Not-so scary Halloween ideas and resources with freebies

Looking for some fresh ideas for Halloween?  

"Scary Night" by Lesley Gibbes received an Honours Award through the Children's Book Council Awards in Australia.  It is not scary at all and would be a terrific companion text for other picture books like "Rosie's Walk" (directional language) and "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" (repetition of location language).  You can read a review of it by clicking on the image below.

Or, you can read a guest post from the author Lesley Gibbs here.  Two Year 6 girls from Covenant Christian School in Sydney, Australia, have posted a book trailer for this new picture book on YouTube.

Free teaching notes for "Scary Night" are available here and here.  There are some terrific ideas for free story props here.  You can also find free interactive activities for this picture book here.  In fact, that site has free interactive activities for all of the shortlisted books in this year's Australian Children's Book Council Awards.

These other sites have free resources and ideas for each of the shortlisted books as well:

Mrs Mac's Library

Mrs B's Interactive Literacy

Dr Jennie Bales

This website has ideas for early years children exploring emotions:
The Little Big Book Club

I put together a mini reading comprehension resource for a friend who was using this title during Book Week.  You can pick up your own freebie copy by clicking on the image below.  If you do download it, I would really appreciate it if you would take a moment to leave feedback in my TPT store.

You can check out my previous blog posts related to picture books for a not-so-scary Halloween, with other freebies, here:
Halloween Treat

Two newly published picture books with a freebie and resource links

"Monster Chef" with freebies

"Monster Chef" by Nick Bland - terrific for a not-so-scary Halloween

Creepy Comparisons with a freebie

"Creepy Carrots" new resource

I have pinned lots of other ideas for Halloween here.

Enjoy all the freebies for a not-so-scary Halloween :)

Halloween treat

A big shout out to Felicity who made my day today by sending me the most awesome email feedback about one of my new resources for Halloween based on Nick Bland's new picture book, Monster Chef.  You can read about the resource at my blog post here.

Felicity's feedback was so lovely.  She used the resource yesterday with her class and has written:

My kids LOVED reading Monster Chef and today we tried the comprehension cards with the QR codes. 

We used our tablets to scan the answers. 

They were totally engaged! Thankyou so much! 

She even included a photo :)  Thank you so much Felicity - you have made my day!

And, guess what I just found out? There is another picture book with a similar title, "Monster Chefs" also published in 2014...I can feel resource making coming on :)  

Click on the image below to find out more about this title and follow my blog (using the links on the right) for notification when the resource to accompany it is ready:

Have a terrific week everyone!

 

Looking for something fresh for Halloween? Two newly published picture books with freebie and resource links

Are you sick of the "We've read that before" line every year when there is a celebration?  

Two newly published picture books will help you to put a new spin on Halloween in the classroom this year - both published just recently in 2014.  One is "Monster Chef" by Nick Bland and the other is "Little Boo" by Stephen Wunderli.

They are both terrific for a not-so-scary Halloween theme, or for teachers who have students who do not celebrate Halloween, as they are along the same theme, but "Little Boo" especially is great for this as it is about a little pumpkin seed that is not scary, until he grows into a pumpkin and becomes a jack-o'-lantern.  The name Jack-o'-lantern comes from an Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack and Irish immigrants brought the tradition to America, with the carving of pumpkins being a regular part of Halloween festivities.

Both of these newly published picture books are fabulous and very cute, with two different characters who are anxious because they are not scary.

I have blogged about Monster Chef before and you can read those blog posts here and here and pick up resource links along the way.

Little Boo is my latest find and I just love it. You could integrate it with a study of the life cycle of pumpkin in science.  What's exciting is that McMillan has provided a free downloadable activity kit for Little Boo that includes a maze and pumpkin carving templates.  Download that freebie here or view a walk-through of the book and review here.  Another review is available here.  This book is so cute! Depending on what you intend to do with it, it could be used in grades 2 to 5.

I have made resources to support both Monster Chef and Little Boo that you will find in my TPT store, but my exciting news is that although I had already discounted them for Halloween (and only made both of them in the past week, so they will be a fresh approach for you), I have discounted them even further as I have put the two together as a bundle, for serious savings :)  You can find out more here.

Bundled, the two resources consist of 57 pages!  All resources involve higher order thinking and are not "busy work" - however they are just print and go, and include graphic organisers/organizers, QR code comprehension questions, a rhyming word matching game, vocabulary work, connections and character traits. 

They also support my very favourite 4H reading strategy that I have blogged about before many times (please check the archives if you are interested in learning more about this).  The 4H reading strategy is an innovation on Question-Answer-Relationships (QAR) but so much easier for the kids to understand.  

Read more about what is in each of the individual resources (i.e. Monster Chef and Little Boo) via my TPT store here or here.

Another resource that has been hugely popular this year for a not-so-scary Halloween focus is "Creepy Carrots". You can read my blog post about that here (with a freebie) or read about my resource to support this picture book here.  

So, to avoid the "same old, same old" or "we've done this before" dread of every teacher, check out these new picture books and check out my blog posts about them (links above) where I share heaps of links to save you time in your Halloween preparation for school this year :)

Thanks for your support everyone!

"Monster Chef" by Nick Bland - terrific for a not-so-scary Halloween

I am so excited to share my new resource with you.  

Last week I blogged about Nick Bland's new picture book "Monster Chef".  You can read that blog post here and pick up a few freebies.  If you are looking for not-so-scary titles you can use around Halloween, you might also be interested in my blog post about "Creepy Carrots" (and another freebie).

