Perfecting The Picture Book II With Carmen Oliver...A Writing Barn Online Course To Check Out!

 

My friend and author, Carmen Oliver, has a very exciting online course coming up. It's for anyone who would like to learn how to write picture books. 

Perfecting the Picture Book II With Carmen Oliver, A Writing Barn 6-Week Online Course, runs from August 17-September 21, 2022 from 7:00-9:00pm CST. 

You can register for the online course here. 

Carmen Oliver Joins Us For A Very Special Capstone Virtual Book Club....Join It Here, Friends

I am excited to share the third interview in our NEW Capstone Virtual Book Club. 

This time I had the honor to talk with my dear friend and amazing author and storyteller, Carmen Oliver. 

As shared on the Capstone site,  Carmen Oliver founded the Booking Biz, an agency devoted to bringing award-winning children’s authors and illustrators to schools, libraries, and special events. She blogs regularly for ReaderKidz, a website that provides teachers, librarians, and parents with the resources and inspiration to foster a love of reading in kids, K-5, and judges children’s writing contents for the Texas Book Festival and Austin Family magazine. Bears Make the Best Reading Buddies is her debut picture book. Carmen grew up in Canada and now lives in Texas with her family.

To kick off our time together, Carmen read her book, Bears Make The Best Writing Buddies, from her Bears Make The Best....series. 

We wanted to share this book to celebrate our children as writers as we kick off a new school year. This book is the perfect conversation starter for young writers as they talk through the process of being a writer. 

Carmen and I spoke about how she was inspired as a young girl to be a reader, writer and explorer.  She wants to help children instill those qualities and feelings too.   

You will find the recording of the book club above. 

I also wanted to include this sweet little book trailer for Bears Make The Best Reading Buddies and...

...the Bears Make The Best Writing Buddies poster from Capstone.  You will find it here. 

We hope you enjoy the third in our series and join us for the next Capstone Virtual Book Club coming later this month.  

Thank you, Carmen for being part of the Capstone Virtual Book Club.  Please join us again. 

Oh, and you will find and can subscribe to all of our Virtual Book Clubs here. 

Celebrate Read Across America With These Books....And 3 Extra Special Ones Too!

We celebrate Read Across America this week, one of the best days of the year! 

As we get ready for this awesome week of celebrations, I pulled together a new Padlet full of titles focused around reading, books and all things literacy. 

At Van Meter, we are reading to celebrate this special day with a whole week around the theme Reading Is For Everyone, 

the special literacy champaign created by our friends at Capstone.  You will find the Reading is for Everyone site here.  I will be sharing more in a post tomorrow too. 

Each day there will a fun theme our students and teachers will focus on for our celebrations, so I pulled together a big group of...

...books they can share with as read alouds in their classrooms. 

You will find the Padlet here.  And please feel free to add books to the Padlet too.  

I want to point out a few of my favorites and ones that I can't wait to share with our students and teachers as I pop-in to the classrooms for some read alouds this week. 

This is one of the books that I wrote with Capstone and Cantata Learning.  Find a Book is paired with music, created and sang by Emily Arrow.

You will find this one and all of the other Cantata Learning books on YouTube too. 

Next, is Bear Make The Best Reading Buddies, written by my friend Carmen Oliver and illustrated by Jean Claude.

And one that comes out this week on March 4, Help Wanted Must Love Books, written by my friend Janet Sumner Johnson and illustrated by Courtney Dawson. 

We have had wonderful Skype in the Classroom connections with both Carmen and Janet to share their books and we love what they will bring to this week as we celebrate reading. 

You will find these three and the videos that go with them on the Padlet at the top, as shown here. 

Have a wonderful and fun Read Across America.  We can't wait to celebrating Reading Is For Everyone at Van Meter and with all of you. 

As we celebrate, let's share our celebrations using #ReadingIsForEveryone and #ReadAcrossAmerica. 

Literacy, Writing, Research and Making....Oh My!

The 2nd graders in Megan Warwick's room at Van Meter have been working on an awesome project tying in literacy, opinion writing, research and making. 

 

She focused it around Carmen Oliver's wonderful book, Bears Make The Best Reading Buddies. 

All of our 2nd graders learned about the Bears Make the Best series when we Skyped with Carmen a few weeks ago.  It was so much fun!  You can read all about our Skype here. 

Megan took this book and used it for the inspiration behind an opinion writing piece where students..

...wrote what their Reading Buddy would be. They did brainstorming, organizing, 

and lots of writing around their ideas. 

As they worked on their final draft and illustration, I came in to do a little maker activity with them too. 

As we introduce 3D printing to 2nd graders, we have been using a couple new tools...Wikki Stix and 3Doodler Start. 

Megan's students were going to create the animal they thought would make the best reading buddy from the opinion writing there were working on. 

These tools...

and materials were new to the 2nd graders, 

so they took some time getting to know them. 

They also used Capstone's PebbleGo Animals as a...

...ways to research and look at what their animal looked like. 

We loved watching them cut, bend and fold as they researched.

 As they learned how to use the 3Doodler and Wikki Stix,

 their animals...

 came to life.

Take a look at a few of their special creations!

They had so much fun! 

Projects like this show us how much it means to our students to put meaning to their learning and to let their creativity and passions shine through.  

A New Twist To Our "You've Been Book'd" Program!

One of our most successful reading promotion programs at Van Meter has been You've Been Book'd, which brings several new picture books to our students, teachers and school community every month throughout the year. 

I saw this adorable idea during Read Across America Week last year from Weaver Elementary on Twitter called You've Been Book'd! 

I love this program. It's such a special way to get more books into classrooms and the hands of teachers and students.  

One bag starts out in each of the grade levels kindergarten through fifth grade...

....with a different picture book in each.  These books will be new to our library collections and ones that haven't been shared in the library with our readers yet.  This will make them super special and new for teachers to share and read aloud. 

I have so much fun picking out the You've Been Book'd all year long...even though it sure is hard to narrow down the list. 

You can read the first post about this program at Van Meter here. 

On Monday, I am sending the newest list of 15 amazing picture books.  I love focusing the books on different topics and celebrations that are timely to the month and year. This new list will focus on more for Black History Month, Digital Learning Day which is on February 27 and Read Across America, which we will celebrate the week of March 2-6. 

But this time...I have added a little surprise to the You've Been Book'd books!  

Inside the book, the teachers and students will find a QR code that will take them to something special for each.  

Take a look at a few of the things I included with the QR codes for each book. 

For Help Wanted Must Love Books written by Janet Sumner Johnson and art by Courtney Dawson, 

I found the cutest book trailer...

...on Capstone's YouTube Channel. 

For Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry and illustrated by Vashti Harrison, 

 I included the Oscar-winning Short Film, Hair Love, from Sony Pictures Animation. 

 

For Bears Make the Best Writing Buddies by Carmen Oliver and illustrated by Jean Claude, 

I included the book trailer to another title from this series, 

Bears Make the Best Reading Buddies. 

For Parker Looks Up, An Extraordinary Moment, by Parker Curry and Jessica Curry, illustrated by Brittany Jackson, 

 

I included a short interview from NBC Nightly News with Parker Curry herself. 

 

 For My Footprints by Bao Phi and illustrated by Basia Tran,

I included the book trailer, again from Capstone's YouTube Channel.  

 

And for one that I just had to include for Read Across America, The Incredible Book Eating Boy, 

 I included an interview of Oliver Jeffers drawing the Book Eating Boy himself. 

I hope that these little additions will make the You've Been Book'd selections even more meaningful and inspire our readers and teachers to visit the books, author, illustrators and publishers for even more of their wonderful books and experiences.