates!

(some classes): recapped Mrs. A’s adventures to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus.”

“How many of you are riding a two-wheeler without training wheels? Riding a bike for the first time without training wheels can be a challenge…but when you do, it feels like magic!”   The Magic Bicycle by Berlie Doherty

Booktalked: The Best Bike Ride Ever by James Proimos – “it is not enough to know how to ride a bike, you need to know how to stop it too!”

Closed with Fast Food by Saxton Freymann

Other fun titles (no time): Bike on Bear  by Cynthia Liu, Little Red Riding Hood: A Newfangled Prairie Tale by Lisa Campbell Ernst, Tillie the Terrible Swede: How One Woman, a Sewing Needle and a Bicycle Changed History by Sue Stauffacher (used two years ago for Women’s History Month) Cromwell Dixon’s Sky-Cycle by John Abbot Nez (Picture Nez) – mostly true story of 1907 Boy Wonder inventor.

Want to add a bit of math?  Check out these bicycle problems from Bedtime Math. http://bedtimemath.org/?s=bicycles

Bedm. 3/16

School Age Storytime: Very Special Dogs

 

Very Special Dogs -- A program introducing Kindergarten-3rd graders to the special things dogs can do for us. Could also combine use elements of this program with a visit from the 4H Guide Dog Training Club.

The Pigeon Wants a Puppy by Mo Willems – Pigeon is desperate for a puppy, until he actually gets one!

How Smudge Came by Nan Gregory -- A young woman with Down’s Syndrome finds an abandoned puppy and brings it along to the hospice where she works.

Flannel: Any Kind of Dog by Lynn Reiser -- Richard wants a dog, but his mom says a dog is “too much trouble!” so she gets him all sorts of other animals instead.

and/or A Pup Just for Me/A Boy Just for Me by Dorothea P. Seeber -- Reversible book tells how a boy and a pup each finally find the friend they were looking for. 

Dogs by Emily Gravett – Quick tour of the variety of dogs – surprise narrator.

A Place for Grace by Jean Davies Okimoto – Grace is a little dog with big ambitions to be a guide dog. Too small for “seeing eye,” she trains as a “hearing ear,” but has some problems learning what she needs to do.

Song: Do Your Ears Hang Low? (done with pantyhose on head!) http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/games/songs/childrens/doyourearsmp3.htm

Lola Goes to Work: A Nine to Five Therapy Dog by Marcia Goldman – a day in the life as told by the dog!

Bark, George by Jules Feiffer – George the dog meows, quacks, oinks, and moos, until the vet finds out why!

RRRALPH by Lois Ehlert – Check out this dog’s vocabulary!

Didn't use (lack of time): Martha Speaks by Susan Meddaugh, My Father the Dog by Elizabeth Bluemie, Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina by Kirby Larsen, The Other Dog by Madeleine L’Engle, Boot & Shoe by Marla Frazee

12.8, 3.15

Frank and Lucky Get Schooled by Lynne Rae Perkins (Winners 2017)

UnCommon Core -- Youth Services Forum 2014 –Slides

For a TERRIFIC post  about using picture book biographies as mentor texts at any grade level, check out: http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/2014/02/heroes-of-history.html




Carol Simon Levin is a Youth Services Librarian at the Bridgewater Branch of the Somerset County Library.  She is a passionate fan of great non-fiction and biography, particularly those titles that spark the imagination of young readers.

Dr. Ellen Pozzi is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the School Library Media Program at William Paterson University. She has been on the Garden State Children Books Awards committee for over a decade, and is a past president of the Children’s Services Section. Ellen enjoys reading nonfiction books for readers of all ages.

A complete copy of this presentation, book & resource lists  can be found here:
http://guides.wpunj.edu/content.php?pid=631942&sid=5228723

Nonfiction Blogs – courtesy of Ellen Pozzi:
•The Uncommon Core
•Nonfiction Monday
•The Nonfiction Detectives
•Great Common Core Nonfiction for YAs
•INK Nonfiction Minute
•The Classroom Bookshelf
•Common Core Exemplar Texts

AASL has two GREAT resources:

1. http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/aaslissues/toolkits/CCSSActionToolkit_2014.pdf Common Core State Standards Action Toolkit for Public Librarians (11 pg. doc)
   
2. http://www.ala.org/aasl/ecollab/ccss101 The Common Core and the Public Librarian: Reaching Patrons and Students (1 hr. Webinar)

Here's the link to the Prezi Ellen and Arlen Kimmelman did at NJLA 2014. It's  "public" and "reusable"  http://prezi.com/ur5gah-zj8ao/teaming-up-to-support-common-core/

In the Prezi, slide  #23 lists what public librarians already do to support Common Core:

• award winning titles
• connections to non-fiction audiobooks
• story times & book clubs
• highlighting primary sources
• navigating the shelves
• topic displays
• lists of matching fiction to nonfiction

That is also the type of information that is in the AASL Toolkit mentioned above.

Here is the link to our bibliography for the presentation:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12C2agjp1l0leBStZsnO5Tn1cR8F2dyyNAAD2Tnn3Vco/edit?usp=sharing

--Mrs. Arlen Kimmelman, Librarian

National Board Certified Teacher

President-Elect, New Jersey Association of School Librarians

Clearview Regional High School, Mullica Hill, NJ 08062

http://clearviewregional.edu/docs/hs/libra/HomePage/Index.html

"Saying you don't need a Librarian because you have the Internet is like saying you don't need a Math Teacher because you have a calculator."  ~Don Reynolds, TLA

Great reviews of "un-common" science picture books: http://www.smartbooksforsmartkids.com/20-best-science-books-children-2014/  (site has great reviews & author interviews in general)

Another good resource:

Picturing the World: Informational Picture Books for Children 

by Kathleen T. Isaacs