I had so much fun putting this new resource together.  You can see a list of the contents beside the image below.





4H reading strategy bookmarks & posters

4H strategy question sort

Making connections

Character traits

Vocabulary work

Story Mountain

Procedural text (recipes)

Rhyming words match game

Compare/contrast venn diagram

QR codes – comprehension multiple choice questions

Here's a quick preview of the resource:

Click on the image above to find out more...

If you would like a copy of this resource, please leave a comment below with your email address and I will choose a couple of winners to receive it for free :)

Please follow my blog (using the links in the right hand comment) to accept this giveaway.

Have a terrific week!

Nick Bland's New Release: Monster Chef (terrific for Halloween and not so scary) with freebies

Well it's official!  I am in love with picture books and one of my favourite authors is fellow Aussie, Nick Bland.
You can hardly imagine my delight when I found his newly published picture book, Monster Chef and I began making connections straight away to Halloween and his other picture book, A Monster Wrote Me a Letter.

I love Nick Bland's writing style with his rollicking use of rhyme and imagery.  

Marcel is the Monster Chef and he has a terrible problem - he wasn't very scary!!!  But, what he did like to do was cook and he makes earthworm spaghetti, hot cactus pies, smelly-sock soup and a cockroach surprise!  Can you imagine the fun the children would have making up imaginary recipes for these gastronomical delights? 

As with all good narratives, this one has the problem of Marcel not being scary even though he is a monster and the solution is actually very clever and creative!  

This is a terrific picture book for Halloween as it isn't scary; it's actually very funny.  Now for some freebies for both books:

Free teaching notes for Monster Chef can be found here and here.  

Interestingly, in my search for goodies for both of these picture books, I stumbled across another book with the same title, "Monster Chef" (different author) so a compare and contrast could be used, however the second title is part of the Vampire School series by Peter Bentley (You can read about it here). I haven't read any titles from this series, but if you have please leave a comment below this post.

You can read about A Monster Wrote Me a Letter here, with excerpts from the book to give you a flavour of the author's engaging style and there are also free teaching notes online. These shared reading notes were freely available on the internet for A Monster Wrote Me a Letter.

Other ideas and activities for using Nick Bland's picture books have been pinned on my pinterest board here.
We don't really celebrate Halloween in schools over here in Australia, so that's why I am keen on books that aren't too scary and I love companion texts and text sets.  

Last year I reviewed Creepy Carrots and provided a freebie for that. You can read that blog post here.  It's another good picture book for Halloween which isn't too scary.  

In fact, all of these picture books could be used to discuss fears and how sometimes our fears can be imagined.  Scaredy Squirrel is also great for this, as is the Children's Book Council Award short-listed picture book Parachute.  You can read my blog post about those two picture books here and pick up another freebie here.

Teachers have told me that their students make text-to-self connections quite easily, but need extra support with making text-to-world or text-to-text connections.  That's why I love it when we can find texts to compare and contrast and explicitly model making connections and venn diagrams are an easy way to do this.

Click on the image below to pick up a venn diagram to compare Nick Bland's two titles: Monster Chef and A Monster Wrote Me a Letter:

Please follow my blog (using the links in the right hand comment) to accept this giveaway.

Please leave a comment below if you can think of any other titles that could be used in a similar way.

Creepy Comparisons with a freebie

We don't really celebrate Halloween in my part of the world, however I really love the picture book, "Creepy Carrots" by Aaron Reynolds and Peter Brown. I think it would be a fun way to touch on Halloween, without any ghosts, witches or really scary stuff.

Jasper Rabbit loves carrots and he is paranoid that the carrots are out to get him.  This is a great text for close reading, as students can explore the illustrations for evidence to support why Jasper might think the carrots are following him.  It's also a great text for problem-solution (top level structure) - Jasper had a problem - how did he solve it?  In addition to this it is a wonderful text for extending students' vocabulary and teaching alliteration.  You can view the "Creepy Carrots" video here:

You can also visit the author's website and the illustrator's website to learn more about their work.

I created a "Creepy Carrots" vocabulary extension resource to support the text that includes:

Vocabulary matching cards

Vocabulary graphic organiser

Alliteration matching cards

Inferring prompts

Creepy vegie writing activity

I find that students often make text-to-self connections easily, but sometimes need support and scaffolding to make text-to-text connections.  That is why I often plan using companion texts.  A terrific companion text for "Creepy Carrots" is "Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!" by Candace Fleming.  You can view a youtube clip here and there are free teacher notes as well.

In a similar way to "Creepy Carrots", Mr McGeely has a problem with the hungry bunnies eating his vegetables.  Similar to "Creepy Carrots" he designs and builds a protective wall to protect his vegetable patch.  Students can compare and contrast the problems and solutions in both texts.  They may also compare and contrast the twists at the end of each story. 

I have created a freebie  with two venn diagrams to help with this.  Click on the images below to grab the freebie and to check out my "Creepy Carrots" resource.

     

Candace Fleming has a sequel to "Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!" called "Tippy-Tippy-Tippy, Hide!" and there are free teacher notes on her website.

Rhonda over at Reading Towards the Stars, has a wonderful freebie using past tense verbs - it's a fun game that students will love, so hop on over to Rhonda's blog to learn about this game and pick up your freebie :)  Any of these hyperlinks will take you there :)

I would love to hear from anyone who has used these texts in the classroom and how you used them.  Also, if you can think of any other companion texts that might fit in here, please let me know.

Have a great week!