Teacher Book Talk Tuesday is a weekly post running through August 22. Each week you'll find favorite kid books, teacher books, and books just for pleasure and a bit of escape. This is a blogger linky, so join up and share your books, too! Here we go.
Master Pieces by Will Lach
This is a way cool book. I got it to teach the concept of portraits. The book is large and easy to see, and includes some of the most important portraits by the art masters.
A bonus is that you can have some fun with it. Each portrait is cut into thirds making it possible to turn sections of the page to mix up Mona Lisa with George Washington and Vincent Van Gogh. The pages are extra thick so they can withstand the handling.
Here is one possible progression:
And why do I want to teach the concept of portrait to five year olds, you ask? Well, in addition to exposing them to art masterpieces, it helps us with our self portraits.
This particular style of self portrait starts with a photo... well, half a photo... and as we create our other half with a bit of directed drawing, we truly learn the concept of symmetry. Those photos were from last year. Here are this year's.
But I digress... this is supposed to be book reviews!
Learning with Lego, 100+ Inspiring Ideas by Danielle Buckley, et al.
I LOVE this teacher book! Talk about a source of hands-on, engaging cross-curricular activities... WOW! Some of those 100 ideas you will have heard about, but most of them will be new. It opened up new and easy ways to not only use Lego, but THINK about using Lego.
Like with water:
Or for math like this:
All of a sudden adding and subtracting with the number line becomes VERY popular.. snort! We're talking science, math, reading... all in this book. And even if you were to already know every idea inside... you don't... the book makes an easy way to remember and use them all... sort of like a Lego Pinterest page in your hand. Oh, and lots of the ideas work with the Duplo size legos, too... yes, I KNOW every kindergarten boy says they love Lego, and only LEGO, but sometimes, some days, the ease of the bigger size is better for that fine muscle development, which makes it even better for some kindergartners. Just sayin'.
As time goes on, more and more "curriculum stuff" is heaped into the kindergarten. I just want to scream STOP!!! But if hands-on learning can be a regular part of center work, with Lego no less, it makes it so much more appropriate. If you feel like play is getting harder and harder to work into the day, then I HIGHLY recommend this book to you. Gold mine, people, gold mine!
Well, for this number two post in the series you only get two books! You see this is the LAST week of school for me... you know all those teacher memes about no tired like end of year teacher tired? Well, I'm trying not to be those one of those meme teachers, even as I can relate. I want to give my all to my kiddos in our last week together, so that is why I sign off and head to bed.... BUT just. you. wait. until next week, when I'll be on summer vacay and as free as a bird to blog all I want. I'm lining up books along my window ledge to snap photos of before I pack up the classroom... including the fart and butt books I promised last week. Hee!
Oh, and while I have you here, if you are interested in classroom design, hidden storage, flexible seating, brain compatible learning spaces... well, you gotta stick around. This summer I'm doing a series... photo and video... with LOTS of ideas.
Thanks for stopping by and see you next time!
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