Do you want to build a snowman?

Are you a Disney fanatic like us?

Do you love singing Disney songs at random times in random places? Do you hold your pets up to the moon? Do you wear mouse ears on your head? Do you bleed pixie dust? 

Have you ever visited a frozen land?

We have!

We recently read a Little Golden Book entitled Frozen. Frozen was written by Victoria Saxon and illustrated by Grace Lee, Masimiliano Narciso, and Andrea Cagol.  This book was published by Random House Disney. 

This book is about two sisters, Elsa and Anna

Elsa and Anna are princesses of  Arendelle. Elsa is born with the ability to control and create ice and snow. One day, when they are young Elsa and Anna have fun playing in the snow that Elsa makes inside the castle. She accidentally hits Anna with a blast of ice, which knocks her unconscious. The king and queen take the girls to see a group of trolls who are able to heal Anna. However, they warn Elsa that she must learn to control her powers or else they could cause great destruction. When they return home, Elsa locks herself away in her room and avoids her sister as much as she can because she is afraid she might harm her. Several years pass, and their mother and father get lost at sea. The two sisters grow into beautiful young ladies. Elsa is still avoiding any contact with the outside world, while Anna yearns to explore the outside world and find true love. On the day of Elsa's coronation to become queen, Elsa gets scared and upset and accidentally places a curse on the kingdom where the kingdom is in a state of an eternal winter. She then runs away to live in isolation. What does Anna do about the curse? Does she find her sister? Does she save the day? Does she find true love? Read this awesome book to find out. 

Frozen is a book that would be good for children to use the reading strategy of visualization.

First, we would read the book to our students.  Students will then complete the following activity.

Visualization activity:

1.       Students will first think of their favorite part of the book. 

2.       Students will then imagine what that part looks like in their head.

3.       Students will then draw their favorite part that they visualized in their head.

4.       Students will then write in their journal why this was their favorite part.

We feel like this would be a wonderful activity to help children with visualization.  Most children love Disney movies and books so they will thoroughly enjoy this book and activity.

We feel this would be an amazing book to show and read to children.  As we are Disney addicts, we feel that any Disney book is a great book.  Disney books have such good imagination in them that they would be good books to help children with visualization.  We thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.  The movie is also a great movie to show children after they create their visualization activity

Read this book to find out who these other amazing characters are:

Click this link to LET IT GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fang-tastic Inferences

Jennifer: Halloween is my favorite holiday. I am too old for trick-or-treating but I love it because I love spooky things.

Do you like Halloween? Did you like it as a kid if not presently?

We recently read a book called Who Will Haunt My House on Halloween? By Jerry Pallotta and David Biedrzycki. The story takes place on Halloween night. This little girl is getting ready by making sure the candy is ready to give out to trick-or-treaters who may stop by her house. She wonders who will “haunt her house” that evening. She thinks about all kinds of monsters and how scary they are.
There could be:
 Ghosts:

 Bats:

Witches:

Skeletons:

To find out how this book ends, read it for yourself!

Making interferences is a hard reading strategy for children to grasp.  We need to really guide the students in this process until they have a complete mastery. 

We would read Who Will Haunt My House on Halloween? to the students before they started the activity.

For the activity, we would give each students three sticky notes.  For each sticky note, there is a different category the students have to write on.  The three categories are as follows:

1.       Observe

a.       The author’s words written in black and white.

2.       Schema

a.       The students’ prior knowledge about the subject.

3.       Inference

a.       What the students are inferring using the author’s words and their own prior knowledge.

An example of this activity is:

	1. Observe = the holiday is Halloween 2. Schema = Halloween is in October 3. Inference = this book takes place in October After the students write something in each of the three categories, the students will share with the class and put their sticky notes in the correct column.  We feel this this book would be a great one to show to children.  Children love to dress up for Halloween and go trick or treating.  Some children might get scared during Halloween, and this book would be a good one to show them that people do get scared just like them.  Children will remain focused when you read this book because it is fun and entertaining.  Children have a lot of prior knowledge about Halloween so this would be a good topic for children to make inferences with.  All in all, we believe that this book would be a great book to show to children. Boys and Girls of every age watch this video to see our town of Halloween!! Check out the website we got the inference activity from!