February: Our First Sunset Stories Gathering
A Very Special Snowflake by Don Hoffman
Our first meeting was a huge success! We had so many families and LOTS of children come to read with us. Everyone had a wonderful time, got a free book, and enjoyed reading together. We can't wait to do it again on March 17th! Join us for the FUN!
Our first meeting was a huge success! We had so many families and LOTS of children come to read with us. Everyone had a wonderful time, got a free book, and enjoyed reading together. We can't wait to do it again on March 17th! Join us for the FUN!
March: Saw some new faces tonight!
Kitty Cat, Kitty Cat, Are You Waking Up? by Bill Martin, Jr. and Michael Sampson
Thanks to all the families for coming out! Tonight we shared the importance of asking questions while reading. When we ask questions, we have the chance to check what we know about the story. We made "Show what you know" bags full of question cards that ask the reader about a variety of story elements! It was a great way to show parents how easy it is to talk about a book, without even reading the print! Before, During, and After Question Cards
Hope to see you next time: Thursday April 21st @ 6:30
Kitty Cat, Kitty Cat, Are You Waking Up? by Bill Martin, Jr. and Michael Sampson
Thanks to all the families for coming out! Tonight we shared the importance of asking questions while reading. When we ask questions, we have the chance to check what we know about the story. We made "Show what you know" bags full of question cards that ask the reader about a variety of story elements! It was a great way to show parents how easy it is to talk about a book, without even reading the print! Before, During, and After Question Cards
Hope to see you next time: Thursday April 21st @ 6:30
April was a BIG success!
We had another great turnout this month! We had some of the same families that have been with us before and many new families too. We got to share this month's story, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, with about 50 children! We also had our first volunteers come to help out. We really put them to work. Thank you so much to Wendy, Karen, and Allie for all of your help! Check out the pictures of the kids making masks of the characters so they can act out the story at home. Come see us next month, May 19th, to see what we will do next! Check out this movie of Goldie Locks and the Three Bears or how about a poem When Goldilocks Went to the House of the Bears
May: Did YOU take the cookie from the cookie jar?
Using repetitive text is a great way to help students of all levels of language and literacy participate in a story. This month's book also offered question and answer or call and response style of reading as well as inflection and expression when using a period, question mark, and exclamation point. After sharing the story once, our reader handed out name cards to several children. We took some time to identify who had which name and then played our cookie thief story all over again. As we read, when someone's name was called, they jumped up and said, "Who me? Couldn't be!" as the rest of the group shouted, "Yes you! Then who?"
Print, cut apart, and put in order your own Reader's Theater script
School's out, but Sunset Stories is still in session! See you in June!
Using repetitive text is a great way to help students of all levels of language and literacy participate in a story. This month's book also offered question and answer or call and response style of reading as well as inflection and expression when using a period, question mark, and exclamation point. After sharing the story once, our reader handed out name cards to several children. We took some time to identify who had which name and then played our cookie thief story all over again. As we read, when someone's name was called, they jumped up and said, "Who me? Couldn't be!" as the rest of the group shouted, "Yes you! Then who?"
Print, cut apart, and put in order your own Reader's Theater script
School's out, but Sunset Stories is still in session! See you in June!
June: Summer's here and the animals are loose!
Animal Strike at the Zoo, It's True! by Karma Wilson
Oh no! The animals won't work at the zoo! What will the zookeeper do?
We made zoo animal Picture Popsicles! With our Picture Popsicles we can retell the story in our own words, put the animals in order or sequence the story, Check out these kids retelling the story too!
Oh no! The animals won't work at the zoo! What will the zookeeper do?
We made zoo animal Picture Popsicles! With our Picture Popsicles we can retell the story in our own words, put the animals in order or sequence the story, Check out these kids retelling the story too!
July: Self-selection encourages interest and ownership!
Thanks to all our kids that jumped out of the pool just to hear this month's story!
Everyone got to pick their own book today! Self selection is very important to encourage interest, ownership, and to begin to build awareness of which books are:
too hard, too easy, or just right.
