Halloween Literacy Fun

Last Friday, ABC Life Literacy Canada released an article with tips to incorporate literacy into Halloween celebrations. Here are their suggested tricks and treats to practice literacy skills:

1.Tell ghost stories on Halloween night. Make up your own stories or read a classic scary book together.

2.Have a costume party and write your own unique invitations. Once guests have arrived, why not play a word game using only Halloween-related words!

3.Organize Halloween candy in different ways. Organize by shape, size, candy name, or even candy type, and then trade! This activity helps to reinforce the importance of math in everyday life.

4.Bake a pumpkin pie. Following recipes is a great way to improve both reading and math skills. Children can read the instructions out loud to help measure the ingredients when making a treat for the family.

5.Research the history of Halloween, and share spooky statistics!

SOURCE: Life Literacy Canada

What other ways can you bring integrate literacy in your Halloween celebrations?

Growing Vegetable Soup

Fall is the time of year where we harvest food. Once the weather starts to cool down, it's natural to grab for a sweater and start up a pot of soup for warmth. Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert presents the perfect opportunity to talk about the things that we naturally do at this time of year. Children benefit by learning from relevant events in their lives. Read this book with your child. There are SO MANY ways that you can extend this book into so much more than it is alone. You can develop vocabulary by talking about the names of vegetables, develop tastebuds by sampling different kinds of vegetables, develop narrative skills and numeracy skills by making a pot of soup, and so on.

More information on skills addressed in this book:

• Print motivation – at the end of the story there is a recipe for vegetable soup (shows children practical use of books – they show us how to do things)

• Print awareness – not all sentences finish on the same page they started on. This could start up conversations on how we know when a sentence is done (along with other aspects of punctuation) with older children.

• Vocabulary – vegetables, gardening tools and kitchen supplies are labeled throughout the book, including when they are seeds

• Narrative skills – tells children the process of making vegetable soup from seeds.

Here is an activity you can do with this book:



From the Garden to Soup

o Create vegetables using craft foam.

o Place vegetables in some dirt you may have left over from your garden. You can also use a blanket to simulate earth.

o Invite one child to be a “sounder” and another to be a “matcher”. Have the sounder secretly choose an item from the “dirt” and say the first sound of the item. For example, say “C-c-c” for carrot. Depending on your children’s ability level, you should be the sounder for the first few times that you model the game.

o Once the sound has been heard, the matcher finds an item in the “dirt” that starts with the same sound. If that item is not the item the sounder has chosen, you can help the matcher by giving clues. Continue until the matcher holds up the correct item. When the matcher selects the correct item, he can put it into a soup pot. Play again using another set of children as a sounder and a matcher.

o This activity can help younger children label things that grow in a garden. If you are working with younger children, you could ask them to find colours, “Can you please find me the white onion, orange carrot, red tomato…..

o You could also add some foam alphabet letters to the soup to work on letter recognition. Say, “Can anyone find me a letter “A” and or the letter that starts with the sound /a/ to add to our soup?”


What else would you do with this book?

The Old Lady is Indulging Again...

I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie by Alison Jackson is a cumulative book that mirrors the story I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. This book differs in that it is centred around the traditional Thanksgiving meal.

Remember to explain the rich vocabulary offered along with the rich foods in this story to your child.

Here is a video of a boy reading the story.

Here is a link to the words in the story so you can recite it without the book.

Enjoy the long weekend! Don't eat as much as the old lady!

Terrific Turkey Book

10 Fat Turkeys by Tony Johnston isn't really a Thanksgiving book in itself, but I am featuring it this week because many families will sit down and enjoy a tasty turkey feast this weekend. This simple subtraction book counts down from 10 to 0 turkeys with funny rhyming text and playful illustrations.

Here is an example of a kit created to link math and literature which uses this book:


If you are looking for some additional activities to accompany this book, try these:

Do the turkey pokey - Sing the Hokey Pokey like normal, but then the last line goes as follows: "You do the Turkey Pokey and you gobble all around, that's what it's all about."

Handprint Turkey with Poem

Interesting Turkey Facts

Turkey Cut-Out Pattern - can be used with some of the rhymes below or to help retell the story. I would resize them to 1/2 the size of the paper.

