Book Love: Bones

This year multiple kids have expressed an interest in learning a little more about bones, so I included that topic as we've been discussing how to take care of our bodies.

One of my favorite non-fiction authors/illustrators is Steve Jenkins, and his book Bones is a fun and fascinating way to look at different kinds of skeletons.

This is not a book that I read word-for-word outloud to a class of this age group, but the fantastic illustrations are great for exploring what different parts of the body look like as a skeleton. The kids get also get really caught up in guessing and comparing the different animal bones as well.

Read-Aloud Tip: As you move through the pages, invite the kids to try to find and explore the different bones in their body. This works especially well with all the different bones in your hand. This time around I had some kids get really excited when they discovered the bones in their head and face.

Bones Art Extension Activity:  We created our own bones art using glue and q-tips. Some kids also turned their name into bones.

Temporary, Interactive Art Display

We played a guessing game with these "about me" sheets that the students colored at home before school started. Sometimes I will make a class book out of items like this, but this year I wanted to display them in the classroom. I still wanted the students to be able to interact with them, but I didn't want to create a permanent bulletin board or put extra holes in the wall.

So, this is just a super simple and easy idea for creating a temporary display for student work.

What I Did:
I just made a line on the wall using painter's tape, and then adhered the work to the painter's tape. This way, I wasn't worried about damaging the paint on the wall with the tape. If you don't want your display to have a blue line on it, you could easily just do a small piece hidden behind each piece of paper, and use double sided tape to adhere it. That's what I did with the title page, "Friends at School."

To make this display "interactive," I taped the two pages separately so that students could lift the top page to see their school friend underneath.

How it Worked: 
Some pages did fall down as the kids were looking at them, but it was easy to stick them right back up. (In fact, the kids could do it independently, which is always a plus). But I didn't use very strong tape, so if you are worried about that, use stronger tape. When I use this idea again, I will probably use double sided tape for the bottom piece, just to make it a little more stable.

My students have really enjoyed this feature in our classroom. Right now they are especially interested in finding their own name and picture, but it has also been a good tool for practicing the names of their classmates.