Creative Classroom: Q is for Duck

At my last visit to the public library, this book caught my eye. Q Is for Duck: An Alphabet Guessing Game by Mary Elting, Michael Folsom, and Jack Kent is an amusing read. Many of my third graders love telling riddles, so I thought they would enjoy this book. Today at lunch I read it to them. Sure enough, they had a lot of fun with it.

The riddles in the book are very easy for third-graders, which I think makes this book a good inspiration for the children to create their own alphabet riddles, using their vocabulary and/or spelling words. What a fun and creative way to practice vocab!

Reading Corner: Sheep in a Jeep

"Beep! Beep!
Sheep in a jeep
on a hill that's steep. . . ."

Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw is a rollicking rhyming book featuring the adventures of bumbling woolly friends. The short, simple rhymes, accompanied by lively colored-pencil illustrations make this book a fun enrichment for phonics and/or spelling lessons. This week in spelling my third graders are studying the -ee word family, so I read this story aloud to them today during lunchtime. They loved it!

This book could inspire students to write their own short stories or poems using their weekly-assigned, word-family spelling lists.