Meeting Patricia Polacco!!!

Today, Patricia Polacco visited our school! She has been going to schools in New Jersey for several days and got laryngitis three days ago, but she was still a great sport.

She told us how she comes up with her illustrations...

and even brought her Keeping Quilt! This one is actually a replica created to replace her 130 year old family heirloom, which is now displayed at a museum in Finlay, Ohio.

She told us about her uses of the quilt as a child, including one not mentioned in the book....she used it as a Superman cape!

She said that when she misses a family member, all she has to do is touch parts of the quilt (such as the edge, which was made from her Babushka's scarf) or read a book she has written about them...and they come alive again!

To see what we did to prepare for her visit and read other Polacco posts, click here. If you've never read her books or met her, you can watch this video, where she explains how she became an author and illustrator.

Click here for more Patricia Polacco videos on her website.

Meteor!

Today, we read Meteor. Tomorrow, we meet Patricia Polacco! This was the first book she ever wrote, and it's based on a true story about a meteor that fell from the sky into her grandparents' backyard. Since we just finished up our astronomy unit, my students thought that it was the coolest thing ever. 

Did you know that Patricia and her hometown hold a Meteor Festival every year in July in Michigan?! You get to visit Meteor Ridge Farm, 

see where the meteor landed in her grandparents' backyard when she was a child, 

eat "Thunder Cupcakes" (Have you read Thundercake?! That was my first Polacco book), visit Patricia's Art Studio, 

the Graves House,

and the GAW Center for Arts. You also can listen to Patricia talk about her life and books. Admission is only $10 for adults and free for kids under 12. You can see pictures from the Meteor Festival here.

I promised my students that I'd post pictures of meteors I saw over spring break at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. They're pretty large and come in many colors and shapes!

The Keeping Quilt

We just finished reading The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco. It's a touching story of her family's journey to America and their celebrations that have occurred with the quilt, from weddings to births to deaths. 

Since she's visiting our school on Friday, (I can't believe it's so soon either!) we made a class quilt out of pictures students had drawn since we started reading her books. Here are a few of the "squares" we made.

and her is most of our quilt:

The Butterfly

In preparation for our butterfly study, we read Patricia Polacco's The Butterfly. It's an account of the Holcaust from the point of view of a child - Patricia's great-aunt Monique - in France as she helps Jews escape and hide. Monique becomes friends with a girl named Severine, who is hiding in her cellar with her family. The butterfly in the story symbolizes freedom, as the girls pray that Severine and her parents may one day return to their normal lives. Eventually, Severine must leave Monique's home as their cover has been blown. She loses her parents to a Nazi concentration camp, but survives and reunites with her long lost friend.

Here is a clip from a play that was adapted from the book:

We watched this YouTube Monarch Butterfly video

as well as this time lapse video of a butterfly emerging from its crysalis.

We created these cute butterfly life cycle plates that I started making with my class years ago. (This pic is from Somewhat Simple though. Click the pic to see how to make them!

We also created symmetric butterflies.

Butterfly Quiz

The Bee Tree

A few days ago we read The Bee Tree in preparation for our Patricia Polacco author visit. We created bees and a tree (out of reclaimed brown paper bags) to decorate our display case. It will be the first thing she sees when she enters our school!

My favorite quote from the book is, "There is such sweetness inside of that book too! Such things...adventure, knowledge, and wisdom. But these things do not come easily. You have to pursue them. Just like we ran after the bees to find their tree, so you must also chase these things through the pages of a book!"

Can you see the "flying" bees? I used clear lanyard to hang them since I couldn't find my fishing wire! I was inspired to make a bee hive by wrapping yarn around an old, plastic mayo jar from the cafeteria. 

We also made paper Pysanky eggs to celebrate Rechenka's Eggs and Chicken Sunday. Students also created bunting flags that illustrated their favorite Polacco book. We're working on a "Keeping Quilt" next!

We also did some fun activities that can be found below, including this simile sheet...

and this definition sheet.

We also used these writing paper sheets.

Check out these other bee-related resources!

http://users.manchester.edu/Student/KRHarvey/BeeTree/index.htm

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/resourcesbee_tree.php

http://www.patriciapolacco.com/fun/quizes/beetree.html

Rechenka's Eggs

In the spirit of spring, we read Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco. Most of my students do not celebrate Easter, so we looked at it from an art / author's purpose view.

Babushka is an artist who enjoys painting eggs. One day she comes across a goose that has been shot by a hunter. As she nurses it to health, it begins to lay eggs. The goose, Rechenka, accidentally knocks over a basket of Babushka's carefully painted eggs...right before the Easter Festival in Moskva. Each night until the festival, the goose begins to lay decorative eggs. Babushka says goodbye and thank you to Rechenka as she leaves for the festival, knowing that she is healthy and will rejoin to her flock. After Babushka returns home, she finds a decorative egg in her basket. It begins to shake and make noise. A baby goose hatches and keeps Babushka company for the rest of her life.

My students think that Patricia's purpose was to explain why we celebrate Easter with decorative eggs in baskets! I guess we will have to ask her in a few weeks!

Here are the eggs we made. First we drew a design on dry erase boards. Next, we drew the designs on the eggs using pencils. Then we used Sharpie markers to color in the designs. They're obviously more colorful than Pysanky eggs, but it was certainly easier than painting or dying them!

  Patricia on Reading Rainbow

Scholastic Lesson Plan

Ms. Jacoby's site with tons of activities

The Lemonade Club

While preparing for our author visit by Patricia Polacco in April, I came across The Lemonade Club. Given that one of our fifth grade teachers, one of his students, and our principal are shaving their heads for St. Baldrick's, it was the perfect book to read to my class. It's about a fifth grade girl with leukemia and a class that keeps her spirit up by shaving their own heads! In an interesting twist, their teacher also has cancer - breast cancer. It's a great lesson that...

Click here for interdisciplinary lesson plans.

If you'd like to get involved, pledge your hair to St. Baldrick's, donate your hair to Locks of Love, or get involved in one of the many cancer society charities such as Alex's Lemonade Stand (childhood cancers). I have donated my hair twice - 12 and 10 inches - in honor of my younger sister Melissa. She had colon cancer at the age of 16 and is now almost 28 years old. It's one way of feeling less powerless.

Please consider donating!

Just in Time, Abraham Lincoln!

I know it's kind of late to be posting about Presidents' Day, but things have been crazy between conferences, report cards, and getting ready for Read Across America Day and our author's visit from Patricia Polacco. It's about two months away, but I wanted to get my students ready for her visit, so I killed two birds with one stone. Last week I read them Just in Time, Abraham Lincoln! This week they will be reading some of her other books in literature circles.

If you're looking for comprehension questions, check this freebie out! It has 15 comprehension questions and one open-ended essay.

In addition to all sorts of other President-themed activities, we visited http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents to learn about and write 3 facts about two presidents each. Two presidents x 22 students = 44 presidential fact pages! We also wrote about three things we'd like to accomplish if we were President or one thing we'd accomplish and three things we'd do to accomplish it. We decided that it would be a pretty tough job!

We also took the White House virtual tour.

I showed students pictures from my visits to the Washington area a few years ago.

Can you name the following monuments, statues, and buildings?

Ford's Theater, where Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth

(closed for repairs when I was there)

The House Where Lincoln Died

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery

Eternal flame and graves of JFK and his widow, Jackie

Visit the White House National Park if you're in the Washington, DC area!