Our School Garden! Planting Seeds of Inspiration

Toward the end of my summer vacation, I searched our local library for appropriate books to begin the school year. I came home with a sizable stack: Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes, Foxy by Emma Dodd, and The first Day of School by Mercer Mayer, among other familiar titles. Tucked in the middle of my pile was one I hadn’t seen before—Our School Garden, by Rick Swann, illustrated by Christy Hale.

The book begins with a poem about a child’s first day at a new school. He’s given a tour by another student and . . .

            He shows me the library, office, nurse,

            Lunchroom, art and gym.

            “The best is last. He grins. “Out here!”

            I open double doors expecting

Playfields, courts, or jungle gyms

            But stop in place, amazed.

            By what? A living space

            With vibrant greens, fruits and flowers

            And hum of bees . . .

            Our school garden!

The cheery illustrations reminded me of our own school garden. 

This book is longer than those I usually read to my speech students so I poked around and selected a few short sections to provide a springboard for further discussion. Like seeds planted in fertile soil, the author dropped bits of information within the book’s pages, which easily sprouted into further enquiry and exploration. The blend of fiction and nonfiction fit in nicely with our Common Core Standards and the varying tastes of my students.

After a few pages, the kids were inspired to draw some of their favorite plants and garden creatures:

One student, Lewis, was particularly creative:

When I asked about his drawing Lewis told me “It’s my pet worm, ‘Whizzy’. He wears a cowboy hat. I found him in the garden and he was cold so he crawled up my pant leg and I took him home. He doesn’t like living outside.”

I admired the drawing and the story. With that encouragement, and the admiration of his peers, Lewis continued. “He’s getting old. He’s turning browner and all scrunkely.”

Lewis has excellent language skills but I thought I might as well take the opportunity to expand his vocabulary so I asked what ‘scrunkely’ means. I was hoping to give him a real word that might do as well as the one he'd created.

“You know, he has those circles on his body and they’re getting, ‘scrunkely,’ like this.” He circled his hands, shook them rapidly and scrunched up his face. I wasn’t able to come up with a better word for that, so 'scrunkely' it is. (And I thought I was going to expand Lewis’ vocabulary—he just expanded mine.)

As the author said in Our School Garden!

“A school garden is a wonderful place to learn about the environment and our local food system. But did you know that it’s also a great place to explore science, math, social studies, art, and writing?”

After visiting our own garden this week, and hearing the kids’ discussions, I have no doubt the author is correct. Our students plant and care for seedlings, measure spaces, and calculate costs and profits during our spring plant sale. As to writing, just ask Lewis. He’s a great storyteller and, it seems to me, our garden planted seeds of inspiration in a future writer. 

The Helpful Puppy & Helpful Kids

The Helpful Puppy, by Kim Zarins and illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, was most helpful indeed! He helped soothe the frazzled nerves of a few new kindergarten students who came to my room for their first day of speech therapy. He entertained the more confident first graders who bounded into the room for their first day of speech after summer vacation. And he inspired wonderful conversations about animals and farm life when my second graders noticed the book sitting on the shelf near our worktable. I hadn’t planned to read it to the older kids, but they didn’t want to miss out so I grabbed the book and they gathered around to hear the story. Later in the year, I imagine, they’ll be too sophisticated for this one, but not yet.

In this charming tale, the puppy travels around the farm, looking for ways to help. He’s too small to pull a cart like the ox or carry riders like the horse. He’s not fast enough to catch a mouse like the farm cat and he couldn’t even give a wake-up call like the rooster. But my students could. They all joined in when I read the rooster’s crow, “COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO”, even the newly minted second graders.

The illustrations prompted lots of stories about the kids’ own animals, like Jayman’s chickens, Joel’s cows, and Olivya’s new Rottweiler puppy, Roxy. In the middle of her description of this energetic addition to their family, a worried grimace crept over her face and Olivya said, “I forgot to brush my teeth!” I wondered where that came from – she is usually good about staying on topic. Before I had a chance to ask, she added, “I brushed Roxy’s teeth but I forgot mine!” (I hope Roxy has her own toothbrush.)

What a helpful child. That brought us back to our conversation about the book and how the animals each did their part to help the farm run smoothly, and how we all do our part to make our school run smoothly. When I asked the kids how they could be helpful around the campus, they had great ideas: pick up garbage from the playground, be nice to other people, if someone gets hurt, help them go to the nurse. Several students quoted our school rules: be kind, be safe, be responsible. Hailey told us she helps by reminding her big brother to follow those school rules, “But he doesn’t listen AT ALL!”

I enjoyed the conversation prompted by this story and we decided we’d all like to be helpful in hopes we’d make the world a better place, whether on a farm, at home or around our school.

My students gave The Helpful Puppy a big thumbs-up.

Back to School!

Our students returned to school this week and it won’t be long before my speech groups start again. Around the campus I saw many new faces. A few had startled-wide eyes and slippery smiles that turned up one moment and quivered into a frown the next. Several parents mirrored the look. I held trembling hands when helping a few five-year-olds find their classrooms for the first time. Apprehension passed over older student faces too, but they were quick to break into a smile when they saw a friend or teacher they’d missed over the summer.

Unlike a classroom teacher, my program doesn’t start on the first day of school so I’m free to help in other ways – like shepherding lost children to their rooms and supervising the early arrivers on the playground. On Tuesday, I was doing just that, and listening to the kids tell about their summer vacations, when we all noticed the sky. It was absolutely stunning. The sun pyramided down through a break in the clouds and lit the rest of the expanse with a silver-yellow glow.  I wish I’d had a camera with me, but since I didn’t I’ll share a photo I took last year on my first day back to school. The formations were similar but it was a little earlier in the day when I took this photo.