Songs and Rhymes

NINE LITTLE TURKEYS (A Counting Rhyme)
One little, two little, three little turkeys
Four little, five little, six little turkeys
Seven little, eight little, nine little turkeys
Out in the barnyard.

Gobble, gobble, little turkeys
Gobble, gobble, little turkeys,
Gobble, gobble, little turkeys.
Out in the barnyard.
by Jean Warren

TURKEY, TURKEY (A Number & Color Rhyme)
Turkey, turkey number one
Strutting under the yellow sun.

Turkey, turkey number two
Strutting under skies of blue.

Turkey, turkey number three
Strutting under a big green tree.

Turkey, turkey number four
Strutting past the red barn door.
by Jean Warren

MR. TURKEY
Mr. Turkey's tail is big and wide. (spread hands)
He swings it when he walks. (swing hands)
His neck is long, his chin is red. (point)
He gobbles when he talks. (open and close hand like a mouth)

Grateful for great books!

Lately, I spent some time reviewing my collection of Thanksgiving books. Thanksgiving is one of my favourite holidays. Here's why:

- families get together
- there is no gift giving expectation
- fantastic fall weather
- delicious food

The book Thanks for Thanksgiving by Heather Patterson really captures the beauty of Thanksgiving, which is really just being mindful of all simple things that bring us pleasure at this wonderful time of year.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

Thanks for the warm fall sun.

Thanks for the outdoor fun.

Thanks for the blue fall sky

and the sound of the birds' good-bye.

Thanks for the golden trees.

Thanks for the crunch of leaves.

Borrow it from your local public library and share it with your child today :)

Does anyone have any other great suggestions for Thanksgiving books?

We're Going on a Leaf Hunt...

Follow this link to the story/song/rhyme, "We're Going on a Leaf Hunt"!

Take your child outside to hunt for some leaves today!

Are you Leafing Around for a Great Fall Book???

If you find yourself leafing around for a great fall book, look no further than one of the beautiful books above all about LEAVES!

When the Leaf Blew In by Steve Metzger

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert

Leaf Season by Quintan B. Lee

The Leaves are Falling One by One by Steve Metzger

Leaves! Leaves! Leaves! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace

Leaves, Leaves, Leaves by Melvin and Gilda Berger

Of course, there are likely many other great leaf books out there. I have merely listed are ones that I own. When looking for books consider a few things: do you want fiction or non-fiction? Children may not understand that books are about the world we live in because they get used to seeing illustrations instead of pictures. Does the book have a great rhyme? Does it have rich vocabulary? Does your child enjoy it?

Please share the names of any other great fall books. I will have more fall book lists as the weeks pass.

Home-made Fall Book

Here is a book you can make with your child to celebrate the arrival of fall (or even use the fancier word...autumn!) This book is made using shapes cut from fall colours, as well as the letter that each shape begins with. This book can be used to teach colours, vocabulary, letter sounds, and so on.

You can even extend the activity with your child by making a complete alphabet book. Find fall pictures with your child using magazines, the newspaper, and flyers.

Hello, Fall!

Red leaves, yellow leaves,
Brown leaves, orange leaves,
See them fall, One and all.

Bare trees gently swaying,
Everybody’s saying.
Hello, fall! Hello, fall!

Today, September 23, 2010 is the first day of fall or autumn. It is also the fall equinox! Many farmers call this time of year harvest. Wow, today really lends itself naturally to teaching new vocabulary!

Take time out of your busy day to day routine to go for a walk with your child. Look for and talk about signs of fall together. You'll be surprised at the richness of language you can use with your child when observing the natural world. You can talk about leaves (colours, textures, sizes, the trees they come from), animals, temperature, clothes we wear, and so on. Also, these types of activites encourage healthy lifestyles that are good to start practicing early in your child's life.

When you get home from your walk, stretch the activity further and read a great fall book. Compare what you saw outside to what is going on in the book. This will help your child make a connection between books and the world that they live in. If you can find a book with real pictures it will help them to bridge the gap even moreso than a book with illustrations.

As an aside, if you are wondering...we say fall equinox because it is around this time of year, as well as in the spring, that the day and night are approximately equally long.