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:

A E I O U . . .

We've been working hard at learning sort and long vowel sounds. 

The students had a wonderful time working in their "vowel group" to create these adorable vowel posters. 

Each group had to design and present a vowel poster. They could use resources around the room or their own creative ideas and come up with words that began with their vowel sound.

It was absolutely incredible watching my young 5 and 6 year old students collaborate and communicate through this project. 

They were brainstorming, problem solving, sharing, and so much more. 

Way to go Kindergarten Friends! 

: )

Persuade the Gingerbread Man...

The students enjoyed reading and comparing a variety of Gingerbread books in December. 

One of their favorite Gingerbread activities was writing and discussing how they would persuade a gingerbread man to come with them... 

I just love the way it turned out. Their self-portraits are beautiful and I enjoyed reading all of their speech bubbles. 

We did something similar last year. To check it out click HERE. 

Wordless Wednesday (Why I Love Kindergarten)