1-2-3 Peas!!

I may or may not have jumped up and down,  with PURE excitement when I picked my students up from library and one of them had this in their hands:

We went right back to the classroom to read it... and, as expected, all of my students LOVED it!!!

I always read LMNO Peas to my kindergarten friends when working on the alphabet or list books. It has been one of our classroom favorites all year... so we were thrilled that Keith Baker decided to keep up the pea fun with 

1-2-3 Peas

The illustrations are gorgeous, I love the writing, and I have about 5 different ideas of what we can do with this book. :) 

Hooray for fun mentor texts!!!!!!!

Here is a peek inside: 

You can check it out on Amazon by clicking HERE. 

Don't forget to enter my book lovers giveaway... I am giving away 2 other awesome new books!

You can enter HERE. :)

Spring Readers

We are so thrilled that the weather has (finally!) been improving and we've had a chance to go outside more. 

The children were happy to enjoy their "Read to Someone" time outside in our school's beautiful butterfly garden. 

LOVE these Growing Readers!! : ) 

Create a photo slideshow

Where Do Readers Read?

My students loved brainstorming a list of where readers read...

 and drawing their favorite places to dive into a good book. 

They are so smart noting that readers can read on an airplane, in bed, at a bookstore, in the reading corner ....

by the end of our discussion they discovered that readers can read ANYWHERE!

We then took our favorite Seuss books and read all around the school. In offices, empty classrooms, the cafeteria, library, hallway and even stairs. So fun!  :)

We also had fun discussing all of the the things that we love to read about... sharks, soccer, barbies, Dr. Seuss, owls, ... 

LOVE my Growing Readers!!!  : )

Fun Sight Word Review!

    

My students had SO MUCH FUN creating this sight word review. I gave each student (or pair of students) a sight word that we have learned. They could "make it fancy" with any designs they wanted... 

but the BEST part was their creative poses!!

I created a slideshow for them to practice reading their words. I also plan on printing these off and adding them to our Daily 5 sight word work bins. 

They are SUPER excited about this and have already been asking to create number and color words posters! 

: )

Kindergarten Friends,

I LOVE all of your star word posters!!!

Play the slideshow and see if you can read all of these words to your family. 

Make your own free slideshow

We Love Otis!

We had a very special visit from author and illustrator

LOREN LONG. 

The children were THRILLED to meet the creator of our favorite Otis books. 

We've enjoyed

and

in the classroom...

and Loren shared his new book:

*click on the books to check them out on Amazon.*

We feel so lucky to have met an author and illustrator that inspires us! 
Thanks Mr. Long! 

New Year, New Ideas, New Possibilities

I am SO EXITED to welcome a guest post by Rachael from Diving Into Learning

We're both participating in 

Click on the image above to check out this fun blog hop!

Hi everyone! I’m Diving Into Learning and I’m guest blogging today here at Literacy and Laughter. Today I’m going to share a fantastic website with you. Have you ever heard of Your Next Read? It is a website where you type in the title (or subject) and it will recommend books for you! I love using it to find new books to read.

This is what the homepage looks like when you click on the children tab. It brings up different age groups and you can click on a book to see recommendations. Or if you are ready to find books to go along with one you already have or need books for a theme, you can type it into the search box and start looking!

I’m getting ready to start my winter/arctic unit in January so I’ve been searching for books. I first typed in ‘arctic animals.’ It gave me a list of suggestions on the right hand side and then I clicked on the “Amazing Arctic Animals” book and it recommended all of these. Sometimes the books do not go along with the theme/subject of the book in the middle, such as you will get other books written by the author or a similar author, but you can click on the other books to get even more recommendations.

Next I searched for penguins and these are some of the books that it recommended. I am adding the “If you were a Penguin” book to my list of books to get!

I love “The Mitten” by Jan Brett so I did a search to see what other similar books were recommended. You can also see reviews for the books on the right hand side of the page.

So be sure to check out http://www.yournextread.com/us/  next time you need some book ideas!

Thanks for reading my blog post! As a way of saying thank you, here is an arctic theme freebie that you can download from my TPT store: Penguin Odd and Even Number Sorting http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Penguin-Odd-and-Even-Numbers-1-20-Sorting

Please go check out Rachael's Blog: 

You can find my guest post here: