Favorite Halloween Literature

Last week I posted about a few of my favorite pumpkin books to use in the classroom. I wanted to share a few of my favorite Halloween books this time. I know many schools are not allowed to do anything 'Halloweeny'... So - if that is you - I'm sorry!

For those that are allowed....

 Here are a few of my faves... (I have almost 25 Halloween books.... so I picked a few...)

Monster Town

A cute book about different monsters throughout the town. This would be a great read-aloud followed by a monster writing activity! Students can cite information from the text to describe each monster and use this in their writing also! :) 

Haunted Castle on All Hallow's Eve

This is a fun Jack and Annie book that can be used as a read aloud over a week or two. Mary Pope Osborne provides a lot of opportunities for the children to practice visualizing since there are few pictures in the story. I can always find journal prompts from Magic Tree House books that the children enjoy completing quick writes about - so that is a great way to build writing endurance and practice writing about a given topic. 

Skeleton Meets the Mummy

Super cute story about a skeleton that is going trick-or-treating.... but gets a good scare! This can be used to practice sequencing and order of events. Point of view can also be discussed while reading this book, or in a mini-lesson before. As a response students can be asked who they would rather meet on a dark night in the forest and why - using some information from the text in their response. 

Nate the Great and the Halloween Hunt

Here is a favorite character to follow through the holidays! Nate and Sludge are at it again... this time trying to help Rosamond find her cat. Lots of adventures and costumes along the way! This would be good for sequencing events in a story, or story structure of a fiction book.

In The Haunted House

This story follows two children as they explore a haunted house. The characters are rarely seen, mostly just their feet - so this would be a good story to incorporate character traits and inferring character actions or ideas - the children should be able to put themselves into the character's place fairly easily. 

This can also be used to practice identifying rhyming words! :) 

Go Away, Big Green Monster

I love using this story for sequencing and a monster craft! Even though the story is about a monster, it is not very scary... pieces of the monster are introduced one page at a time... and build the while monster in the middle of the story. The children love getting to yell at the monster and watch as each turn of the page makes the monster disappear. This is wonderful for sequencing and making predictions! 

Halloween Is...

An illustrated nonfiction book to introduce children to the origins of Halloween. A KWL would be a good tool to use before reading this book, and then work in groups to compare and contrast what they thought Halloween was before reading, and what they know Halloween is about after reading. This is written by Gail Gibbons, she is one of my favorite non-fiction authors for little learners! 

Some other cute books that I love....

Skeleton Hiccups

Room on the Broom

and of course...

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything 

:)

Praise to the Fudge!

OMG. I am SO HAPPY to be finished with this book companion.... 

FUDGE-A-MANIA

I can't adequately express how excited I am to be finished! I was in high school when this book was published, so I never read it in grade school.... I missed a whole bunch of fudge! :) 

My second graders will be reading this when we get back to school so I wanted to be prepared for the first nine weeks! WHEW. I have comprehension questions for the kids, for the teachers.... a writing prompt, a graphing activity, journal ideas....

OH!

And a flip book of the story elements!

I have spent most of this week on FUDGE....

and I am so happy to be finished! 

Head over to TeachersPayTeachers to check it out!

Want one for free? 

Leave me some love and I will have my DD pick a lucky number when we get home...

Don't forget to leave your email! 

To celebrate... we are heading to IKEA today! 

I can barely contain my excitement.... 

Back to School Picture Book Linky

I am linking up with DeAnne at First Grade and Fabulous today for her Back to School Book Linky. 

I don't teach first grade anymore, but I did... for six years... 

I love it.. I miss it...

First grade has my heart.

{enough sappy.... onto the books...}

I am really excited because the book that I LOVE to use at the beginning of the year hasn't been listed yet! I also thought I'd include some first weeks of school ideas and plans. A few years ago I gave birth to my son on the second day of school. Yep - I went into labor a week early {which was a GOOD thing because little man - wasn't so little.... 9.5 pounds...} I was planning on being at school that whole first week. I didn't want to leave a sub in my room during the first week 

1. it's CRAZY!

2. I'm OCD. 

:)

 The book that I always start my new year off with is Mark Teague's How I Spent My Summer Vacation.  This is one of my favorite books to use frequently during the year for different reasons. This story has LOTS of great vocabulary, rhyming words, and visualization opportunities. It is also a great way to connect with the children about their vacation, and gives you an opportunity to share about yours. This book easily lends itself to writing activities, even if its only drawing pictures.
I like to make a book of our own Summer Vacations with my class and put it in the book center for them to look at later.
Here is a cute, free product I found on tpt that goes along with it...

 Here are two of my other favorites for the first day...
Brand-New Pencils, Brand-New Books is a great back to school/starting school book - all around.

Miss Smith's Incredible Storybook is great for giving the kids the idea of 'getting into' a book. I always share with them that this is how I feel when I start reading a book and that is why I love reading so much... because I can always make the pictures in my head and feel like I am in the story with the characters.

Head over and link up!
I'd love to hear your favorite back to school books! :) 

Product Swap

It's Product Swap time again!

Thanks to Jessica Stanford for putting this together! These are always so much fun!

I was paired up with the amazing Amy at The Resource(ful) Room.

I tried out her April Fluency Packs (tpt store here)
Here are a few things that are included...
click on the picture to head straight to her product.

There are 5 different ways to practice fluency all with a spring theme! I had my two personal kids test this one out, and it was a big hit!

The trackers and spy glasses were another huge hit - We are all about clouds in my house - and wouldn't you know it - there were cloud spy glasses and cloud trackers! Woot!


My daughter loved the beat the timer reading. Anything that gets kids excited about reading, is awesome in my book! :)
My two littles also played the Spring Showers phrase game. (Well... g1 played and g2 pretended to play...) But we have to let him think he's included! :)

The last activity we did was Use your Unique Voice. This was so much fun! I actually recorded my daughter doing this, because it was so much fun... I should have done iMovie so I could share - but it was a voice memo... :(

I am so excited that I was able to try this product out - I have a bunch of the other ones on my wishlist now! These would be amazing practice for my 2-5 ELL kids - there are basic sentences, lots of sight words, and it would get them talking and practicing English!

I hope you enjoyed this product swap as much as I did! Don't forget to head over to The Resource(ful) Room to check out her product review on me! :) {I hope she likes it!}
And head over to Jessica Stanford's blog to see all the other product swappers! Have a great weekend! :)