Pop-Up Books

Who doesn't love a good pop-up book? They make reading fun for kids and adults! We are going to share some of our favorites as well as some sites to learn how to make your own.

 I Will Never, Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child

We LOVE this one. My son wasn't great about eating vegetables as a 6 month old, and we came across this book by accident as it was part of a box of books I randomly bought. It turned out to be one of our all- time favorites and our son also turned out to be an excellent eater! I highly recommend the book, pop-up version or not!

Check out the pop-up engineering video here.

Listen to the pop-up read aloud here.

Check out the TV show episode here.

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The Color Monster by Anna Llenas

This book is great! Like the Little Spot books and others that are similar, emotions are identified by colors. The pop-ups here are creative and adorable. My son loves interacting with them and my daughters can't wait to get their hands on this fiercely protected book! The price for this version is not quite double the price of a regular paperback, but for us it was worth it. 

Here is a read aloud video showing the pop-ups.

Yellow (happiness)

Green (calm)

Blue (sadness)

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This Book is a Planetarium by Kelli Anderson

It's actually many different things - a planetarium, a speaker, an instrument ,a decoder, a calendar, a spiralgraph.... Most of all, it's fun. I can see this being used for travel especially. I imagine my son using in on long car rides, in hotels, and on planes once we start going longer distances from home again. Kelli has thought of it all!

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The Star Spangled Banner by Calvert Gamwell

This one is cute, and a nice and easy way to introduce the National Anthem of the United States. It's currently out of print, so you'll have to snag a used copy. Its pop-ups aren't anything too fancy, but they do show different ways and places people can be patriotic.

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Auntie Annie has free basic printable pop-up cards. With the ability to print in color or black and white and picture directions, this is a great place to get started with making your own pop-ups.

Best Pop-Up Books has it all! From tutorials to a forum to book lists and even some freebies, you can find whatever it is you're looking for here. Paper engineering is a great skill to have to introduce kids into design and the engineering process. It's also a fun way to spice up projects you may assign students.

Learning about Frog Life Cycles with A Frog in the Bog

 Learning about Frog Life Cycles with A Frog in the Bog by Karma Wilson

We are big Karma Wilson book fans over here. We love the repetition and rhyme as well as the pictures. This one was great because we were able to tie in learning about biomes and life cycles in science while reading as well as practice our number words.

See the read aloud here.

Here are some printables I created for us to work with.

We also watched some videos about the tadpole's life cycle into a frog and learned about where frogs live.

Trials of a Tadpole video

I found a song called The Frog in the Bog. It's a little tricky for preschoolers, but it's fun when a puppet is included. 

Read another post about Karma Wilson books here.

Read more animal life cycle posts here.

Roll and Compute Dice Game

 

I spend a lot of my time blogging about books and reading, because that's what I spend a majority of my time doing both in school and at home with my children. However, I'm always looking for ways to modify and adapt materials others have created to make them more accessible for all children, regardless of age and performance level. 

Some kids struggle to add and subtract without tools, and they get confused when using fingers. Try these games to practice adding, subtracting, and comparing numbers while using dice.

Click on the images to download the Google Doc.

Feel free to add, change, or rearrange, but please don't sell the item if you've used my framework. Sharing for free is okay!

Bear Snores On

 

My little guy and I are working on rhyming and reading short, repetitive text. We were given Bear Stays Up for Christmas when he was a baby, and grabbed the rest of these books by Karma Wilson at the library recently. Check out some of the fun stuff we've done after reading them.

As a teacher with a master's degree in special education, I'm constantly thinking about modifications and accommodations to meet learners' needs, so I included some free printables in different output formats, which allow students to show what they know in different ways.

If your class is like mine usually are, there is a wide range of reading and writing performance, so I'm happy to be able to support you and your learner(s) and provide examples of different ways your students can demonstrate what they've learned.

 

This EdWordle is neat and can be used in many ways. Beginning learners can create their own using words they know from the story. Advanced learners can create their own, including only specific parts of speech or whatever you ask them to do, and even put it in a shape related to the story.

Here's another way of meeting standards, using a table to answer a question. You can even edit the Doc to include a row or two to have students add their own answer! 

Watch the read alouds below!

Bear Wants More video

Bear Says Thanks video

Bear Snores On video

Meet biologist Lzzie Daly and watch this video to learn about how she uses technology in the wild to learn about bears!

Spookley the Square Pumpkin, and other Fall Shape books

 Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano

A fall favorite of many kids, this book is also a fun short movie. Even my husband remembers the name and plot of the book! While we were pumpkin picking the other day, I even heard a child telling his father he was looking for Spookley in the patch! The theme here is that it's okay to be different, and that we should celebrate those differences. We love the rhyming, which allows for our son to help us read along. Here is the read aloud if you can't find the movie streaming.

Pick a Circle, Gather Squares: A Fall Harvest of Shapes by Felicia Sanzari Chernesky

The concept of this book is great, especially for beginning learners. However, the teacher in me gets a bit annoyed at seeing pumpkins be called circles when they're really more spherical. The books could mention faces of objects being 2D shapes, but chooses to call the objects themselves two dimensional figures. Anyway, my son and I have been searching out shapes in our environment lately, so it was nice to read on the day we went to the nearby pumpkin patch.

Walter's Wonderful Web by Tim Hopgood

This book is great for learning about shapes, the engineering process for littles, and alliteration. Walter ties to build webs in the shape of a triangle, circle, square, rectangle, and diamond. There are lots of W words in the book, obviously, and it's pretty repetitive so kids will enjoy joining in. Check out the read aloud below.

Want to read more fall / Halloween posts?

Looking for more shape / geometry posts?

Drop a comment below to share more fall shape books you've read!