When traveling to the Public Library or book store allow your child to select books that are just right, that means your child can read most of the words on the page independently. We like to use a five finger rule: try reading one page, if you make more than five mistakes on that page, that book may be too hard.
When books are too hard you won't understand what you've just read. But sometimes, it's just fun to look at something you're interested in and that's okay too! :)
When books are just right you can read the words easily by yourself and you can understand what you've read.
Too easy books are the fun ones that you can read so easy that they become good practice for smooth, fluent reading.
Choosing 1-2 too hard books (because they are interesting), 3-5 just right books, and 1-2 too easy books are a great way to encourage a variety of reading interests that still encourages choice and self-selection!
Check out our READ ALL ABOUT IT! activity, if you can do all these things with the book you've chosen...it's a JUST RIGHT book!
Everyone got to pick their own book today! Self selection is very important to encourage interest, ownership, and to begin to build awareness of which books are:
too hard, too easy, or just right.
When traveling to the Public Library or book store allow your child to select books that are just right, that means your child can read most of the words on the page independently. We like to use a five finger rule: try reading one page, if you make more than five mistakes on that page, that book may be too hard.
When books are too hard you won't understand what you've just read. But sometimes, it's just fun to look at something you're interested in and that's okay too! :)
When books are just right you can read the words easily by yourself and you can understand what you've read.
Too easy books are the fun ones that you can read so easy that they become good practice for smooth, fluent reading.
Choosing 1-2 too hard books (because they are interesting), 3-5 just right books, and 1-2 too easy books are a great way to encourage a variety of reading interests that still encourages choice and self-selection!
Check out our READ ALL ABOUT IT! activity, if you can do all these things with the book you've chosen...it's a JUST RIGHT book!
August: Welcome back to school!
The Biggest Apple Ever by Steven Kroll
Sequencing is the process of putting events in the correct order to retell the story. This can be done aloud, in pictures, in actions, and in writing. We made sequence pies with the events that Clayton and the other Mouseville School students go through to find the biggest apple anyone has ever seen! Take a look at our slices. Can you put the pie back together in the correct order?
Sequencing is the process of putting events in the correct order to retell the story. This can be done aloud, in pictures, in actions, and in writing. We made sequence pies with the events that Clayton and the other Mouseville School students go through to find the biggest apple anyone has ever seen! Take a look at our slices. Can you put the pie back together in the correct order?
September: Building your community and your vocabulary
Just Critters Who Care by Mercer Mayer is all about volunteering in the community; picking up trash and helping out our neighbors. This was a great book for beginning readers, but had a lot of new words that could use previewing and reviewing to better understand the story. One of the best ways for children to acquire new vocabulary and have it stick so they can recall it for later use, is to have a child develop their own definition and create an illustration that is meaningful to them. It's all about exposure and ownership!
October: Spookley Saves the Day!
The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano
Adjectives (adj.) are words that describe nouns (n. person, place, or thing). Using adjectives helps a reader make a better picture in their head about what something looks, smells, feels, tastes, or sounds like, even what it's made of. After reading our story and watching listening to the Spookley story video, we sang the Pumpkin Song using different adjectives to describe our pumpkins.
Here are just some of our pumpkin adjectives you can use to describe your drawing of a silly, crazy, goofy, rectangular, colorful, squishy pumpkin.
Adjectives (adj.) are words that describe nouns (n. person, place, or thing). Using adjectives helps a reader make a better picture in their head about what something looks, smells, feels, tastes, or sounds like, even what it's made of. After reading our story and watching listening to the Spookley story video, we sang the Pumpkin Song using different adjectives to describe our pumpkins.
Here are just some of our pumpkin adjectives you can use to describe your drawing of a silly, crazy, goofy, rectangular, colorful, squishy pumpkin.
November: It's a bilingual counting Fiesta!
Come out Thursday, November 17th at 6:30 for our next story!
Fiesta! by Ginger Folglesong Guy Illustrated by René King Moreno
For all of our really young learners, check out Rosita's Fiesta counting game!
Fiesta! by Ginger Folglesong Guy Illustrated by René King Moreno
For all of our really young learners, check out Rosita's Fiesta counting game!