I asked the kids what they thought the sky looked like and one child said it looked like mountains. Another agreed, “Yes, mountains.” But Maddie pointed toward one long ray of light and said, “That looks like a key.” Those words ignited lively chatter and brought a glitter to the kids’ eyes as we talked of what that key might open and where a door through the clouds might lead. The bell rang before I’d heard enough, but I think I’ll learn more about that magic key in the future. Maddie is a speech student and she loves to create stories.

Now that school is in session, my blog-vacation has ended and I’m happy to be back. I had a productive summer working on other writing projects and scouting out new books to share with my students this year. You’ll be hearing about them in the months to come along with the kids’ reactions. And you might even hear some of their own stories. After all, Maddie found the key to a rich imaginary world and I know she’ll be willing to share it with others.

Welcome Summer!

When I closed my speech room door on Friday I closed a year of speech services at Redwood Elementary. It feels something like closing a good book. I’ll hold these young “characters” in my mind long after they leave our campus. Some of them I’ll see again next year but others are moving up to another school or off to another city. I’ll miss them. But many have left me with mementos to remember them by:

And many authors have left these students with treasures to remember over the summer and into the coming years. About a month ago, one of my second grade students drew a blockish bird with skinny legs and a lot of charm. When I asked Bodie where he learned to draw like that, he said, “You know, that book.”

I didn’t know. But the bird looked strangely familiar and before long I remembered, Calvin Can't Fly: The Story of a Bookworm Birdie by Jennifer Berne and illustrated by Keith Bendis. Bodie had drawn a Calvin look-alike! I introduced the story over a year ago and haven’t had it in the speech room since that time. Bodie doesn’t own the book but he hasn’t forgotten the adorable Calvin or the story.

A few months before that when Landen, a young first grader, asked for the book about the really, really loud kid I knew exactly what he was thinking of – Holler Loudly, by Cynthia Leitich Smith, illustrated by Barry Gott. I read that book in the spring of 2012 when Landen was in kindergarten and then donated it to our school library so other kids could check it out. I don’t think I ever saw a child more excited about a book than Landen was when we read this story in his kindergarten year. He felt a special bond with Holler.

The kids often ask for stories we’ve read in the past or ask if they can make up their own, modeled after a favorite book. On Thursday of this week, when the kids were cleaning out their folders, seven-year-old Esmeralda ran across her story, “Creepy Bananas!” A smile spread across her face and her eyes widened in pleasure. She wrote this tale last September after we read Creepy Carrots! by Aaron Reynolds, illustrated by Peter Brown. She plans to add more details this summer so she tucked the pages back into her folder and took it home. I hope I’ll see the revised version next year.

I’m going to follow Esmeralda’s example and work on my own stories this summer. To fully immerse myself in these projects I’ll be taking a blog-vacation, but I’ll be back in the fall. And since, when I write, I like to read the best stories I can get my hands on, I am likely to discover more wonderful books. When school is back in session and the students walk through my door, I’ll be ready with a new supply. And soon thereafter, I’ll have more speech-room stories to share with you.

Have a wonderful summer!

Take a Gander at Geese!

Two weeks ago I featured some of my students’ artwork modeled after Mo Willems’ goslings from That Is Not a Good Idea! The kids loved making those darling animals almost as much as they loved the book. At the time, I thought I’d pair the story with a nonfiction book about geese but I couldn’t find one appropriate for the five to seven-year-old crowd. I searched on-line through our county library system and, though I didn’t find a perfect match, I found a wonderful book, Geese by Darice Bailer. It came in to our local library on Tuesday and so this week we were able to compare and contrast facts and fiction.

Darice Bailer’s book was written for grades three and above so it was a bit advanced for my students but I was able to modify the text as I read and the kids had a chance to see beautiful photos of real geese and goslings. They may not be as expressive as Willems’ hatchlings but there is no denying the down covered babies in this book are adorable. I was as enthralled as my students when I turned to page twenty and saw a mother Canada goose with a young gosling nestled on her back, sleeping. The photos in this book inspired several “oh look!” and “how cute” and general sighs of longing to own a fluffy young gosling. They also inspired some imitative drawings. Take a look:

 

The stately neck of the adult Canada goose caught the eye of several of my students and they were amazed to discover:

“The Canada goose has excellent hearing and can even hear a nearby dog’s tail wag!”

The kids were charmed when I read about the family life of geese – they choose their mates for life and work together to protect their young. When a goose needs to leave her nest, her mate keeps an eye on her and her eggs.

“If a predator approaches the mother goose or the nest, the gander will stand up tall, stretch out his neck, and hiss. He will chase after the intruder and attack it with his wings.”

My students wondered if a gander might chase off a fox like the one pretending to court the goose in Mo Willem’s story. I couldn’t answer with authority but I have my doubts. The hungry fox pictured in Darice Bailer’s book didn’t look like he’d run from an angry gander! On the same page, we read that in 1975, biologists moved Canada geese onto a fox-free island to protect the endangered Aleutian Canada geese from that predator. It sounds like those ganders weren’t taking on any foxes.

With the emphasis on balancing fiction and nonfiction in the Common Core Standards, I was happy to find this appealing fact-filled book. Perhaps next year I’ll find a more age-appropriate pairing for Mo Willems’ book. I hope to find many such pairings and if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.