On this brand new website, Shepherd.com, I review five of my favorite books on animal adaptations for young readers. All except the last one are currently in print and are one of many books in a series. The idea of this new website is to guide you to five of the best books curated by an author who has done extensive research on the subject. Check it out and see what you think!
What I really love on Jamboard is the feature that allows you to upload media. You’ll see that I make extensive use of free clip art offerings. Using the post-it function in the toolbar, you can also make word cards or a game track around the perimeter of the Jamboard. A word of caution here: You can’t customize the font on the post-its or selectively color different letters to highlight a particular orthographic pattern.
This Short Vowel Racer game is designed to be non-competitve in format, but you could, of course, assign players different vowels. In this case, the winner will be a person, not a vowel sound. You’ll see in the video that I’m the maestro of the game board. That’s because the student is very young. With older children, you can share the Jamboard with them so they can make their own moves. I have one student who even adds features to our game board in his spare time.
SPECIAL! For this era of of remote learning!
For these Zoom times, I’ve reconfigured Capture to work on a shared screen. You can cultivate some of the suspense and glee of “swapping” words without touching physical cards.
Olivier Tallec’s picture book is a perfect blend of captivating illustrations and brief compelling lines of text. It’s a fitting parable for the Trump era even though it was published before 2016. To be honest, I was going to post this book review in Nov. 2016, but I didn’t want to jinx the election… So four years and one month later, here it is!
Marvelous Mazes is a good companion for the Stories to Solve books because it too presents games in a book format. And it too is captivating to young and old alike. The meticulously drawn miniature landscapes are intriguing to wander through even for kids who aren’t that into mazes.
Stories to Solve is a book for family fun around the campfire or on the couch in quarantine. It’s a collection of 15 folktales from around the world which George Shannon has rewritten as puzzles for the readers to solve. It’s fascinating to see where different people’s minds go, and to notice that sometimes the youngest family members have the most innovative solutions. If your family likes this collaborative experience, you’ll be happy to hear there are two other books in the series.
from a very old edition of Ladybug magazine
My heart goes out to the parents of pre-readers as they embark on this home-schooling adventure. So I’m going live with some ideas for the young’uns.
These Cork Projects are from a book by Sabine Lohf called Things I Can Make. (Chronicle Books, 1994.)
Based on real-life events, The Hero Two Doors Down is the story of the friendship between Jackie Robinson and a Jewish boy who lived on his block in Brooklyn.
“With PLAY ON WORDS you not only make words, but also change, rearrange and steal words. Combo cards, flip cards, and wild cards give even more options in this tug-of-war word challenge that is just the right mix of brain exercise and fun.”
Laura Hulbert 