December: What can you do with just one mitten?
Thursday, December 15th at 6:30
One Mitten by Kristine O'Connell George Illustrated by Maggie Smith
We love poems and songs. It just sets the right tone for a great story. Singing and poetry helps build fluency, introduces vocabulary and can get kids moving! We started our with Mittens poem, then read our book discovered what could be created with just one mitten. Check out our mitten word match up game pictures below!
One Mitten by Kristine O'Connell George Illustrated by Maggie Smith
We love poems and songs. It just sets the right tone for a great story. Singing and poetry helps build fluency, introduces vocabulary and can get kids moving! We started our with Mittens poem, then read our book discovered what could be created with just one mitten. Check out our mitten word match up game pictures below!
January: Building the biggest snowman EVER!
Remember our book from August, The Biggest Apple Ever! by Steven Kroll? Well, we've brought this great author back to tell about building The Biggest Snowman Ever! We started with The Chubby Snowman poem, read our story, then made snowmen to tell the beginning, middle, and end.
Holy Cow! Check out this REAL snowman built in Olympia, Maine, it's made of over 122-foot-tall mountain of snow!
Holy Cow! Check out this REAL snowman built in Olympia, Maine, it's made of over 122-foot-tall mountain of snow!
February: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
This month Sunset Stories celebrated serving our community for a whole year! Can you believe it? We've given over 400 free books away this year to help our Meadowcreek Elementary families build better literacy in their homes! We can't thank our families and our volunteers enough for all their help and support along the way! THANK YOU!
To keep the party going, we read Clifford's Birthday Party by Norman Bridwell. Of course we had to sing happy birthday, so we sang it three different ways, in English, Spanish, and then in American Sign Language (ASL) too!
Listen to the story again, plan your own Clifford Party at PBS Kids, or check out fun some Clifford games!
To keep the party going, we read Clifford's Birthday Party by Norman Bridwell. Of course we had to sing happy birthday, so we sang it three different ways, in English, Spanish, and then in American Sign Language (ASL) too!
Listen to the story again, plan your own Clifford Party at PBS Kids, or check out fun some Clifford games!
March: The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
Chicken Little didn't see the acorn fall on his tail, he thought it was a piece of the sky! Silly Chicken!
Tonight we started with matching the rhyming words of the characters of our story, Loosey Goosey, Lucky Ducky, Cocky Locky, and Henny Penny.
We noticed that on each page Chicken Little always say, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling! I'm off the tell the king!" So, at the end of each page we read Chicken Little's words together. That way EVERY reader can read along.
Check out our chickens!
Tonight we started with matching the rhyming words of the characters of our story, Loosey Goosey, Lucky Ducky, Cocky Locky, and Henny Penny.
We noticed that on each page Chicken Little always say, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling! I'm off the tell the king!" So, at the end of each page we read Chicken Little's words together. That way EVERY reader can read along.
Check out our chickens!
April: Pancakes with curious monkey?
Tonight we read Curious George Makes Pancakes by Margret and H.A. Rey.
As always, George causes some trouble, but with delicious pancakes, how could you go wrong? Yum, yum!
Usually, we read the story and work on reading and writing. Tonight, we shared how to bring math into reading. We colored four pancakes any flavor we wanted, then cut them into fractions, or equal pieces (whole, half, third, fourth). Families were able to talk about how much they ate, how much was left over, and what fractions were equal. Make your own fraction pancakes!
Listen to the story again!
Want to make pancakes at home? Learn how with this recipe
As always, George causes some trouble, but with delicious pancakes, how could you go wrong? Yum, yum!
Usually, we read the story and work on reading and writing. Tonight, we shared how to bring math into reading. We colored four pancakes any flavor we wanted, then cut them into fractions, or equal pieces (whole, half, third, fourth). Families were able to talk about how much they ate, how much was left over, and what fractions were equal. Make your own fraction pancakes!
Listen to the story again!
Want to make pancakes at home? Learn how with this recipe
May: Saying good-bye, Our Last Sunset Stories
May will be our last Sunset Stories. We hope we'll be able to raise more money to buy more books soon.
