100 Day Books
This Tuesday, February 12th, our school will celebrate its 100th day of school. The 100th day of the school year is a special day students in our school look forward to. Celebrations and activities help children grasp the number and reflect on the community they’ve built as a class in the past hundred days together.
Try reading some of these books with your classes.
In
The 100th Day of School by Angela Shelf Medearis, the children learn 100 spelling words, plant 100 seeds, bake 100 cookies, and "do everything the 100 way" to celebrate this special day.
Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten by having her children bring one hundred of something to school, including a one hundred-year-old relative, one hundred candy hearts, and one hundred polka dots.
Mr. George Baker, by Amy Hest, is one-hundred-years old and still learning. Each day this man rides the bus with his six-year-old neighbor to school to learn to read.
The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis is a classic story of the relationship between Michael, a boy, and his one-hundred-year old aunt. Michael’s mother wants to throw out the battered old box that holds the pennies, but Michael understands that the box itself is as important to Aunt Dew as the memories it contains.
The Doll People by Ann M. Martin would make an enticing read aloud for a second or third grade class. In this chapter book, a family of porcelain dolls that has lived in the same house for one hundred years is taken aback when a new family of plastic dolls arrives and doesn't follow The Doll Code of Honor.
The following math books teach the concept of one hundred:
From One to One Hundred by Teri Sloat
One Hundred Hungry Ants by Elinor J. Pinezes
Chicka, Chicka, 1,2,3 by Bill Martin, Jr.
Let’s Count by Tana Hoban
Only One by Marc Harshman
Don’t forget the folk tale “
The Sleeping Beauty.”And the new book that inspired my writing this list is
The American Story 100 True Tales from American History by Jennifer Armstrong.
This collection of three to four minute stories introduces a cast of personalities throughout our country’s history from 1500s to 2000.
The tales will certainly hold readers' attention.
Labels: 100
New Folktale Versions to Storytell
Our school is lucky to have Mitch Weiss and Martha Hamilton, two talented storytellers working with our third grade children this month. Each student in Mrs. McDaniel’s third grade classroom will learn to tell a story to an audience. It’s exciting to see the children gain confidence as they practice their storytelling techniques with encouragement from their classmates and teachers. Listening to others’ stories encourages students to come to the library to find the stories to read.
Mitch and Martha have also been busy publishing their own versions of folktales. We now have these books they authored in our collection: The Hidden Feast is a tale told originally in our country’s south. In this story barnyard animals have a good time at their neighbors’ party until dinner is served. Rooster, not happy with the cornbread served, rudely storms out. The twist ending explains why, ever since, Rooster scratches in the dirt. Tricky Rabbit A Story from Cambodia to Read and Tell tells of a banana-loving rabbit who devises a clever plan to fill his tummy with his favorite fruit. Two pourquois tales they have retold are How Fox Became Red, A Folktale from the Athabaskan Indians of Alaska, and, Why Animals Never Got Fire, A Story of the Coeur d’Alene Indians.
And, Two Fables of Aesop is both fun to read and fun to tell!
The Civil Rights Movement Through Literature
As educators we introduce children to the leaders of the civil rights movement. And the civil rights movement was graced with extraordinary individuals who provided vision and inspiration. But it was also comprised of thousands of heroes whose names are largely unknown to history; people who stood for justice in countless ways as they went about their daily lives.
One way to broaden children’s awareness of this time in our history is to share stories that echo their own lives or the lives of those around them; stories about “everyday” people, even children.
The following are titles published within the last few years that tell the stories of courageous individuals who did not accept injustice. We have the following books in our library.
In
A Sweet Smell of Roses, Angela Johnson writes about two young African American sisters who join a freedom march during the civil rights movement.
In
Grandmama’s Pride by Becky Birtha, six-year-old Sarah Marie experiences segregation for the first time. Every summer, Mama, Sister, and Sarah Marie take the bus down south to visit Grandmama. The three of them sit in the back of the bus, because, as Mama says, it is the best seat. Later, on a walk into town, the girls don't drink from the water fountain because Grandmama says she'll make fresh lemon-mint iced tea when they get home. Throughout the summer, Aunt Maria teaches Sarah Marie how to read. Then Sarah Marie notices signs in town she hadn't been able to read before, like the one on a bathroom door that says "White Women" and another that says "Colored Women." Sarah Marie faces a hard realization about the segregated South of 1956. But in the fall she reads about events happening in places like Clinton, Tennessee, and Montgomery, Alabama. And by the next summer, when they go back to visit Grandmama, they all sit in the front of the bus.
In 1965, third-grader Sheyann Webb and her friend Rachel West help change America by singing and marching for civil rights with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in
Singing for Doctor King by Angela Shelf Medearis.
Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-ins by Carole Boston Weatherford tells of the 1960 civil rights sit-ins at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, as seen through the eyes of a young Southern black girl.
Jacqueline Woodson’s picture book
The Other Side is set around the middle of the twentieth century, in a town where a fence marks the literal dividing line between black and white. African-American Clover watches with interest the young white girl, whose name turns out to be Annie, playing on the other side of the fence each day. Before long, the two girls are chatting through the fence, and soon sit on top of the fence side by side. Woodson’s story gives children an understanding of our society prior to the civil rights movement.
The School Is Not White! A True Story of the Civil Rights Movement by James Ransome tells the Carter family’s struggle to integrate an all-white school in Drew, Mississippi, in 1965.
Mississippi Morning by Ruth Vander Zee tells the story of a boy who discovers a shocking truth about his father. At the same time he becomes aware of the racial hatred that exists in his community.
A Bus of Her Own by Freddi Williams Evans is based on real events that took place in a rural community in Madison, Mississippi in 1949. A community of African-Americans joined together to buy a bus for their children to ride to get to school. At this time African Americans attended separate schools from whites and didn't have transportation to and from school.
When their school is burned to the ground, the people of Chicken Creek rebuild in
Freedom School, Yes! by Amy Littlesugar. Freedom schools like this one helped African-Americans learn about people and places important to their heritage. In 1964, the Mississippi Summer Project brought 600 volunteers to the state of Mississippi to help black students at last learn about their own rich heritage.
These books could be read all year long to help children see how individuals can make differences in our world. I hope you will share these titles with your students.